RIP:Monthly Paychecks, From 3-7-2000 To 2-7-2010

Long back when I was in college, once i had a discussion with a friend. What would we be after 10 years? I remember saying some thing like, "I don't know what I will be but I know that I don't want to be a manager or some thing like that in some company". Being a highly opinionated person, I used to make lot of such declarations. Even now my friends tease me that I am the biggest hypocrite, saying one thing and doing another thing. May be true. But I think I have kept at least one promise. Exactly 10 years after I joined my first job I am not a "some manager at some company".

This is what I have always wanted to do. To do something actually meaningful. To make some impact. To be on my own. Now I think I had run out of excuses for not doing it. So I have said good bye to my fat pay checks.

I am starting a venture.

Bar Camp Chennai Roundup

- The sessions started little late. Robin from ReachAccountants.com kicked off with a session on the accounting and tax related things any entrepreneur need to know. It was informative as most of the participants were techies and this is one area which techies don't fully understant.

- Praveen from Krea gave a talk on the importance of Market Research for start-ups. His take away was "Find the market and develop the product/solution". A discussion ensued with a counter point that there are many examples of super success startups where the product/solution came before there actually was a market(Likes of Google, Twitter...etc).

- Kannadhasan from Eagle Software gave a talk on how biometric based id cards are used for Healthcare delivery (TN government's insurance scheme). It was interesting and very good to know that technology is touching people and is reducing pilferage. As a side topic, a strongly opinionated discussion on the ethical and privacy concerns of collecting bio-metric information of all the citizens and how the government could misuse it.

- The high light of the bar camp was the presentation by Ms.Sonal Misra Deputy Commissioner of Traffic Police Chennai. She demonstrated what she had done with geo tagging of accident prone zones at Erode. Eventually there was a very involved discussion on how technology can be used in
- providing automatic traffic alerts
- traffic law enforcement.
- Senthil Nayagam of RailsFactory.com gave a speech on the need for Hackerspace. Good idea. I would for sure subscribe to one such hackerspace.

We had to leave after this....In general the Barcamp was good. It could have been better. Though it is an unconference, the discussion could have been lil bit anchored, if not moderated. Some times the discussions took a tangential path.