Letter to my younger Self

In hindsight!

Dear Self,

In hindsight, We all do what is indispensable, and things that we have no choice- but to do. Like our education, our skillsets, our learning, our jobs, etc., things that are a must for us. Our universities and schools also teach what needs to be taught. What takes a lifetime to learn is the experience and wisdom to know life. Things that we wish we could have done or known earlier. These life lessons are sometimes easy to adapt to, sometimes they are subconscious and most of the time it takes a lot from us before we learn them.

Today I am writing to you about things, that if someone told you in your younger days, would have helped you have a better quality of life, or at least reduced your anxiety. Stories can succeed or they can fail, what we remember is the experience we were going through when such things happened.

The advice does not mean what not to do, it also means to keep doing what has worked for you well.

There is no timeline for life’s choices
- If we run by timelines we almost block things that should have happened at a certain time, we also block the possibilities for things we could not achieve in the past. There is no wrong time to do anything right. We are not OPEN to possibilities because the timeline made it obsolete in our minds.
Be a brand, don’t create one!
- We have heard this enough of creating a brand for oneself, creating a brand is more about building an image for the public, but being a brand is encompassing all the uniqueness, the obvious, and the beyond, and being that whole self that we are. Be a brand, don’t create it for someone else, just be it! No excellence will separate you from the crowd than being your authentic self!
Good things take time:
- Started to learn a skill, late? Not sure if this will get anywhere? Think of yourself just 2 years back and think what could have been done better and you will find 2 years is enough to get you to a good place. In a world of 20/20, we forget the countless hours of practice. Trust the Journey and moreover enjoy it to the core!
Growth comes in various forms
- We have always been thinking of growth either vertically or arithmetically. Growth should be logical not just numeric. Numbers are results for most of us, but what gets you to these results is the real growth. Think of the breadth of your experience, think about your level of influence, think of ways you are expressing yourself, think of your network/connections, see yourself now, and compare that with who you were 10 years back all of that is growth. Growth is organic and relative.
Stay away from the big words!
- Passion, calling, and breaking the glass ceiling, are words that are alright but let these not create an illusive exterior around you. DO real things, be authentic, be honest, be apologetic, be vulnerable but just ensure that you put your head down and take those small steps. Just build those small atomic habits that will do just enough for you, that possibly just an inner calling won’t!
Knowledge is your greatest and the most powerful weapon you always carry!
- Knowledge is not just what you know, it’s what you researched, outlined, challenged, read, applied, failed at, cried over, and most importantly that you were curious about. The biggest arguments, discussions, debates, and influences can be won only with knowledge! Try it in the next meeting. Knowledge comes from staying curious, challenging beliefs networking, and mostly trying!
Break the comfort:
- The biggest barrier we all face is the mental barrier, most of the barriers are created by procrastinating and speculating unreal things. Break your routine, count the days where you did something different. Learn to do something different each day and do it better with each passing day. Challenge your beliefs, and gather fresh perspectives. The day you stop learning is the day you stop growing.
Life does not change in a night!
- Getting opportunities is one thing, creating opportunities is another but above all is being prepared for any opportunity. We see people getting famous over a viral video getting a sudden break changing a country or getting a job. All of that is a result of years of effort, hard work, and preparation that is happening below the tip of the iceberg. Be ready for that opportunity always, you never know when a big shift may be in the offing!
Life is whole:
- You are not just your surname, your LinkedIn, or your job. Life is about all the experiences that it throws at you. Make sure no department goes empty! Have a full life. Each phase matters and is designed to give us a much richer experience.
Do not fret:
- Refrain from fretting over changes and mishaps, no one likes them. But no one can avoid them either. Running away from problems or praying not to have them will not make them better. Solving them will! Take adversities, challenges, and problems head-on. Don’t fight them, fight them. Every adversity comes with an opportunity. Adversity is the most underrated motivation theory.
Find your comfort place:
- Reading, meditating, music, sunshine, wind traveling anything that you find serene and surreal, make time for it. That works like an incubation for the next leap. The mind has batteries too 🙂

The real beauty of life is that it is unpredictable, had it been what we think it would be, there would be no proud smiles when we look back at our younger self. Sometimes there is no need to be strong, there also needs to be some..hang-in and stay-calm days.
Life is a cricket match,
No matter what is your score right now, It’s YOUR match, finish it well !!!

I wish I was talking to a younger me right now with the same fire in her heart and passion in her eyes and I could time travel to just do all things right, just right!

Unapologetically your’s

Rupali Talwatkar

Version 2.0.

Version 2.0.0

No this is not a tech or a geek blog, this is as humane and as related to our second innings as our mid life crises. They say we are what we eat see hear and believe, well said so, this reminds me of the “famous law of diminishing marginal returns” in economics, to simply put it, it means that with every unit increase in any one input in production we may not get a proportionate increase in output beyond a certain limit” as it says overdoing any one thing does not mean that it will give us same quantum desired results. Simplest example is with increase in fertilizer or oil in your machine you can not keep overdoing it because it increases performance, well it will but only till a certain level, then it will give results in a diminishing way.

While our macro environment has changed dramatically, does that call for some inner rebooting for one’s micro environment to relearn, unlearn and learn to adapt to the changing circumstances.

Food for thought –

What is that one thing that keeps lingering your mind all the time and what is it that it makes you feel that it is beyond your control to change any part of it? For me it has been my weight and my professional ambition of becoming a coach, and the way my self confidence has taken shape into self doubt in such a subtle way that I did not even realize it. How many changes have we been a part of and how many are desirable? Think back and analyse what part of “you” have you lost to the pressure of time, and where you are now. Think of this only once. Are you the same ambitious and hungry and happy you ?

So this lockdown, I decide to create a version 2.0 of myself where I will make some changes to the overall being me part and ensure that I reach my milestone of writing a book once day with a lot of positivity, that’s how I would like to live after I am gone. You may wonder what does weight have to with becoming a writer, I first want to fix the broken portions of my flight that are not important to flying the machine but to maintain the aesthetics. Would you board a plane that is broken and shattererd and that does not give the thrust as as strong as it takes to fly. The look of the plane being how I want to be and the thrust being my mind powerful enough to have the courage to have ambitions again. That’s where the version 2.0 came calling, when I could not see my own pictures and when I did not like my own company, can it get any worse than this ?

Whats up with me now ?

I plan to share my learning and experience with you, and love you all to be a part of my transformation journey. I read it on “The monk who sold his ferrari” that goal when declared in Public builds a pressure to commit to it. So lets see, if this is the nudge I need.

What new I did learn on my Day Zero ?

Something very interesting I read today in the book that I am reading “How to stop worrying and start living by Dale Carnegie is :

“Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand”- Thomas Carlyle

Another quick tip from my weight loss journey, is that, it does not mean how you crave to eat the incorrect and feed your addiction hormones with it or to see how much you ate or want to eat. All it needs is a simple filtering mechanism, to screen the food and make a decision in that quick one moment, whether it takes me towards my goal or it doesn’t. If it does not you know what to do then

See you all soon with my next update soon. Stay safe stay sound !

Locked down with a Five Year old!!

Close your eyes and think of the most memorable times.. those are the times when WE didn’t think at all.
Hi, I am writing from a 6th floor tall apartment that I recently bought (mortgaged)for myself . They say the best places are where you feel at home. I have a funny anecdote around it, no need to quote anywhere “A home is where you can burp and fart inhibition less”, dont need that “ewww” we all have been there and needless to say done that !! This post is to share my kinder garden experience while I was quarantined with a 5 year old Niece, off course not planned !!

Here in India and all over the world, apart from Humanity there is one other thing that brought all of us together, while we are all freaked with the “C” word there is another word that has been an even intimidating term which became part of our day to day lives- and that is “quarantine” which we only heard at Airports before this. Everyone has a quarantine story to share from finding which relations are genuine and which are not ,or to our chaos of finding toilet Paper.. from roaming freely to realizing that we are all guests on the planet called earth ,from AI stories of driver less car to washing hands and eating at home..from manned mars mission to masks we all have felt something differently.

They say the most difficult place to find peace is not around a child and especially when it is a lone child all pampered with mood swings as severe as a Tsunami and an appetite that is a more in the head than in the stomach phenomenon, where the screen time is more than 24 hours in a day and a craving for creativity that can put the world best novelists a run for their money, is where you find peace, not through the silence but more from the innocence that comes through the eyes and questions you at every blink and possibly also also answers them in 2 simple words – “So What”. These 2 words are powerful, just ask the most challenging thing that you are facing in your life and answer it with So what??? (Triple times for an added effect)

So here is what my daily routine looked like, I work from home (from my bedroom) and every time I walked out to check on that Kid, she got up and gave me a hug, so no matter how many times I came out, exactly those many times. And because you striked a deal not to barge in when you are on call, you could see someone slowly open the door and see if you are still on the call. You could even mute when you know the kid is about to make a request that you can not deny, because you can not light up a cracker when you are on the call, right? So you say yes !!

Your lunch breaks are not just eating and cooking, but cooking, not once but twice, once in your Kitchen and once in a miniature cooking, in Marathi there is a special kids play called “Bhatukli”. A little background, in Maharashtra culture girl kids are taught to cook on a miniature set up and boys are taught to build a miniature fort with real mud and bricks and guard the fort, this is to inculcate a family nurturing spirit for the girls and a sense of warrior ship in the to be men. So I as a child enjoyed just playing 2 things, being a shop owner with a weighing scale made of cherry blossom shoe polish lids, and off course miniature cooking. I somehow did not play doctor doctor ( no pun intended! )

Who said only girls in relationships throw tantrums ? Ever tried getting upset with a kid and pretending not to talk, By Jove, I even remembered the last scene of Devdas Movie where the hero shouts the heroine’s name, well that happens in your house too !! This kid would lie on the floor and just do that until you spoke a word and mindwell you can not fake this one, you have to be original !! You may even have to shed a tear if the situation is too bad.

There is also a censorship that you are always with when you are watching TV no matter if is a Christmas movie or a royal love story or it is even an animation movie, the moment there is a pre kiss moment, this kids senses it like a Bird would sense a thunderstorm and not just close her eyes but mine too. Can you imagine where that all is so understandable for a five year old.

Yes this Kid has been locked down for a straight one month now, she accepts the dreadful “C”story and she is fine with it, she has a birthday this month and I have learnt how to make cake from biscuits in case I do not find all the cake ingredients before her birthday. And she is absolutely fine with it, and people blame kids for being adamant, sigh!

I have learnt a lot of new things from this child a lot of them , not sure how many will last, but one thing that will last is its good to keep coming up with things that make you happy, sounds very simple, but if we knew how to engage in our happiness just that simply!! Kids are not emotionless, they just do not let their emotion be their attachments and that’s what keeps them from being frustrated. They quickly move on to the next thing that makes them happy, I am not saying the “D” word, frustrated should be good enough for now.

What does your quarantine story look like ??

Friends : Finale story and Me

Just before getting to write this and when I was about to unlock my laptop, with a surge of emotions and desperation to write something .. I mistakenly entered my password as “Friends” . I am in 2019, a little short of the year where the then friends series character ROSS is filming video for his daughter in 2002 and says it is 2020 now and we want to deliver this message we shot for you in 18 years back and we give it to you now.

It extremely unlikely that a woman me of 34 years old now, down after an accident and immobile for the past 5 months, took to the rescue of “Friends” as I always heard it back from school friends between 1995 to 2000 and pretended to have seen is as I could not tell them the least i did not have was not about the Cable connection but I din’t even have a color TV. Friends episode description sounded alien to me and could never figure out what the hell made people talk so much about it.

Yeah and a women aspiring for a great career and to prove that it’s not about the state of being than it is about how unpredictably awesome life is. I know that the late 2000’s would have allowed me to watch the sitcom by having those resources handy to do them, but it was not the time and it still had weird animosity with the series which kept me so inferior with my friends.

So today on 18th July, 2019, possible some 19 years after my 10th standard, I started watching the friends series with a subconscious hatred, and being on the bed for 5 months. Well thanks to netflix who kept each episode so organised just the female Geller would have loved to.

After watching all episodes of 10 seasons, and having finished the last one 5 minutes back when I just started to write this piece, here is what I feel about the series..

We all go through phases of life and how each one of us has given up on our school and college days and early years in careers struggling and making it memorable because of the people we had around us, we still moved on. The biggest lesson I learnt from the series is moving on- is growing.. The series could have still had a very happy ending where it just could have said “Friends Forever” but instead they chose to depict growing and moving on in life as integral.. No matter where we are or how happy we were in a certain place we all have moved on for the better, better career, better place, better salary, better connections we all have done that. How wrong would it have been to leave the episodes the same way and let people feel they are practically not going to have changes in their lives would have been so unnatural to the civilised human lives.

The second feeling which a lot of the 90’s kids would still have is, isn’t it a piece of sheer excellence that the series still touches so many lives. When I met with an accident, single, female, 34, four surgeries, 3 hospitalisations, and a workaholic fanatic, would not be able to spend a single day at home, who could imagine her being home for 4 consecutive months where her only window to the outside world, was her balcony and the sounds of vehicles which made it so natural to know while someone out there is leading a routine life , somebody else if struggling to get normal life back. For me it was the series that kept me up and eager. NO one can believe if I said I know how Mathew perry or courtney Cox looks now was my first look of the actors and I then saw the 18 years old characters.So when I was watching chandler I knew how he would look when he gets older. But their characters were immortal stories of them than themselves. What a piece of mastery it still continues to touch lives with. How beautiful it is to build something that is a master class and will continue to affect lives positively. Just if everyone thought as their purpose of life ?

While watching the whole series back to back and then wachthing the last episode there never was a moment where it felt that I could watch something else, what else could a bed ridden trauma patient do. But it never felt there was something else better, if you compare this to the whole lives we spend dont we end to loose track of times when we are doing what we are supposed to do. The times that have made us forget the time are the things that we should be doing. While I look back and start taking a look at my life, I feel the routines ones are nowhere. Close your eyes and think of the times and things that you loved doing the most, are you there now? If not you got to be! And if you do not see a large part of life you have spent somewhere doing something than its a introspect time for you..

After seeing the friends finale i do feel there is an end to everything, not matter what, no matter how good or bad or unpredictable state you are in, everything has an end, Why do we still peep back and slant forward when being where you are is a moment of celebration. The hardest part of life is something that never is going to be constant, or permanent, are you making the most of what you have. Even it means as simple as waking up each morning ?

Thank you “Friends” !!

Red Hat @ Nullcon 2016

Nullcon 2016, http://nullcon.net/website/nullcon-2016/cfp.php is a premiere security conference held each year in India. Training’s, booths, networking parties, awards, talks, hacking challenges and a lot more makes this conference. What attracts me the most is the creative badges at Nullcon, so well thought and made they totally stand out as a USP to the conference.

Red Hat, has been getting a chance to be the badge sponsors to Nullcon for consecutive 3 years now. Nullcon organizers are creative in making the badges and the effort is well appreciated when the the security enthusiasts are fond to see the first thing they hit

the conference and are curious to the know the Badge for the year.

With the preceding years badges made on a floppy drive and with Red Hat being the sponsor and being informed about the badge making process , the first thing Red Hat wanted to know is to see the badge come up so well to beat the precedence set by the previous year.

This year Nullcon badge was a hardware badge made in the shape of a bug with some soldered LED ‘s that lit with the batteries, it has Red Hat branding done on the top of the badge and looked something like this —>

This years anticipated turnout was of 800 delegates and they merrily carried the glittering badges around and took them back as a memory !

It was a sense of pride to feel the happiness People has with the badges. The badges were accurate timely made with other details of the attendee and the QR Code.

Red hat also had a booth at the conference and was a genuine effort by the Red Hatters to open a dialogue with the visitors on the emerging technologies by Red Hat like Openshift, OpenStack and Red Hat cloudforms and the security aspects. Prasad Mukhedkar from the emerging technologies team in Red Hat pune did an exceptional job here by taking questions from people on the emerging technologies for people wanted to know even more he went ahead and did a small session on cloud forms security at the booth itself. It was so interesting that people came back again after they came to know from their friends about the session. We drew this idea from the “poster sessions” at PyCon India just that we used more live forms like an LED to demonstrate in detail.

Since the conference has more ethical hackers and information security people we thought we should create a gimmick at the booth to draw people’s attention to the product security general knowledge and recent happening around it which made news.. So we had our product security guy, Prasad Pandit who designed a small quiz and we ran the quiz at the booth to distribute some cool swags for people who got it right. It was a great time people literally scratching heads and raising hands to answer, the result was in no time we had interested folks turning up at the booth to take the quiz. What we saw were some contented faces at the booth after they won the goodies.

It was interesting point to note that people came to Red Hat’s booth just to say that I am your customer and you guys are doing a great job. There were students inquiring about some internship openings. There also were some security architects who wanted to know more about the product security and hence left their contacts with us. This is precisely what makes you feel so passionate about the place you work for !

Prasad Pandit also spoke about the Fedora Spin available for security as the ready tool for people who use Fedora or had interest to use them so we had some Fedora 23 DVD’s at the booth given out to people.

There were some interesting sponsors with booth presence like Synack, Checkrmax ( scan un-compiled code), Sans (information security training & certification) Superhero ( for middleware security).

http://nullcon.net/website/nullcon-2016/sponsors-and-partners.php

A lot of people just turned up to say hey hi what product are you here to talk about and we smiled and said “Emerging technologies”

FUDCon Pune

“Great places are where great people meet” such was the site at MIT college Pune from 26 to 28 th June where the yearly FUDCon APAC chapter was conducted. The aspiration to host and organise the conference came true when Pune was officially announced as the venue for the APAC conference.

http://fedoramagazine.org/india-calling-namaste-fudcon-apac-2015/

All thanks to a detailed and promising bid by the organisers.

The organisation and planning of the event started from the CFP and the website, which was going to be the place people to watch for the most sought after event in open source.

It took us a good 3 months of effort for the CFP to be live and eventually more intense efforts towards outreach on CFP. We did a fair enough job on that justified by the number of talk submission we received with a reasonable good number of 140 talk submissions. The CFP planned to close by 9th March got extended by a few more days.

Sponsors :

The budget estimates were based on the repositories from the the FUDCon 2011 handled by more or less the same organisers with room for inflated travel rates (web fares) and real time experiences from recent events. The organising team also sought help from Red Hat, Pune as financial sponsors. The estimated vis a vis the actual closed within the budget. MIT college sponsored the wifi. Hasgeek and Sanisoft came in as angel sponsors when the organisers needed them the most.

Planning :

The weekly planning meetings started from Jan 2015. This mostly included organisers and volunteers from Red Hat and was open through dial in for those who wished to attend the meetings. The minutes were regularly posted and pirate pads updated. The best part was we never had to follow up or remind volunteers to attend these meetings, there was always much euphoria around it 🙂

The planning was fairly around head like- Travel, Accommodation,venue, Outreach , FUD-Pub,Swags and collaterals and conveyance.To save on the burden for associates to pay and expense later we used the existing vendor base for bill to company and some awesome negotiated rates.

Vendors who did a splendid and a professional job were Creation Magnifique for T shirts and socks, Country wide travel for local and airport conveyance, Cocoon magarpatta hospitality for accommodation and BLUO for the FUDPub and Food delight for the lunch. An awesome conference happens when you manage to have few volunteer who have these niche vendor management skills. The key to that to have overestimated deadlines for the finish.

A learning to have prioritised swags over all makes a difference in the last few days of planning.

Talk selectors realised there were a number of talks on Docker/atomic , storage and OpenStack which warranted a series of separate talks which we called as tracks for better management and audience understanding. And thus we had 3 technical tracks, one bar camp track, a track for BOF. and two main talk tracks.

Talk selection were done and published and travel sponsorships were being approved soon after that. The sponsorship were more based on the criteria of active contributors to Fedora than on the basis of being a speaker.

The tickets were thoroughly looked at and travel sponsorships partial or total were done. The travel consumed 30- 35% of the total budget.

Schedule :

We had some constraints over the HTML format of the schedule and that’s where Sanisoft came as a sponsor and there was our schedule with 89 speakers, 7 tracks , 36 deep dives and 13 hands on workshops. :http://fudconin15.shdlr.com/grid

Fedora Booth was mostly manned by Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay and Prasad Pandit.

The talks ran smoothly except for a few glitches in the wifi which were mainly due to changes in the firewall settings which created confusion for a while. Apart form that the BOF’s were mostly used for the fedora ambassadors meeting and Bar camps had limited entries which did not use the whole conference day.

FUD-PUB- the networking event was an awesome place with all that one can expert as perfect setting including bowling alley, foos ball, pool, karaoke, drinks a dance floor and not to forget the awesome food !!

The last day of the conference was mostly workshop and got over with a closing note which detailed the active volunteers, the journey from bid to bid adieu from glitches to milestones and to watch for’s in the coming days.

The next FUDCon venue is in discussion.

And last but not the least, a community grows flourishes with its members and more so with the ambassadors who act as crusaders of the technology in specific and community engagement in general. Conferences like these are aimed at increasing awareness, collaborating on technology platforms and sharing through community work. Coming together is either the first step towards building a community or holding hands and pursuing the goals of a successful institution. An event is successful by not just the smiles its captures or the pats it receives but more from the culture its brings or passion it encourages in the future!!

Photo credits to Jared Smith 🙂

Kushal Das thank you for these awesome captures :https://www.flickr.com/photos/kushaldas/sets/72157653370892863/page1

Special thanks to all the volunteers who made it happen, you were an awesome group to be with 🙂 : http://fudcon.in/conference/about.html

Nullcon : A great conference experience !

I , Praveen Kumar, Soni Lonari and Prasad Mukhedkar on behalf of Red Hat got to attend Nullcon 2015.

Red Hat also was a badge sponsor. The idea of nullcon was generated from null – The open security community registered not for profit society.. nullcon is functional since 2010 usually structured as exhibition, talks, security trainings, workshops, bugbash and job fairs. Nullcon 2015 was conducted at the Bogmallo resort in Goa. A perfect place selected with solitude which allowed a lot of networking opportunity and an experience to remember.

Nullcon 2015 was a five day effort which included 2 days of training and 3 days of conference. Indeed a very extensive and a well planned training and conference style.

Red Hat was given a table space as a booth and we reached on the 6^th Feb. The registration was very well managed with pre- made badges which had a floppy drive as Nullcon is known for geeky and innovative badge ideas. The best part was the swag sling which left smiles on attendees as they slowly pulled out the swags with curiosity.

The Red Hat booth got a lot hits the moment it was set since a lot of people had questions about Red Hat’s security strategy, about Fedora 21 and features. To add more to the swag experience we also had Red Hat stickers and Fedora DVD’S for distribution which were fast moving right from the onset. A few people enquired about jobs, Its always good to have your recruiters with you. 🙂

The handout made by Nullcon was detailed and had insights on all the speakers with their bio’s. It was interesting to read through the CXO corner and it was quite resonating to see Harish Pillay from Red Hat there. It was all the more enriching to see him on the panel discussion. However there was clash with Rahul Sasi’s session which left people to make a difficult choice to attend.

Networking: On this conference my networking experience was splendid and the venue was so apt for it. A sea facing sit out along a pool side couldn’t get better for the purpose. Few interesting people I met were Joerge Simon who was a fedorian and was one of the trainers who took 2 day training on coral 2. He is so collaborating and enthusiastic that he can bring the best out in others in no time. Had great discussion with him on Fedora, Upcoming FUDCon 2015 in Pune, his experiences with his visits in India and how he was so curious to know about so many cultural aspects. Another such meet was with Harish pillay who is a Red Hatter but I met him for the first time and it was so nice to see his zeal on almost everything be it I python, or CTF for women by info-sec girls, for that matter upcoming FUDCon 2015. Looking forward to meet him there. Another interesting group of ladies were who have recently formed Infosec girls an initiative to increase women in information security. Sneha Rajguru Shruti Kamat and Anupama Giri are doing a nice job on this initiative. The organizers had a nice invite only networking party arranged at the venue followed by a JAZZ band the next day leaving the attendees all the more relaxed to grasp more the next day.

Follow ups and Take away: It was enriching to know during the CTF session by the women for the women was taken by Sneha Rajguru that formed a infosec girls group to encourage more women into this field and also to know more about the security threats that exist in the digital world. I and Soni Lonari from Red Hat got in touch with them for a follow up session in Red Hat and to see how it could foster further

Cut Throat Highlight: was the emc defenders league which had a cash prize of INR 5,00,00 and Winja ( CTF by women for women).

All put together was a great experience which is going to last through the year only to eagerly wait for the next one. Kudos to the organizers on a successful, complete, thoughtful and a lasting experience. I look forward to the next one:)

https://infosecgirls.in/events/

http://nullcon.net/website/

PyLadies : Pune Chapter

We have been hearing about a lot of women in open source initiatives and endeavors happening all across the world. There have been mailing lists, women centric conferences events,awards and meet ups. There have been debates, brainstormings on the need for such women centric initiatives. The underlying basis comes from the fact that the women represent only 2 percent of the total open source population. One such group is “Pyladies” which is an international mentoring group aimed at increasing the participation of women in the python open source community.

Recently I got in touch with the Pyladies US team to know how we could participate or co organize a pyladies event since encouraging women to open source and technology is a mutual goal across. This helped us understand that there were pyladies volunteers Manali Gadre and Shreya Bhattacharya from Cummins college of engineering. And that’s how we planned our first event at the campus. Thank you girls, you were splendid.

The event started with the introduction to PyLadies by Anisha Narang.

Ramakrishna Reddy caught the nerve of the audience by introducing Python and its evolution as a programming language . Students were interested to know how the language evolved with the internet and how a completely unknown or nontechnical person could learn this language with ease. He quoted Late Kenneth Gonsalves an open source enthusiast and as someone who learnt Python at a later age and yet contributed so much to the community. The sure takeaway for students was when Ramakrishna gave them a few tips to be efficient at the language while choosing Python as a career Viz.Understanding memory consumption, data structures, algorithms, Core OS skills, Putting codes on internet for companies they wish to work for and getting statistics and probability as helpers to drive the programing language. He also asked the PyLadies to know and learn more about API’s.

An excellent piece of advice that came from Ramakrishna was when he encouraged students to intend to be good programmers and not just to fetch jobs. Ramakrishna also hinted a few career options in fields like Big Data, Animation defense. And while doing so he also cited the example of the animation Movie Kunfu Panda which used python and did problem solving through virtualization.

PyLadies nodded in appreciation to the well covered aspects of python in the industry by Ramakrishna.

Praveen Kumar and Chandan Kumar added real life to the event when they actually undertook hands on workshop by starting with simple programs like hello world, addition subtraction through python interpreter to a brief covered by Praveen Kumar about functions, file handling, exceptions, class and modules in python with basic examples.Anshul gave a demo about fetching data from rotten tomato’s API using python request module which was equally interesting.They carried Fedora system live DvDs for the hands on. Thank you Siddhesh Poyarekar for making these available for us !

All ended well when students asked us to come to their college for more such sessions. Since open source is all about crossing borders and sharing we informed ladies about the upcoming python meet ups and FUDCon 2015 to be active and get to the open source world to learn more, share more and grow more. We wish all the PyLadies luck and support in their endeavors. Nothing closes better than a selfie moment:)

Long way to go ladies !

References :

http://kumar-pravin.blogspot.in/2015/01/event-report-pyladies-pune-chapter.html

https://getfedora.org http://python.org.in

http://pyfound.blogspot.in/2012/10/kenneth-gonsalves-posthumously-awarded.html

http://fudcon.in

AdaCamp , 2014 Bengaluru

ADA Camp 2014 @ Red Hat Bengaluru:

“Each Time a Women stands up for herself without knowing it possibly, without claiming it, she stands for all Women” – Maya Angelou

Yes we are talking about Womanhood and the identity of her existence, perspectives of her own, the patriarchal hand cuffs which deny her a free hand to live as a human being and her right to be treated as one. No this isn’t intended to be an activists blog, but its intended to write about a form, a structure, a movement, a style, a feeling and lastly with more emphasis, an initiative called “Ada” .

ADA was founded in Jan 2011 and is a non profit feminist organization aimed at increasing and leading women participation in open technology and open culture. For now its well understood the important role of women not just in building society but as key contributors to development and technology. Thats where we are women in open technology and culture. The focus areas for ADA are: increasing women percentage in Open technology which is sadly 2% now, anti harassment policy on conducting conferences which is gained momentum and used in other conferences too, teaching ally skills workshops to all gender to help women in open tech ,with over 2 million people trained so far and the most sought after conference by any women in Open technology the ADA camp.

This year there were 3 conferences hosted at Portland (Oregan), Berlin (Germany), Bangalore (India.) Probably some good karma landed me at the ADA camp Bangalore and as a Red Hatter allowed me to me to be a venue host for the camp.

So here’s the event coverage:

22^nd and 23^rd Nov, a warm Red Hat board welcomed the delegates to the first ADA camp in Asia at the Red Hat Bangalore office. It succeeded a cordial dinner reception on 21^st Nov Friday.A lot of women struck conversations over dinner and were already charged for the “unconference style” sessions to follow for the next 2 days.

The first session however was scheduled on the “Imposter Syndrome” which was very well put up and raised curiosity among attendees. Some great work by ADA on that : http://adainitiative.org/what-we-do/impostor-syndrome-training/.

A room full of ladies something I only saw after my Alma mater days. There were around 45 ladies attending the conference

Meanwhile the participants were asked to submit lightening talks for the day with not more than 90 seconds to deliver and one slide to present.

Post Lunch sessions started with the lightening talks and the actual execution of schedule for the Unconference style started. Attendees proposed talks and the remaining marked the session which they’d like to listen. There were four sessions slots scheduled for the next 1 day with half a day reserved on the last day to be used for hand on or workshops. There were four session running parallely at each of these slots and the participants could be on and off as per their topics of interest. Thats again a fantastic testimony to being Open and respecting choices with freedom.The best part was each session had a moderator a gatekeeper a time keeper and a note taker. Session notes were circulated to attendees for participants who could attend all the parallel sessions.

Few key sessions covered were : Introduction to Information Security, Design 101, Using technology and feminism for empowerment in local community, gender violence online problems and strategy,Castism and racism in Indian Open stuff, Augmented reality big data, why open geo maps are better than google maps, Hacker school, OPW and GSOC, Women in Mozilla, Contributing to Open source projects.

Such content rich and open discussions sparked and ignited more passion of being a woman in the open source technology.

Some awesome lightening talks included: Technology and gender based violence,How I am in Open Source,WFS India,eTekkatho Digitial Library Myanmar,Ubiquitous Computing,Feministic approach to technology,Diaspora.

The best part was 90 seconds to be fair to the topic covered was a test to the speaker and all went good!

And some enriching workshops on: Digital Security,Open Hardware, Mozilla Web-maker and a crafts workshop too!

It was hard to believe that a completely unscheduled conference had such an awesome program made by the attendees in just 30 minutes. Nothing could be more open and encouraging than this. Kudos to Alex Bailey and Sukhi from ADA to drive the wonderful unconference schedule with such perfection that it looked superbly planned. I am sure the attendees would drive such unconference sessions in their communities once they hit back.

Some very thoughtful things in the entire conference were the wall of compliments, a clear passage marked in case of emergency in the conference room, photography consent through forms and lanyards, a handmade schedule on the wall, the time keeping for lightening talks, the quite room for resonating what you just learnt, session notes, and the informal group dinners, timely delicious snacks and food breaks,an ADA alumni list, regular housekeeping announcements and off course the swags:).

All put together was a unique ADAian experience.

On Behalf of Red Hat I thank ADA camp organizers for considering to host the first ADA camp in Asia @ Red Hat. Red Hat is more than happy to support the cause of encouraging women in Open source. The Women’s Leadership community at Red Hat also encourages the participation of Women in Open Source and has launched a Women in Open source award from 2014: http://www.redhat.com/en/about/women-in-open-source. Please nominate and pass on the baton.

I can say this conference was the most truly touched feminist endeavor I have ever witnessed or thought of. An inspiration to last through.

Long live the cause and great is & would be the result.

Some key future events and resource links that can be looked at, which came from the attendees:

http://adainitiative.org/about-us/

Woman On-Board !

Sadly, woman in a Driver’s Seat (Literally) is perceived as a suicide bomber ready to pull the pin at any unpredictable moment. Whether you ride a two wheeler or you drive any of those SUV’s how many of you face a disgusting look from those men who consider roads as their field and love to see women only on their left or probably using the front mirror to apply her lipstick? And when you are just about to scratch your car because a rowdy teenager just gives you a cut so close to miss a breath.You stop your car to avoid a collide to save the two wheeler all you get are sarcastic smiles, disgusting gestures and honks so loud to scare you. And not to forget ladies a few of them would definitely overtake you just to give you that look which say “Hey there.. you are a woman and you cant drive.” !!

What made me write this blog is a short Bengaluru -Pune flight. I hate the take offs and landings as any one of you there and to spill a bean I even hold the chair arm rests so tight to counteract the reactions in my stomach. Apparently this was the smoothest flight so far and the on and off from the run way were too smooth to believe. I thought if I get a little glimpse of the captain of the flight I would definitely thank “him” for a smooth flight. Now look at the way we Women have been trained that we imagine a good ride as a male driving product.. naturally.Well hang on I wasn’t right , this time it was lady. How I wish I could remember her name and follow her on some social site!. Why are women so underrated as drivers.. here is my take.

Societal drift : In India I grew as a child where my mom used to rest her hand on my dad’s shoulder while he rode our Bajaj Scooter for 12 years. How much pride a man gets when his lady sits behind him where her hand also signifies the fact that “Yes I am dependent on you”. As against now where women drive those Enfields and HD’s to the highest motor-able roads and they look so super good. A little difficult to digest isn’t it? The dependency has gone! Assaults on ego’s are too hard to take.Times have changed, so should our perceptions guys. Please get habituated for some more jazzy looking women drivers.

The Feminine Side: As Women patience and modesty comes naturally to us and we exhibit the same on roads. We don’t pop our heads off the window to abuse someone.We don’t want to run the car on the fifth gear just because we see a 30 or so meter patch empty ahead of us. We would like to go slow and steady, but beware there are these Schumachers behind you who feel you are insane to go with that speed and what an achievement if they overtake you “Applaud”. And yes he wouldn’t miss to give you that look! And mind well guys we would not like to give you way just because you want to ride at a high speed on a congested road. And I really don’t care about that look.

Chivalry Are you there ?? Our society thinks a chivalrist by default is a gentleman. Too Judgmental tough..Where does the chivalry go when men see’s a female driver trying to cross a road on a high traffic zone and she struggles to reach the other side. The moment they see its a female driver instead of just slowing down and letting her go they would use all the power to stand on the accelerator just to make sure you don’t get a chance at all. I have seen so many times where I am in a line of cars going across and just when they are able to see you are a female they start from their end too. Get some heart dude! If you can vacate a chair for her why cant you let her go on the road ?

Female as Jugglers: A man leaves office at around 8pm just to reach home, get some shower read the newspaper or watch some news, eat and off to bed (exceptions are welcomed here)!! As against a woman who leaves office round about the same time and what does she have lined up? Pick up the baby from day care, pick some grocery on the way (not to forget the quest for parking at each time.), go home cook, look at the kids homework, get things up for the next day, serve, eat ,clean keep everything ready. Just imagine the temperament with which she drives, not to justify any incidences of mis drivings but to know the turmoil in her mind and heart.

Brotherhood: One women goes wrong on the road and there are so many men who join in, why not they are brothers man. And where is our sisterhood fading out ? Next time you see a girl quarreling with some one or stuck please stop by and let her know she need not freak out , Lady is a personified virtue of strength.This isn’t a gender battle its more about transitioning change.

There are king’s on the roads and prince too.. Let there be a queen whose given a judgment on her driving skills and not on her gender. Driving skills are not gender based and hence should not be gender biased. You want to rate a driver please first see if there is a “L” on the rear, if the car is too old to be raised, if there are other people who are trying to push you, if there is traffic, if there are these High dipper driver from the other sides,if the right signals were given, if the roads are in a good condition and if she applies urgent brakes at least try to see why she did that and what you need not see is, whether the driver’s seat is filled by a male or female. You need not see that to make a judgement. Equality doesn’t come from reservations it comes from your thoughts.

Don’t consider us Equal, treat us equally. I’d feel equal one day when a guy lets me take the lead with my queen ,with a smile. Queen ? My New car :):)

Happy Driving Ladies!!

rupalitalwatkar