I run Tandem Entrepreneurs, a mobile accelerator in San Francisco Bay Area. I am visiting India and will be in Pune from Tuesday 7th Feb for about 10 days. I would be happy to meet with a few entrepreneurs if you want to use me as a sounding board.

At Tandem we work with 6 companies at a time. We invests $200k in each mobile startup and works closely with the team for an initial 6-month period. This allows each team to focus on gaining traction without having to wait for other capital. We work with founders to bring in other investors as the business gains momentum.Tandem has the ability to invest considerable additional time and capital in each business as needed.

You can learn more about us at TandemE.com. You can also look at this discussion on Quora.

If you want to meet with me please fill out an application at Apply and if I think I can help I will ping you.

Just to be clear I am not going to consider these applications for an investment, unless we meet and things make sense and you can move to the Bay Area for the six months that we work together. (Just dont want to set any false expectations).

About CMDA:

CMDA, Pune is an association of Computer and Media dealers in Pune. It is a registered organisation and is ISO 9000 certified. Recently, it is declared as the best Computer dealers association across India by DQ Week magazine. Website: www.cmdapune.org

About IT Expo:

CMDA organises IT expo every year. This was 14th year of the expo and was held during 15-18 Dec 2011. As per CMDA organisors, the no. of visitors this year was about 40000.

About our activities:

CMDA gave us a 2m X 2m stall. The usual cost for the stall is about Rs 25,000. However, considering that we are not doing any business activities and are working for a social cause, this was given to us GRATIS. The stall allocation was confirmed at a very late stage. As such, the call for volunteers was also sent very late and we were running short of people to man the stall.

On day 1, (15th Dec), user:Mahitgar, Sudhanwa, Hisham and Nitika started the activities in the morning session. Flex banners were put up and the printed handouts were ready to be distributed. Hisham and Nitika came all the way from Delhi for this. They also got some T shirts for distribution to the right people. Our stall was the last stall in the expo and was adjoining the seminar hall. After the inauguration, people started visiting our stall. The chief guest was visiting all the stalls and he visited our stall also. He was pleasantly surprised to see our activities (non-commercial, social cause) in the expo.

On day 1, second half was handled by Ashwin and Mahitgar. We had printed a handout to create a generic awareness about Wikipedia. This was in English on one side and about Marathi Wikipedia on the other side. Initially, we had about 200 handouts printed as the response was not known to us. Ultimately, we had to make many copies many times as the response went on increasing day by day.

Day 2 (16th Dec) was managed by Mahitgar, Ashwin, Abhishek and some other CA volunteers. For the CAs, it was a great experience to interact with the people face to face and answer all kinds of their queries. This was totally different from the usual CA activities where they interact with people who are already much aware of Wikipedia and editing and may be other projects too. Abhishek and some others managed the stall till afternoon and later on by Sudhanwa and some others like Pratik. In the evening, Mahitgar gave a talk on the topic “Marathi Wikipedia- Challenges and Future” in the seminar hall which was received very well.

Day 3 (17th Dec) was a hectic day being Saturday, the weekend. Mahitgar and Sudhanwa handled the 1st half. Ashwin joined with his spouse for a couple of hours. Mandar joined in the 2nd half till the day ends. There was really an energetic crowd who visited the stall and asked many many questions.

Day 4 (18th Dec) Mandar handled the stall since morning for whole day. He was alone there till lunch time when some more volunteers including Ashwin, Mahitgar came to help him out.

Being a Sunday, the fourth day was very hectic and most crowded. Some more volunteers like Lochan Makheja (Hindi Wikipedian from Pune) were also added but it was still difficult to address all the visitors to our stall. Even with 4 volunteers at a time, we were not able handle the running crowd at peak hour on Sunday evening.

We had kept a notebook at the stall and noted down names and contact details of the people who were interested in further Wikipedia related activities. During the 4 days of expo, we have collected names and contact details of the interested people and that number is about 250!! That is big enough to have multiple wiki-academies in Pune in the next few months. Our guesstimate of the no of people visited our stall is about 3000.

While many visitors knew what Wikipedia is, most were not aware that it is also available in Indian languages, especially Marathi. The few who were aware of both were not aware of other projects like Commons, Wikisource etc. People were mostly unaware of the implications of copyrighted and freely licensed information.The expo gave a very good opportunity to interact with the people directly and get a feel of what the common people understand/know about Wikipedia. Here are some USUAL questions that we faced in the expo.

1. What is the price of Wikipedia? I want to buy some copies. (to be specific – Wikipedia kitne me bech rahe ho…. )
2. You are not selling anything here? !!! Then why are you in the expo?
3. You are not getting anything from Wikipedia, then why are you standing for whole day on the stall?
4. If anyone can edit Wikipedia, what is the assurance that the content is correct and authentic?
5. Can you edit Wikipedia in Marathi/Hindi? How?
6. If I write any article on Wikipedia, will there be my name on the article?
   7 If I type some search string in Marathi (Devanagari), you get search pages in Marathi/ Marathi Wikipedia?? !!
7. If I type in English (Roman) on English Wikipedia,can I get pages from Marathi Wikipedia?
8. When and where you meet? I want to join your activities.
9. What? You can directly edit content on the Wikipedia?

Apart from this, in the expo we could interact face to face with Marathi Wikipedia users and the activity helped in explaining Marathi typing in more easier way.This interaction will help in improving related help pages on Marathi Wikipedia. (Marathi Wikipedia sandbox has a good number of trial and error edits of people trying to type in Marathi using phonetic facility and still not succeeding in their effort)

It was also observed that the number of visiting women was good but at times the stall being small, it was crowded and they could not come forward to listen amongst the jostling men. Next time we should give a thought to request and hopefully get additional space (and also women volunteers) for addressing women.

The happiest experiences were when school children were stopping their parents saying “Papa Mummy Wikipedia Stall !!’ and that naturally made those parents stop at our stall and see what it was all about. it would be great if we are able to get academic fraternity and more volunteer support as many such expos will be forthcoming in the near future. It would be great to arrange such expos in bigger education campuses too.

Remarkably, this was a second consecutive year for the expo having a Marathi Wikipedia seminar. Last year’s talk was given by Abhay Natu and this year Mahitgar spoke on “Marathi Wikipedia: Challenges and Future”. Mahitgar used the opportunity to focus on areas where Marathi language has scope to provide significant knowledge. Mahitgar opined that all the technology is available and volunteers are there to support the activity. The real challenge is to bring back the confidence of the people that they can avail all the knowledge in their own language by cooperating each other through projects like indic language Wikipedias. Thanks to Wikimedia projects, the key of the future is in their own hands.

Expenditure:

We had asked for a grant to GAC on almost the last minute and it was sanctioned very quickly. (Money yet to be received in the account) We have asked for about 11000 INR that includes printing, stationary, CD/DVD burning, etc etc. Out of this, we spent about 5000/- Rs. (Expenditure details yet to come from the volunteers) Remaining money was not utilised as additional activities like CD burning, making some goodies like stickers, key chains etc. could not be done as all the volunteers were stuck up at the stall itself. The amount will be used for the given purpose but for/during our further activities like Wiki-academies.

Pictures:

Abhishek has already uploaded some pictures and will be uploading some videos also. Sudhanwa is uploading some photos in the category “CMDA IT Expo 2011, 15-18 Dec” on commons. We will also try to get some pictures from the expo organisers.

Conclusion:

With the kind of manpower we had and the time and money in hand, the kind of outreach we achieved is extraordinary. Almost 3000 people interacted and of these 250 showed interest in future activities!! Some of them are very useful people like librarians. We met some editors also in the expo. Some of them are from rural area and are doing work in Marathi!! All of them were unaware of the presence of the Pune Community and we were able to get some dedicated new members to the community.

Probably, considering the outreach we had and the response we got in the expo, it is even worth paying for the stall next year!!

We can do much better next time if we get enough time span for planning and execution of activities

(To find out more about Wikipedians in Pune, search for WikiPuneri and Mr-Wiki on the internet.)

On behalf of Pune Community and Pune chapter, we celebrated the 11th Anniversary of Wikipedia and the 1st Anniversary of India Chapter at Jnyan Prabodhini, Pune. We started the session with the introduction by Chapter Marathi SIG (Special Interest Group) followed by Chapter briefing by EC Member Sudhanwa Jogalekar. Pune SIG lead Mandar Kulkarni shared a presentation of Marathi Wikipedia which included the history and the journey of Marathi Wikipedia. The presentation also explained the common mistakes made by users during editing. The details statistics of no. of pages, no. of users, no. of articles since last 6 years and where we stand now was explained in details.

Being Makar Sankranti, as per the Indian tradition we gave Til Gul (sweets made of sesame & jaggery) to all the participants including the refreshments. (Please note that for next many decades, Makar Sankranti is going to be on 15th January only and we will have same opportunity to celebrate the Wikipedia Anniversary on the day of Makar Sakranti.)

The next session was handled by senior editors of Wikipedia by coaching the members in actual wiki academy in the lab. All the new users created their login accounts and started editing in the articles. This was very interesting as many members were new to this would and finding some challenges in tying in Marathi. Some of the members created new articles and also linked them to English Wikipedia. Overall, it was a great learning experience for all of us.

Next Steps:

1. In the coming months, we have planned number of wiki academies in English and in Marathi at various places all over Pune.

2. We are also proposing to have one interesting session during our monthly meet on every 2nd Saturday.

If you’re interested in the activities of the Wikipedia Pune group, search for WikiPuneri on the internet

WiC has made it to TLABS of Times Internet .

http://tlabs.indiatimes.com/wic.html

We showcased our ‘Made in Pune’ proudct at IIT Bombay E summit on 28th and 29th Jan .

http://ecell.in/esummit/startup-expo/#Simplibuy

I’m glad to share that our startup Programr just got featured on TheNextWeb , one of the US’s top Technology News sites.

You can read our article here:

http://thenextweb.com/asia/2012/01/03/programr-the-code-school-with-a-hands-on-community-based-approach/

Last week we have also launched Coding Contests, and we plan to launch Code Challenges next week.

I will be taking over as the Chairman of Computer Society of India, Pune Chapter from April 2012 (and Nikhil Karkare will be the Vice Chairman). We are looking for fresh faces who can own different responsibilities. People involved can utilize their people/organizing skills, build network with ITES honchos and most importantly have the satisfaction of giving back to the IT community.

Their is no bar on the age, sex, experience and qualification. However, it is important to note this being a voluntary activity, no payment is involved. We don’t expect you to spend more than 2 hours a week on CSI work. Please visit http://www.csi-india.org for more info.

We will be also interested in those who can bring revenue to CSI and take some share. Some scrutiny and conditions will be applied for such paid arrangements.

I look forward to your response.

(Write to amit.dangle@gmail.com if you’re interested)

iWeekend is an intensive and innovative experience that brings together talented entrepreneurs and professionals of different profiles to select 3 ideas and bring these ideas to reality by collaboratively developing a business plan and a prototype, all in one weekend.

iWeekend is targeted towards technologists, designers, marketers, business and finance professionals, lawyers, etc. with a passion for technology and the intention of founding a startup or working in one.

The final output of the event includes a prototype, a basic business plan, a product demo and a possible team.

The event had around 30 participants, and around 10 mentors, all mostly from Pune, and ended up working on 3 different ideas. The event was covered by the “Starting Up” show that airs every week on the ET Now Channel.

Here is the ET Now’s coverage:

(If you’re not able to see a video above, click here to see it on YouTube)

Pune-based InnovizeTech Software that raised Series A funding has strengthened its management team by inducting former Dell India Sales head Ranjit Nambiar as VP to handle sales for its flagship software product Sapience, a patent-pending cloud-based solution.

reports TechCircle.

It adds:

Nambiar moves from Dell India, where he spent six years and rose to the position of India Head, S&P and Transactional Services Business. He comes with over 16 years of experience in sales and growing businesses in the large enterprise segment.

Read the full article

Pune-based outsourced software product development services company Persistent Systems on Tuesday announced that they have partnered with IL&FS Education and Technology Services Ltd. to develop a series of mobile based learning applications on IL&FS Education’s, Exploriments learning platform.

Exploriment is a simulation-based interactive learning platform designed for enhancing students conceptual understanding in science and mathematics. As a technology partner, Persistent Systems will be developing mobile based applications on the Exploriments learning model for various mobile platforms like tablets and other hand held devices.

reports the Business Standard.

The article goes on to say:

Exploriments, doesn’t intend to transfer traditional classroom teaching to digital pedagogy or convert print materials into a digital format. But it endeavours to create a platform that enhances the delivery of quality education through the use of technology by providing a highly interactive, exploratory, and engaging experience for students and teachers.

Read the full article

• Effective Project Management – A Critical Social Need.
• Fostering progress through smarter Project Management.
• How effective project management would help the society at large.
• Smart & professional ways for NGO’s to manage Projects and Operations.
• Improving effectiveness of Social organizations using PM methods.
• Critical Success Factors for Socially Relevant Projects.
• Case Studies in Social Project Management.

The selected papers will be published in the OnTarget 2012 Conference Souvenir.

Papers (in English) should be submitted as a PDF file or Word attachment by email to corporate@pmipunechapter.org by 7th Jan 2012. Include “PMI Paper Competition-” followed by the Topic on the subject line of the email. The paper should include the following:

• The Title of the Paper
• Name & Organizational Affiliation of the author(s) on title page
• Along with one page abstract
• 50-80 words write-up about the author along with 1 photograph (150×150 pixels).
• Article (Text font – Tahoma-9) should not be less than 5000 and should not exceed 8000 words.
• Submissions should represent original work.

The chapter will acknowledge receipt of article submission by email. Notification of selected papers will be done by 31st Jan 2012. The chapter will evaluate the submitted papers based on the following criteria:

1. Quality of hypothesis.
2. Data presentation.
3. Practical Implacability.
4. Use of figures/ statistics.
5. Aesthetics.

OnTarget 2012 is a mega-conference of business leaders, practicing project managers, and senior leaders in government and professional organizations. The theme of this conference is “Effective project management – A Critical social need”. Seminars, discussions and interviews will focus on impact of project management on social development of the country and its business/academia.

Last date for paper submission is 7th Jan. The conference itself is from 3-5 Feb 2012.

For more information, see: http://t.pmipunechapter.org