Third ETG Event

The third ETG event was as big success as the last two events. This time we had a 70+ participation. The talk on .NET platform and ADO.NET by Jignesh Desai was highly appreciated. Now, we have few more volunteers lined up for speaking to this highly technical crowd. Unfortunately, I missed this event as I was in Chicago on this day.

Jignesh delivering the session

Chicago - Jan '07

Second ETG Event

Second ETG event at Khalsa college was a big success with more than 60 participants consisting of Post Graduate Students of Comp. Science, IT, University Professors and Industry Professionals. I delivered a two hour session covering CORBA and J2EE architectures. This now will be followed by Web Services, Web Services Orchestration, SOA, Web 2.0, Symantic Web, etc. etc. in future sessions. Mr Jignesh Desai, MVP has volunteered to conduct the next session on Jan 27th. Details on this session can be seen at http://www.abcom.com/etg.

4 days at IEEE/WICSA2007 Conference

Last four days (6-9 Jan) I have been in the WICSA2007 conference (http://www.gv.psu.edu/WICSA2007/index.html). The conference gave lot of insights with current and emerging trends in software architectures with several eminent speakers delivering valuable sessions at the conference. The keynote by Scott Ambler (founder of Agile Modeling), gave very good information on Agile Modeling and directions for further research (http://www.agilemodeling.com/essays/) in this area. Prof Prabhakar (http://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/users/tvp/) of IIT, Kanpur on his keynote on second day gave important information on Knowledge Management of Software Architecture.

I presented a paper entitled "Setting up Architect Team" on 6th Jan.

Recognition as Ph.D. Advisor

The new year (2007) has begun with a great news. I officially received an intimation that I am now a recognized Advisor for Ph.D. at Univ. of Mumbai, India in Computer Science. Having a mixed exposure of both Academics and Industry, I am happy to know that my contributions to academics have now been recognized. Many thanks to Prof Mukund Sanglikar, Head of Computer Science Dept, Univ. of Mumbai for his support and efforts in getting me this recognition. I now look forward to enrolling few bright and aspiring students for Ph.D.

Visit to University of Notre Dame

Yesterday (Dec. 29, 2006) I visited University of Notre Dame, the place where I previously worked as a Visiting Asst Prof of Electrical and Computer Engineering some 20 years ago. It was a casual visit to Notre Dame which brought back those good old memories. I had a good informal meeting with my then supervisor Prof (Dr) Anthony Michel who is currently Dean Emeritus of Engineering. Here are some photos.

Notre Dame Dome

Church on Campus

Office that I used to occupy during my stay at Notre Dame

At Lunch with Dean of Engg. and Family

ETG Launch

Considering the large gap between academics and the industry requirements, I decided to create a group and named it Emerging Technologies Group. I intend to deliver seminars, lectures and courses to this group on a regular basis. This should benefit both academicians and professionals working in the industry. As a result, the first event was conducted on Dec. 16th, 2006. In spite of the fact that we had only two days to advertise the event, a whopping number (about 50) attended the event. My many thanks to my student Abhijeet Gole whose unprecedented efforts made this possible. The first talk was on Java and was well accepted by the audience. The next event is scheduled on Jan 13, 2007. I look forward to recieve much larger audience for this event.

What initiated this blogging?

On Dec 11, 2006, I delivered a speech entitled "Bridging the Gap between Academics and Industry" to more than 50 invited teachers of Mumbai University in a one-day event organized by Dept of Computer Science and Mathematics of Univ. of Mumbai, India. During the speech, I realized that there are many professors who are seriously interested in improving the quality of education but were not able to do so for some reasons which may not be publicly disclosed. After the speech, few professors approached me and suggested that I take the lead in helping the university raise its standards in Computer Science and IT by improving the course curriculum. Incidentally, I am member of the adhoc board of studies in Computer Science and is currently heading the syllabus committe for creating the syllabus of M.Sc. Computer Science. Thus, I decided to create a blog where people can post their views.