where are the indian hacker's ? : Bosky's reply

I was reading this thread on ycombinator news, that went :"Where are the Indian hackers? "

About indian hackers... ohh they're out there all right... they're out there.

indian cities like chennai ,bangalore,bombay ,pune and delhi have really making the most of the unconference,hacker & silicon valley culture that's slowly building up.

There have always been examples of startups with a combination of design and development teams across india and us can do . take zimbra, riya , slingshot ,et cetera, or the bigger and more established zoho and slideshare . but for the smaller ones, you need to keep your eyes glued to unconferences .

If you're flying down to india, you might want to subscribe to http://upcoming.yahoo.com/group/3556/ for the upcoming unconferences .

Its run by gud friend - and pythonista siddhi govindraj who for instance runs a one man project management s/w called silver stripe. Hey i think i might even talk more about the best hacker's in india i've had the privilege of ...uhmm adding to their feed subscriber list 8 )

ravi mohan, who just happened to port all of google director peter norvig's AI book code to java - is a one-man hacker working on nothing but the best of AI related work for the past few years.

swaroop ch , whose python hackery got him into adobe's flex team in india ,has written a book on python .he's one of the inventors of the ipod charger called ion.

gopal v , heads the open source project dotGNU,apart from contributions to native php code from yahoo's bangalore office is one of the most talented native code hacker's out there when it comes to the open source stack.

sriram krishnan, who 's story and 'curve to geekdom' is possibly the most enchanting, is a great example of a hacker getting noticed in the blogosphere, and all the way to microsoft.he nows works in the popfly team at redmond.

sidu ponnappa, is very 'agile' hacker with very diverse skill sets working in thoughtworks bangalore, apart from a very interesting mobile sideline project with a few friends called inactiv .

abdul qabiz , macromedia/adobe/yahoo/ and now hacker at Nanocasts r&d (called Mixercast ) is a hacker in the flash/flash space.

pvsundarram, who's addiction for designing scalable apps from native mvc to jabber & erlang ,to javascript hackery has taken this hacker to be invited for a number of startups in bangalore,bombay and chennai. he now works at zoomin ,and was my colleague at tutorvista where we worked on the whiteboard & chat collaboration product.

balakumar muthu - along time java based hacker, ganesh app for robotics and c++, labsji for smart gadgets, anantha narasimhan ,Seshu Karthick for web2.0 , the brilliant bunch of hackers at tachyon , antano solar john for AI , vipin from au-kbc for networking , .... i could go on . (maybe u can suggest more ?)

Heck, even i' ve quit and now finally taken time off to hack up a few open source projects, apart from bootstrapping for the startup i'm co-founding . (Note: this is where i hint that ppl interested in joined me can ping me ;) )

one thing about all of them is that they're all got a very diverese skillset,and can express themselves verry well.i could go on with more people i know..hmm wish i could export my google opml .... The day of reckoning will however be when the first ycombinator with indian hacker's . Grab a couple of the names from above and make a team - now that my friends will be history in the making 8 )

But anyways - in the end we've can't say that we don't have the hacker's right now . i think it's the "getting it to market" ability that we are still perfecting. and part of that has to do with the eco-system for startups and entrepreneurs...

The good news is that that's exactly what is fortunately getting better ... in fact when i read "icon : steve jobs" a few quarters ago - i could'nt help but notice how lucky i was to be in india right now. Very much reminiscent of the hacker culture from the 1980's ...

Can't wait to get started 8 )

Keep Clicking,

Bhasker V Kode
Hacker, and proud to be indian... 8 )

PS: i wish someone updated the nice compilation of indian startups logo's

UPDATE1: hey I just heard about Yahoo 's HackDay India . well that might not be too bad a place to find 200 odd hackers assemble together 8 )

Technorati Tags: hackers, hack,hackdayIndia, india, indian, startups, bhasker, bosky

Indian Independent music is ALIVE and kicking !!

When i first saw sites like radioverve and gigpad for indian independent music spring up , I wondered who would be creating this kind of music from india . Well, today as a music lover and self-taught guitarist , i'm more than convinced at the amazing changes and advances happening in the indian independent music scene.

Take for instance - my good friend ,Prakash Hariharan has been playing the mandolin for 10 odd years. Sometime in college few years back, he got himself a new acoustic guitar ,and an electric one . And started playing amazing leads on both that led to him drifting towards fusion and little jazz. He and other friends from college like Raghu (Bass,vocals, composition) ,Karthik(vocals,guitar)& Deepak (drums) all from SVCE , have been making demos and jingles and performing at a semi-professional level for some time now .My gf was judged best singer at an inter-college event,and sings for the college band , and i know how she really enjoyed every practice session they had, and admits - its all hard work and patience. She should know - she's been learning classical indian music for the past 15 years ,Prakash for 10 odd years on the mandolin started off classical himself. Some like the pianist junior ,have even made it big in the band called Oxygen. Great to see them win gigs ,be it a fusion at iit,iim or the other events in south india. Hey ,incidently I had a great time myself playing the guitar for while in the western music band. I still do enjoy each minute i spend everyday with my custom made spanish guitar 8 )

Whats new though , is that unlike anyone else i know or anytime before ... Prakash has put away a nice job at a software company to pursue his dream . He joined a radio station to learn production , while spinning his own compositions in his home studio . recording and jamming with other buddies . He's been showing his demo's to people ,even to Guitar Prasanna and hopes to one day join the Berkely school of music . Really awesome to see people passionate and pursuing what they love 8 )

On the same lines, I was really stunned when i heard the awesome potential in indian inde music 8 ) ( songs from red cube, indus creed especially ) .Lot of indian independent music happening ....

Check out

1. http://www.split-magazine.com/downloads
2. http://split-magazine.com/radio
3. radioverve
4. gigPad
   

Prakash puts some of his music over at his blog and runs his own podcasts with his music , and I'll ask him to update news on his new band in bangalore .

Here's a demo of Red Cube's single called "some where in the corner".

Cheers to the music,guitars and the free world ! 8 )

Update : Also on similiar lines, is tempostand.com . And here's cheers to Oritus, for their awesome song and now my personal fav indian inde ballad - 'Many a Mile' - by Oriitus.
Keep Clicking,
Bhasker

Technorati Tags: indian, indie, music, pkharry, radioverve, redcube, split,tempostand, oritus,svce, gigpad,bosky101