Good Start for 2015 @ OpenGyan

OpenGyan was in Trichy for a one day workshop. It is our first workshop in 2015 and we had a good start. One of the alumnus (Siva, thank you) of Jayaram College of Engineering and Technology who used to work with us introduced us to HOD. We were supposed to have workshop on Programming but we had to switch over to general topics as we have got many students from different streams. So, we did a workshop on "College to Corporate" and touched on "Resume Writing" with giving elements of good resume and review of the resumes of the students, "How to present oneself in interviews" and a mock "GD" and review of the GD.

We will be there on another day for a programming workshop.

And finally the day was ended with a very long discussion with Principal, HOD (CSE) and there were a lot of exchange of interesting ideas, exchange of thoughts on academic, industry and state of industry. We happen to capture few snaps during and after the workshop and the pictures are hosted here.

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OpenGyan in Trichy

Another Saturday at OpenGyan

Many of you would know by now that we, from OpenGyan were at KCG last Saturday for a one day workshop on programming fundamentals. It was personally an wonderful exposition on various aspects of programming. We tried mapping programming from different perspective and there were wonderful answers from the students too. What we came up was the following map which was our agenda.

Talking about trivial and non-trivial software and trying to explain the logic. We took an example of searching a list. How to come up with a logic. We conveyed how easy is to write a brute-force algorithm for searching and how it fairs when the number of inputs is increased and why it cannot scale up. How to optimize the brute-force and to come up with a algorithm that usually takes less iterations.

The students wrote two versions of solution - brute force and building a binary tree. All these were correlated to real-world and the students were spot on in relating effective data storage with library, medical shop.

Towards the end, i felt why we were ending the session. It was an wonderful session talking to young minds. Hope we meet often and soon. Some pictures from the event

Self Learning - Resources

After a very long time, writing this post. Stayed away from blogging, primarily because i didn't know what to write. The work kept me busy and so no reading, no browsing and no learning (except work). It is just work, work and more work :-)

Finally got some time off and yesterday i did something which i never did for past many months. I started learning a new programming language. It is Python and i know you are fuming for saying it. It isn't new to many of you but it is new to me. I started to learn python in Code Academy and completed the beginner course in Python. Here is the list of online portal that helps you build your skills.

Hope it is useful to someone out there.

http://www.codecademy.com

https://www.coursera.org

https://www.udemy.com

https://www.codeschool.com

http://www.mysliderule.com
http://java9s.com

If you want to add new skills to your kitty, look at the above places and i am sure you will end up learning more. And additionally, you will get a certificate.

BTW, interesting found PyCon India scheduled coming Sept and hoping to attend the sessions and workshops and you can buy tickets here

OpenGyan - An Update

Last two weeks, we at OpenGyan had a great time in conducting workshops. Last Saturday, we were at KSIT Bangalore for a one day workshop on "Pointers in C" and yesterday we were in ES Engineering college in Villupuram for a workshop on "Networking".

KSIT - We are visiting the second time (CSE department) and the response from the students were too good (and the students themselves are too good). The day went like a second and there were learning at both students. At the end of the workshop apart from learning pointers, the students felt that learning pointers is easy (but it requires lots of practice) and we too had wonderful learning as we had to learn it again to conduct this workshop. There are interests from other departments from KSIT and we met up HODs of two other departments post our workshop. Kudos to staff, students and management of KSIT, Bangalore. It is one of the institutes where we feel we should keep going.

ES Engineering College - Being my hometown and it makes feel so happy to contribute to an institution in my hometown. It is the first time for us in Villupuram. It was wonderful experience to meet up students from different background and we spent a day on talking about networking. The second half of the day, we managed to capture live network traffic and show the students how to analyze the traffic using Wireshark. The management was very interested to get our feedback and suggestions to improve the quality of education. It is glad to see such interests from the department. Thanks to management, staff and students of ECE department.

Here are some of the snaps taken in these two workshops

KSIT, Bangalore (22-Mar-2014)

ES Engineering College, Villupuram (29-Mar-2014)

OpenGyan - Public Workshop on Networking Basics

Computer networks is a fascinating area. I picked up very little of networking or computer networks when i was doing my engineering and most of it came from the place where i m working. Like many folks at my work place, i too started my career with networking and played with routers and switches. Slowly, i was introduced to works of great programmers/teachers/authors like Richard Stevens. 

Many folks who attend my workshops used to ask me - how can i learn networking. If i do CCNA will it be helpful. While the certifications are there for a specific reason, a mere certification will not fetch you a job. It is the knowledge that will get you something. So, my suggestions to all folks who wants to learn networking is to get started with reading/experimenting using the books of Richard Stevens. Unlike other theoritical books, Richard Steven's work are thought provoking and the reader gain knowledge by doing stuff.

Keep this in mind, i am planning to put together a curtain raiser to the fascinating subject - communication of computers. We believe this workshop would help someone to understand various jargon and at a bare minimum will give an exposure on practical aspects of networking. At the end of the course, you will not get everything about networking but you might develop an interest towards networking and will be in a position to take networking knowledge to next level (if you are ready to put the efforts needed).

We are planning to have this workshop somewhere in Nanganallur, Chennai and for logistics reason we need a minimum of 10-15 students committed to attend the workshop. If you would like to take this opportunity, please do fill this form. One of us will get back shortly. This is targeted for students. Here is the registration link

OpenGyan Workshop on Networking Basics

OpenGyan - First Public Workshop

Today - From colleges to community.

OpenGyan has been conducting workshops in colleges. Today (and for the first time), we conducted our first public workshop in Nanganallur, Chennai. The workshop was on "Resume Writing and Interview skills". It was wonderful experience and all the participants (though number of participants were less) were really charged up. The advantage of conducting such workshops is that you get folks who are really interested to learn and this group of participants were really good. I got a feeling that the day was spent well and we hope that the participants too feel the same.

Our special thanks to Mr. Barani Prasad, Nanganallur, Chennai and the school administration of Jaigopal Garodia Girls Higher Secondary School, Nanganallur, Chennai for helping us giving a class room. Kudos to Ganesh Narayan who was behind organizing this workshop flawlessly and without his dedication this workshop wouldn't have happened.

Glad that we were able to do this today and here is a picture captured.

Wonderful Experience in OpenGyan Workshop

"Those were really fulfilling moments". 

This would be an understatement. The amount of satisfaction and sense of attachment i get out of OpenGyan's workshop can never be said in words. A day's time or sometimes probably lesser than that is required to rejuvenate my morale. The amount of inspiration and motivation i get from the tiny leaders out there in schools is very huge. Many folks think i go to colleges to add value to the students. But usually it is the opposite. I feel that i get a huge benefit and value from those students - a bunch of students who have hope in their eyes and fire in their belly. You never know the magnitude of their fire just by looks. You should really talk to them.

Yesterday, it was once again a great moment unnoticed. I would rather say that it would have gone unnoticed had i been normal, usual. Yesterday was the first time we were in a polytechnic to meet up budding diploma holders. We spent close to three hours to talk about computers, programming and operating systems. Many times during the session, i hit my limits and had to rethink about the way i deliver the session. The questions were spontaneous, direct and cannot/should not be missed. Yet all those had to be answered to curious minds.

It was wonderful session and i sincerely wish all my workshops are like this. If the participants try to shake my understanding of computing, it helps me to understand it better. Yesterday was one such day. Because of intense discussions, we missed to capture the moments through lens but we didnt miss to capture the college along with Paramaraj (alumnus of the college and my co-worker) and the faculty from Dept of Electronics.

Don't miss to visit us in Facebook - OpenGyan @ Facebook (your support means a lot to us)

OpenGyan - Update

Last Saturday (28-Sep-2013) we @ OpenGyan were in Bangalore at KSIT. This is our first workshop in Bangalore. This time we were conducting our workshop on Networking. Originally we planned to conducted Networking and Network Programming. We were not able to touch Network programming due to time. Hopefully we conduct network programming soon.

It was wonderful experience and we should say that the students were brilliant. There were lot of intelligent questions and the students attended the workshop with full enthusiasm. After seeing their enthusiasm, i felt that i should go back to college and learn once again. The hospitality and the interactions with the students and professors we really enriching and rewarding.

Kudos to everyone who made this event and we really looking forward for our workshop in KSIT again. Here are few snaps.

OpenGyan - Becoming a Better Programmer

[Alert: Longer post, targeted for students community. Comments are welcome from seasoned software engineers]

Recently we had a couple of OpenGyan's workshops and i happen to scribble my ideas to the students. I hope i will be able to dedicate more time in writing posts like this. Hope this helps the students' community. Though software engineering is a very complex area (is it really that complex?), we are going to focus on the things that are very important for software development of any sort - may it be a lab exercise or a project. The readers are suggested to reflect upon the exercises given at the end of each article for better understanding.

I was reading and reflecting on the short article written by Badhri on Programming languages. Though it was short, it gave a general overview about the programming language. Any programming language is a tool to achieve your imagination. For example, if you are writing a simple program (similar to the ones that is given to you in lab), you do not need to think much. But in reality it isn't the case. To be a programmer, knowing a programming language is secondary because knowing the syntax of the programming language won't make you a good programmer. If knowing programming language is sufficient, then compiler would do the job. Software development is much more than knowing a programming language or few.

Any software is a solution to a given problem. And programming language is just a tool to solve the problem. The solution to the problem is more important than the tool (the programming language). In order to develop a better software one needs to follow certain basic principles in a specific order. The rest of the article discusses the basic principles of software development in a much simplified way.

First, one needs to understand what needs to be done. Because you cannot go on writing program simply for everything. You need to understand that you are writing a program for someone to use it. Remember that you will not always write program to improve your knowledge. So understanding the requirements - what needs to be done plays a crucial part. Understanding the requirements is the first step and if you do not understand the requirements, remember you do not have the second step.

As a second step to writing a program, you need to know how to solve the given problem without employing much of your knowledge on programming languages. For example, if you are writing a game, you need to understand and know how the game is played, how many players are involved, what are their roles etc. In this phase, you will least bother about whether you will use linked list or array. But you will solve the problem at an abstract level. This is called high level design. After high level design, you will decompose the high level design into modules and design each modules. For example, if you are writing a program to validate Palindrome, you need to have input module, processing module and output module. This ability to decompose the problems in sub-problems and solving them with sufficient data structures and algorithms is called low level design. While you are solving the problem, you should also keep in mind about the future problems that may crop up. Your design has to be flexible enough to accommodate future problems (which is quite challenging).

The third skill that is required is to convert the design into product and this is where the programming language comes in. Without the above two steps, the third skill is not worth and in fact not needed. Once you have understood the problem and solved it at a conceptual level, then implementation becomes pretty easier. You do not need to beat around the bush. During the implementation phase, you will implement the entire software module by module and finally integrate the modules to make it bigger whole. Apart from implementing the design, the coding is also about producing maintainable code. When you develop software, you are writing the software which is expected to live more than your lifetime. The program (aka code) can be written with a lot of grace and the code that is well written will live beyond ages (example Unix). The developer needs to understand about other developers who are working with him/her and the people who will be working in future. So programming is not merely following syntax but much more than that. As this point of time, we have discussed about three important qualities of a developer.

The final thing that you need to do as developer is to test your software. The primary focus of testing is to uncover hidden defects. As a developer, you are the best person to know about your code and it makes sense for others to bank on your certificate. So, it is the developers' responsibility to test the software and fix the defects. This is called as unit testing as the developer who develops it ensures that all the code that is written works as expected.

You need to evaluate how much percentage does a programming language play here. May be 40%. But please do not get me wrong. For writing a software, you need a language however for solving problems you need skills like understanding requirements, designing and most importantly testing it. Without these skills, you will not be able to excel as developer. Now would you understand why you have "Algorithm", "Flow Chart", "Hand Calculation" and "Output" section in your lab observation.

When you follow the above software development practices right from the beginning, you become a natural programmer/developer to solve any complex problems. You may want to evaluate your current way of writing programs. First solve the problem and then start writing the program. Though the exercise is short/simple, i am sure there is a lot to learn in terms of processes.

Exercise:

Take any simple program (Palindrome, Fibonacci series) and apply all the concepts you understood from this article (Duration: 3 Hours, Complexity: Medium)

1. Clearly understand the requirement/problem. For example, what is palindrome or Fibonacci series
2. Solve the problem by decomposing into modules
3. Write the software
4. Finally test

Happy Weekend

State of Fresh Graduates

Recently we had discussion with one of the processors in an engineering college and it all sums up the state of new graduates recruitment. From my view, it shows that the industry is involved in batch processing and it appears to me that either they do not have confidence on technical skills of students or they do not bother to know whether the students possess any technical skills (may be they are confident that they can train them up).

Even if they can train them up, i don't think a simple and general discussion on life and that too only for few minutes wouldn't reveal anything about the candidate. I have met also students from different background and i can see remarkable problem solving skills and great commitment from first generation learners. Usually the first generation learners, know the importance of education and so are their parents. The first generation students know the importance of opportunity. But then, due to their social/economic background, they usually fall to the bottom in terms of communication skill. We had a discussion with Director, Loyola-ICAM College of Engineering and Technology. During the discussion he shared a real story of son of a painter. It was heart touching.

Considering the amount of first generation learners, social/economic parity, i feel that it is high that the corporates of India (particularly the IT) see an opportunity and fine tune their recruitment process. It is always the hard skills/technical skills that will bring you the edge. Communication is always overrated. We know how Japanese and Chinese do their work. And we do have BPOs in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities and towns.

At OpenGyan, we work towards filling the gaps by interacting with the students as early as when they are in second year. And we are keen to impart experiential knowledge. Together, let us grow by knowledge sharing.

Have a nice sunday

OpenGyan - An Update

It was new beginning. Last week, we at OpenGyan launched a new workshop on "Attending Interviews and Resume Writing". I would say it is highly successful and many thanks to Director, Staff and Students of LICET who made it successful.

We conducted close to a dozen of mock interviews and we feel that it helped the students to greater extent to conquer the fear. There was an introspection session soon after each mock interview so that the students learn their mistakes. During the second half of the day we focussed on resume writing. Both morning and evening sessions were received very well. To add to our happiness, we have been requested to conduct two more workshops (this weekend and next weekend). :-)

We are glad that the students find our workshop very useful.

Here are few moments captured through camera and more in Facebook.

We are looking forward for more sessions :-)

The Learning Path - Linux@OpenGyan

If you are an engineering student still in college, you may want to spend time in reading through this post. This is little longer and it may change the way you program (of course with your efforts). If you are a professional, i still feel that you have a bit to learn here :-)

I wanted to write this post for past few months and i had to think about designing a series of workshops that would take a newbie of Linux to expert in Linux. What are various areas in Linux that would make you a good programmer in Linux. While you have many programming languages like Python, Perl, Java, C, C++ and many languages, is there a way in which i can pick one or two programming languages and yet become good in Linux.

If you are a computer science student, you would learn "C" programming language. When you complete your second year of engineering, you would have completed probably a theory and a lab on C programming and you will be fluent enough to solve simple to medium complexity problems in C. If you know "C" and wish to become an expert, here are something that we offer from OpenGyan (yep, we are in Facebook too). Once you follow this path, though it is little difficult, you should be good enough to call yourself as budding system programmer.

I have made these in few easy steps so that you can take these as a capsule and set a milestone. All these steps should take you one to two years of consistent efforts and a strong will power. What you sow is what you reap.

Step #1 - Linux Basics and Commands
This workshop will be a curtain raiser for you and it should give you various inputs on why you should be spending time in Linux. You should be able to understand what is Linux, its architecture, why it is successful, Open Source, Linux's history and basic commands to play around with Linux. After this workshop you need to spend some time in playing with Linux like watching movies, playing music, browsing Internet in Linux, chatting with your friends and do whatever you want. Just be a user of Linux.

Step #2: - Linux Shell Scripting
After spending sometime in Linux, this is the baby step of being a little programmer on Linux. If are typing series of commands and by now you should feel it is boring or tedious and you want to automate it. Shell Scripting will help you to automate tasks and don't think it just automates. Shell scripting can be powerful tool when you want to do stuff when you have slept. This is sure first step towards becoming Linux programmer and don't miss to practice. Do couple of mini-projects before moving on to next phase.

Step #3 - Linux Programming (Part 1)
Linux are based on processes and files. In this first and most important part, you will go through series of topics on Linux API. These APIs are the ways to get things done. You will learn how to create a process, how to run a program, manage the process, learn about memory allocation, learn basic operations of File. If Shell scripting was exciting, this one will be more exciting. Again, spend time here and practice with couple of mini-projects. Do all your data strcutures exercise here to learn how to handle memory. This is the time you should write code that causes segmentation fault and when you go to next stage your code should hardly core

Step #5 - Linux Programming (Part 2)
Human beings talk to each other and so are processes. Do not think you will write standalone processes. Think about the scenarios where the processes wants to interact. In this stage, you should learn various ways of inter process communication and understand how processes in a machine interact with each other. Once you acquire the concepts/skills at this level, your journey from here will be very easy and little faster.

Step #4 - Multi-Thread Programming in Linux
Your mobile is quad core now. And everywhere it is multicore. Multi-threaded programming lets you to write high performance and concurrent systems. You will learn what is thread, how to create and make them to execute a task, synchronize them so that they don't block each other's work. If you are good programmer, multi-threading should make you a great programmer (of course with a lot of practice)

Step #6 - TCP/IP Fundamentals
Today, Internet reached everyone's home. Facebook, Yahoo, Google and many other websites/webservices are reality only because of TCP/IP stack. If you want to program network applications or design network elements, it is very much essential for you to understand how TCP/IP works. Whether you want to write a simple chat server/client or complex web application like Facebook, this is where you should start.

Step #7 - Network Programming in Linux 
This stage is very interesting as you will learn how to write your own network applications using APIs provided by Linux. It should take a while for you to master this. In this stage, you will understand what is socket and what are various different ways of communication. Once you are done with this, you will be regarded as full blown application developer on Linux and most likely you will be an expert in "C".

Step #8 - Linux Kernel Module Programming
If you are system programmer or want to become one, after acquiring above skills, i bet the next thing you would like is writing your own LKM. It gives you an opportunity to play with famous kernel - Linux. You will write modules which is part of Kernel. You will compile Linux kernel and be a true hacker. This will surely quench your thirst of becoming a great programmer and highly sought after.

How much time do you think it will take to accomplish the above training path.
If you are second year or have two more years to complete your degree, you have ample time. With your consistent efforts, it should be really a doable task.

Happy Learning

Watch out the space on how can you build same expertise in Java world.

OpenGyan @ SRM University

OpenGyan had its first workshop in Chennai at SRM University. In a sense it is breakthrough as we are conducting our first workshop in Chennai (officially under the banner of OpenGyan). Today (24-Aug-2013), we met bunch of students in SRM University in their campus and conducted workshop on "Data Structures (and applications)".

Again, it was wonderful experience meeting the students' community and personally i have learnt a lot during the session. Many of the students were posting interesting questions and i had to recollect the basics i learnt to give them an answer. Apart from the questions, i really liked the way in which the students adapted to the situation. They organized themselves so well that we could overcome unavailability of Linux systems. If we had few Linux systems, the workshop would have been more successful. During the course of the workshop, we discussed (and learnt) many interesting data structures, wrote code, fine tune the code that was written, discussed about career, discussed about doing pet projects. Wow, we thoroughly enjoyed.

Kudos to the students, professors and everyone for organizing wonderful workshop.

Without a doubt, it was one of the most productive days in life :-)

Couple of snaps from workshop

OpenGyan - Update

We will be conducting around four workshops in Aug/Sept and we are discussing with few colleges in Bangalore and Coimbatore for couple more workshops in Oct 2013. We happen to have discussion with HOD of an engineering college in Bangalore and they were interested to have series of workshops in their institute (based on our workshop flowchart). Glad to see interest in OpenGyan. With your support, we believe that OpenGyan and its cause will grow in coming years. 

We are also planning to add more initiatives and we are thinking about few initiatives that can be delivered over web (like forums or emails) and it also helps students across colleges to collaborate using Internet. The rolling out of new initiatives will take little more time as we need to work on planning and how to cater the needs of the students. Watch out this space for more updates.

Kudos/Credits

Many thanks to supporters and "word-of-mouth" ambassadors of OpenGyan. All those likes/shares, tweets and casual chit chats really helps OpenGyan in a very long way.

Your help helps us in a long way: Support us in Facebook and Twitter 

For first time viewers: OpenGyan is a non-profit initiative that helps the students community to improve their exposure in information technology, computers, programming and problem solving. As a side effect, you get to know about Open Source Software. More information - http://www.opengyan.com

Support Growing for OpenGyan

A couple of days back there was post here on OpenGyan's first media visibility.

I got calls from 10+ folks from my neighborhood appreciating/wishing that we are doing a good job and we had couple of parents visiting me to help/counsell their kids. It is very heartening to see that people around us wish and want us to be successful. A couple of folks wanted to join us and wanted to contribute towards OpenGyan and its mission. Glad to see that support for OpenGyan is growing.

We are very thankful to all kind hearted human beings who are giving us morale strength and whole-hearted support. It is that strength that makes us to continue the journey and reinforces us that we are doing something worthwhile and meaningful. On the other side, we

feel little nervous and fearful and i am pretty sure that we will overcome that fear. The fear is equipping ourselves to step up our contribution/work. We have plenty of plans for that and soon you should witness couple of initiatives.

Expect an announcement soon.

Thank you for the wonderful support, wishes and suggestions.

Help Needed

Help us to help your alma-mater: If you still have contact in your alma-mater, request you to discuss with the students/professors. We will be glad to talk to them and try to contribute there as well. If you need a brochure, we have one. Please reach out to us at "ping@opengyan.com". 

Is communication a key factor?

In one of our workshops @ OpenGyan,

A student asked, "How important is communication?"

I said, "very important".

He then asked, "how much should i improve?"

I said, "i don't know the answer but you and i should keep improving our skills".

He smiled and then asked, "will i get a job for my communication skills".

I said, "well, if you are looking for a technical work, communication skills alone won't fetch you a job. It is your programming skills that would fetch you a job but for that you have to express yourself clearly".

He asked me again, "i have difficulty in communication". 

I said, "as long as your express yourself with a bit of difficult toastmaster. I don't think much about my English when speaking but i try my bit by reading. That's my homework."

and listen genuinely it should be fine. don't think much about whether you are correct grammatically or you speak like a

I asked him, "how are you feeling now? do you think, talking to me is a difficult task?" 

He said, "No" 

I said, "that's is enough to start with. Don't think too much about work. Communication is more like conversation and holding interest of other person. As long as you do that, it's enough but keep improving"

[He then sat in his chair with big relief.]

Take away for him: Good technical skills and ability to converse on the topic of your interest is sufficient at work or interview. And that's my experience too [it fetched me a job 12 years back and i have been recruiting folks with average communication skills but with good technical skills]. 

OpenGyan – Workshops Flow Chart

The students attending our workshops always wanted to have follow-up workshops and some of them even told us that they need one or two easy workshops at beginner level. So, we thought that it is better to have a flow of workshops targeting second year students. The idea is to get involved at early stage so that both the students and OpenGyan has ample time to cover most of the topics without compromising on the technical depth. Having in this in mind, we have come up with several streams - Linux Programming, Data Structures and Algorithms/Algorithm Design, Testing, Software Engineering, Web Programming and Soft Skills. All the streams will have three levels – Praarambh (Beginner), Madhyama (Intermediate) and Dheekshana (expert).

For example, if you get involved with OpenGyan in your second year at engineering (for a Bachelors in Engineering student) or first year in Post Graduate course (MCA, MTech, MSc) there is a high probability that you become expert in a couple of streams and you will get to know about other streams as well at a beginner level. Ideally, we feel that a student can reach to a level of expert in couple of streams (fluent with hands-on) and expert in soft skills in two to three years’ time frame.

We are also planning to have some coursework (mini-projects or online intern kind of thing) once in a semester however mini-projects/intern will be limited to few students. We are in planning phase and more updates to come within a month from now.

You may want to check out our flow chart. The online version can be found here.

As always, we would like to get your feedback and request you to spread a word.

OpenGyan - Do you like it?

May be you are heading for a weekend drive, catching up your emails or seeing this page accidentally in your timeline. Got two minutes to spare?

If so, here we go..

Having spent close to two years in OpenGyan (actually it is 5 man years, 2 guys 2 putting two years and one guy about an years' effort), we have reached a stage of self-assessment. This self-assessment is not to terminate OpenGyan but to steer it towards something meaningful. OpenGyan should not be redundant and doing things that are already done at colleges. We want to work along with colleges and try to see whether we can create a spark.

So, first thing that we did was to review all the feedback from students. Well, it sounded to us that more than 90% of the students wanted these kind of workshops again and again. The feedback from the professors are also good. All of them convey to us that they are extremely happy with the workshops.

Next, how about getting feedback from common people? If you can help us in answering these three questions, it would be great. You can answer either in the comments section here or you can email be at grabyourfreedom@gmail.com if you prefer to be confidential. The questions are

1. Do you really like the idea of OpenGyan - going to schools to conduct workshops(kindly check our website and Facebook page for a while, would be glad if you can like us in Facebook.)
2. If you follow OpenGyan, what is the most you like and what is the aspect that we should improve upon?
3. Would you like to share the works of OpenGyan to people you know who can be benefited (professors and colleges students)?

Please do share your feedback.

BTW, i really like it merely because of connecting to the students. The next thing that we should focus is to go place where the students do not get exposure. Money should not be a gating factor whether or not a person get access and the interest should only be the gating factor. Let us see how it goes.

If you are looking to volunteer for some of the workshops (as trainer), please do let us know. We shall involve you when opportunities arrives.

Life Lessons @ OpenGyan

I haven't got a chance to write about my learning at OpenGyan for a while. It is very easy to write something [for me it is even easier as i m currently reading some books and i can vomit that i learnt in my own horrible language] but i thought that it has to be a honest review/reflection. These posts should not appear as a mere "accomplishments" but rather i always felt that it has to fuel me to overcome the obstacles. In that aspect, i wanted to think and write about one of the challenges we have in OpenGyan - Word of Mouth and it is taking a while for me to think through.

As far as i understand, we stand bad in terms of Word of Mouth [read it carefully, we dont have bad mouth :-)]. Yep, we miss the masala and marketing and I should say we miss it terribly. It is good as it paves way to learn something, it paves way to be successful at something new. It is always exciting when you think it is only matter of time and keep changing the strategy and be patient until fruition. 

Our story goes like this. We were writing emails to people at colleges and there was only a little traction. Then we wanted to start a Facebook page as we thought the social media is so powerful and the traction was little more. While we were clear on what we wanted to do, we weren't quite clear on how it should be done. Blame (which is very easy) the lack of experience in marketing, sometimes we thought the things are not working out. For a while, we even thought the content was not good but time and again the participants prove that in fact the content and delivery as excellent (on an average we score close 80 on a 100 point scale). But again, we didn't cash on this feature - good feedback. We never requested participants to share it with their friends. Was it a bad decision? We thought that the participants would actually share OpenGyan's workshop with their friends but it seems like they didn't. Was it out bad reasoning and decision? May be yes. We should  change this in future.

Nevertheless, being close to heart, i feel that we have not learned the trick, holy grail or the magic it. There are few initiatives in pipeline and i feel all those will take us to next level in realizing our vision - "providing cost free workshops for students' community". The failure in marketing making us to do many things and i would be very glad to share with you once some of those are put in to action. Like you, i sincerely hope we turnaround this and continue to provide/host workshops with impact.

For all those supporters out there, a very big thank you. I shall wrap up saying, "we are here because of your support and we will live up to your expectations". Thank you again for supporting OpenGyan.

OpenGyan's Workshop on Networking

This post has very few words and a picture. We @ OpenGyan happen to use the silent period (or no activities at colleges) to our advantage of getting a good content on our next workshop on "FUNdamentals of Networking". I m sure that this workshop will help you to understand networking little more with lots of activities and fun. Here is the mind map of our workshop.

Share this with your friends who are in colleges. If you have any questions, add a comment here or email us at ping@opengyan.com (and expect a response back :-))