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.

Awesomeness - Impressive "Impress.JS"

Again, another theme. Why don't i share something on a regular basis which is awesome [Since everyone that i m an awesome guy, i promise you that i won't write about myself]. BTW, all these are something which i come across, read in web or someone met in my life.

This time, i happen to hear and try an awesome.

Impress.JS is cute Javascript that helps in creating wonderful presentations. It helps you to express wonderful ideas and by the way you must know HTML, JavaScript and CSS (or very least try to learn all these). One of the aspects of Impress.JS is that it paves way for keeping the presentation simple and so it will be really an aid (and you will have to be main thing). Without your articulation, may be your presentation deck alone will convey 10%. "Impress.JS" and "Presentation Zen" will certainly take long way. BTW, "Presentation Zen" is another awesome that will be writing shortly.

After initial play, i feel that "Impress.JS" is very promising and really cool.

Have a look at here for a short demo and here to download it.

Have a good day.

Programmer who dreams in code - Inspiring

I just want to share this video to you. No words and the video speaks by itself :-) but pretty
inspiring.

Ideas Behind Life Lessons

Whether or not you like this post, you will like the image

I m posting a series of articles with title "Life Lessons @ OpenGyan". The idea behind it is to document my journey towards something which will be a game changer in my life. OpenGyan, as you may know now, is an non-profit initiative run by couple of folks towards students' community in this part of the world who do not have enough exposure towards software engineering and they get to know only when they join a company (after being branded as non-employable).

The document helps me for two reasons.

It is going to convey to me that it is not going to be easier [though it may be simple, i doesn't mean that it is easy to do]. It helps me in a great deal to keep up the focus on the vision and values. It makes me to think why i m part of this and how much i can add to its functioning.

Second, all these experiences should give me wisdom (a big question mark) and enough strength to absorb anxiety. [I already feel that i m reasonably successful in handling the anxiety]. I see these posts as a way for self improvement and self leadership (and most importantly build some good/pleasant qualities, if that is possible :-))

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.

On the way to "Asking Right Questions"

As a follow up to my previous post, i would like share my progress on my effort to ask right questions. So far i have read around five chapters. I already got the feeling that i should read the book again [this is the book that i m talking about. seems like 10th edition is out but i m reading 9th edition that i bought a couple years back].

First two chapters are general that talks about the benefits of asking questions and critical thinking as a social activity. I think, these two chapters are placed well which give us motivation to continue reading. I am a soft of guy who would like to work with book using exercises. First 20 pages of the book are theory and i m glad that it is small.

The real fun begins from chapter 3.

Chapter 3 talks about finding the issue and the conclusion in a speech or material. For many of us who are grown up and literate, i feel that finding the issue and conclusion is simple but yet after reading this chapter i felt i have learnt more. I got to know what are the aspects i should do while reading a material.

Chapter 4 talks about the reasons. By reading a material we wear the hat of the author and we tend to bury ourselves in his shoes or go against it (we take positions based on whether or not we buy the author's point or it could be due to our very own conditioning). We hardly find the reasons for the conclusion. This chapter gives us the process of finding "reasons". Only when we find reasons, we learn from the material. The reasons are critical for continuous learning.

Chapter 5 has some excellent material. It talks about dissecting the material given. It shows us how to find ambiguity. By ambiguity i mean anything that is hard to be believed without giving enough data points or research.

I have found examples exercises in all the chapters that hand holds us [which do provide hands-on on the topics]

More learning and more excitement. Will keep you posted on "asking right questions"

 

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 :-))

Back on Track - Reading Books

It is a while (may be close 6 months) since i touched a book [not literally though, i touched them when we shifted to new home as i had to physically touch them for arranging]. I particularly liked this activity. It gave me a guilty feeling. It appeared to me as if the books were saying, "why are you neglecting me? Had i been bought somebody else, would have felt the human touch". So, i thought, i should read them one by one. So, all the books in my cupboard are going to be happy :-)

After careful thinking, i thought i should read "Asking The Right Questions, A Guide to Critical Thinking". I read couple of chapters of "The Elegant Universe" by Brian Greene (and i was unabated by my lack of understanding on superstring theory) before jumping into "Asking Right Questions". I thought the universe can wait till i correct my thinking flaws :-)

The book "Asking The Right Questions" promises to improve critical thinking for those of you who think critically and to make people like me to think critically (who are not thinking critically or who do not know how to think or forgot it due getting married). So, in next few weeks, i m going to be a superman with my critical thinking :-)

On a serious note, i am glad that i bought the book. After reading couple of chapters, i felt that this book is written exclusively for me (to fix flaws in my thinking). Once i read it completely and put some of the concepts in practice, i shall share my experience with you. You can also become superman.

Great Book on Compilers

Recently, i have been trying to keep myself focused on learning the basics. The interesting thing about this i keep finding something very interesting. The digging things is really very interesting. I failed understand this when i was doing my under graduate degree nevertheless i learned the lesson and from here it is going to be another personal undergrad course in computer science :-) and most of the credits should go to the students who attend our workshops @ OpenGyan.

While i was reading a textbook on C, i found another interesting book and just thought of sharing here. I just skimmed through the table of contents and it is massive 1000+ pages book but it gives an excellent understanding on compilers.

Next to Discrete Mathematics, this book is likely to get into my shelf (and possibly to my brain little later). Please buzz me if you are interested for a group learning.

OpenGyan Workshop in PEC

The last two Saturdays have been nothing less than awesome. It was most satisfying moment in my life as i happen to meet few students of Pondicherry Engineering College, Department of ECE, @ their college campus for two day workshop on Linux Programming from OpenGyan.

First, after a long time, i happen to meet folks who speak in black and white. It is much easier for a teacher or trainer if the students convey whether or not they have understood (especially when they didn't understand). When the understanding is not clear, the teacher should think more and come up with better way of presenting. A teacher can think better only when there are intelligent questions or when an articulation was not understood. For sure, this workshop has sowed a seed of self improvement in me and i should say that this will make me to think better.

Second is the puntuality. We never had a situation where we started the session because of delay due to students. Everybody was there on time (1 or 2 minutes before).

Third and most important aspect is that almost everybody showed genuine interest to listen and "do" the exercises.

Overall, it one of the most fulfilling moment in my life and i hope this continues. Here are few clicks from the event.

And finally, the "moment"

Life Lessons @ OpenGyan

It is always honor if people look up to with trust that you can bring in a change. Top execs take charge after promising that they will bring about a change. Change is something good. Rather than change, we should call it shifts, a paradigm shift. Change is not so easy, it is pretty involved. Though there is a hope of turnaround, the change is not rewarding until it happens. Since it doesn't provide us an instant gratification, often people disengage themselves from the change. This is exactly why top execs are fired (or resign gracefully).

The youth, the students often think that they can do many things. It is true because the potential is always infinite. We have potential to do infinite things because we, the human beings know how to build systems up, from simple systems. Few smaller systems give us a little bigger system and by moving up further, the integration leads to much bigger system. So, it is possible to build infinite things and to produce infinite number of smaller things.

So, when you want to bring about a change (or rather a paradigm shift), keep focus the change, the much bigger and might system and at the same time draw a genuine motivation from milestone. A recent example is OpenGyan. While there is something big behind the idea of OpenGyan, the genuine motivation is drawn during every workshop. The motivation helps me to keep the bigger reason of existence of OpenGyan relevant.

And ultimately, i tend to think that everything decompose on how you break the system (goals, software, human relations, life's challenges) and how you integrate it again.

So, enough?

Our first workshop in 2013 at PEC, Department of ECE, Pudhucherry and eighth workshop (overall) is most satisfying experience.

Visit us http://www.opengyan.com and join us in Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/opengyan