Congrats to Infy aka Infosys on reaching magic number 100000. Now we are a family of one lakh members across the world. 19675 makes me feel so old

Src:Fact sheet: Results for the Second Quarter ended September 30, 2008.

Venice is a small city in northern Italy. Venezia (in Italian) is also know as city of bridges and city of water. I just got a day to spend at Venice. I know its not enough but something is better than nothing.
The city’s main transport system as you would have guessed is boats. The city also has narrow (aka lot of gallis) streets. It is very easy to get lost in Venice even with a good map. I followed the direction marks inside the city to reach the landmarks. I have lots of pictures with notes so go get your Latte Grande.

View of Grand Canal from the from Ponte dell’Accademia. Its the biggest canal in Venice. You will see many gondolas (Venetian boats) carrying tourists on this canal.

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Knowingly or unknowingly I was talking about Shankar Nag’s (Shankar Nagarakatte) talent and films yesterday. 18 years have passed since we lost a great director/actor of Kannada film industry. We Kannadigas are still trying to find a Shankar Nag in every debutant.
Shankar who gave us movies like Minchina Oota, Accident, Noodi Swamy navirode heege. Shankar who gave us television serial like Malgudi Days, Shankar who got Nagamandala to stage is missed by every Kannada movie buff.

I miss you personally.

So you love those unknown faces behind Open Source products. You like their work and suggest the same to your friends. But what if one of those developers need your help desperately to save his child……..can you donate small amount like $5….the amount you spend @ccd in a week…will you help them?

“My family got bad news - doctors said allogenic bone marrow transplantation is the only chance for my son Ivan. “8 months of heavy and expensive immune suppression brought some positive results so we hoped that recovering is just question of time. Ivan is very brave boy - not every human meets so much suffering during whole life, like Ivan already met in his 2,5 years. But long road is still in front of us to get full recover - we are ready to come it through.
“Ukrainian clinics have no technical possibility to do such complex operation, so we need 150-250K EUR for Israel or European or US clinic. The final decision will be made considering amount we able to find. Perhaps my family is able to get ~60% of that by selling the flat where parents leave and some other goods, but we still require external help.”
– Andrii Nikitin, MySQL Engineer
http://www.mysql.com/about/help-ivan.html

Thanks to GBot, Dhempe and ManojVasanth who have already contributed to the effort.

I am still trying to come out the euphoria. Out of my six days in Helsinki spent first three days geeking out. The idea of OpenLab was to bring together 35+ geeks from the field tech, blogging, programming, education, music and photography to discuss about social media, connected life, mobile life etc

Womworld had planned the event so meticulously that they had even scheduled sauna time. The pattern of discussion was completely new where we were made into four groups with little introduction to subjects. The objective being the *ideas* should come out of discussion. Then a leader from the every team presented it to the rest of the group. The members of the group were shuffled enough number time to create an opportunity for networking.

The first session started with social media and networking. Least common denominator amongst the participants was we all were on some social networking. So it was great subject to start the sessions. I did not know anything about others. Its not easy to talk when you don’t know whom you are talking to and they are best thirty five from around the world. More than that I am great listener than a talker. So my initial participation was listening to the comments made by other and in some cases making some comments. In the afternoon we had discussions on how to use collaborative and social tools at work, future films, games and usage of geo-location data.

Time was very limited. Each of the subject on the agenda would have taken a day. I still remember during our discussion on environment we had not even started the discussion when the bells went. Never the less, me and Jen continued our discussion about Bangalore autos, LPG and nuclear power. After a long time I found somebody who liked Bangalore amongst all the chaos. Jen said and I quote “Bangalore today is like LA in 80s. Its growing heavily, attracting people from all over the world. It will take time but it will become one of the best cities in the world”.

For me the best things were lunch and coffee breaks. I had great conversation with Steve about education in India and US. How education is becoming expensive and there is such a lack of good teachers in India etc.

Each and every conversation I had is memorable. It was the best part of the workshop. Lots of people to talk to and lot many different subjects. At the end of the third day we had just begun and it was already time to bid good bye.

I am not sure how this is going to help Nokia. Probably its going to help them if they want to build a new internet service or want to improve a service. Or they just wanted to feel the pulse of heavy internet/mobile users. Nokia kept all the conversations open and earned a lot of my respect.

Note: Cross posted at Bangalore Mirror Blog Talk.