Startup Weekend: Cambridge To Hyderabad, The Experience

Startup Weekend Cambridge

Back in March (2011) I disappeared for a month to UK and while I spent a month there, there are only two significant things I did. The First being a visit to Stone Henge (picture below) and the other being ‘Startup Weekend Cambridge.’

Startup Weekend is this 54 hours madness that brings together business folks, developers, designers and jack of all trades like me to build a startup over a weekend. Ones with an idea pitch it, voting follows and teams are formed organically. These teams have to come back with a product / prototype / demo / whatever by Sunday evening and present to the judging panel. In march, Startup Weekend, which has as of today done over 100 cities and 250 action packed weekends, came to India.

My friend Pankaj Jain was (he still is) passionately spearheading the India leg of SW and I decided to jump in and help organize Delhi and Bangalore. Events were planned, dates final, lots of pre-event work done and then UK happened at the same time as SW Bangalore and Delhi. And right then, Pjain pointed me to Startup Weekend Cambridge and I signed up for it immediately. So as the folks in India were organizing Bangalore, I participated in Cambridge. Left home with a view of seeing startup action in UK, getting a feel of the event, floating around multiple teams and chilling over the weekend.

What happened was crazy. Read More

Inspirational: Babu’s Doing Extraordinary Things (Transformational Leadership In Government)

In his talk ‘In defense of the indefensible’ Srivatsa Krishna goes on to show multiple examples of Government employees / ‘Babus’ / public servants doing great work, within the same political structure that is currently hit by a new scam every week. While many around me (include me to an extent) are at loss of confidence, doubting India’s prospects and can only vent their anger of Facebook / Twitter, here is a video that raises such hope!

YouTube Link

Thanks Hari Kotian for sharing this

 

Fly Like That! Jumpsuits In Action, As Seen In Transformers 3

Transformers 3 Base Jumpers / Action Scene

The making of the amazing action scene in Michael Bay’s ‘Transformers Dark of the Moon’. These jumpsuits made of Nylon let humans fly, have seen a video of this in mountains before and if you recall a recent Salman Khan ad for Mountain Dew, you would see this there as well. But jumping off a skyscraper, it’s a different thing altogether. My plans for skydiving are in place, I want to do it whenever I am heading west coast (US) next and if I can ever manage something like this, it would be a dream come true.

You MUST see this sequence in the movie (I saw it twice on large screen), but for now here is the making:  Read More

The Debate: Blog Came Pune 2 Video

Here is a small video from my talk at BCP2 in June earlier this year. This one is really special. It was the first time I took a session at any unconference / seminar and what better audience than my fellow bloggers to interact with. Though I was really nervous it was a proud moment for me. Thank you all for the support.

If you cant see the video click here

More BCP2 videos soon

Jai ho – Bhay ho (ROFL VIDEO)

Recently a political party in India took the rights for famouse Slumdog song “Jai Ho”; here is the response from the other party. …the Bhay ho version of the original video…