Lake palace hotel

The multi faces of India... Luxurious hotel...

Ready to sleep

Still in the train. Very exiting experience thanks to vidya and sudhir.

Udaypur

On the train for Udaypur, 700 kms from Dehli. Sleeper 2nd class no AC.

Mysore

We went for a tour in Mysore at 170 kms from Bangalore. The trip costs 300 rupees in a non-AC bus with the Greenline travels, 32 Hotel Suprabhatha Building Shesadri Road, Anandarao circle, Bangalore 560 009. Tels: 98450 47994, 2238 0104, 2237 1266. AC is not required! We visited different places listed below. Do not be offended by the discrimination between Indians and foreigners for the prices to attractions! I bought some bangles (the first set was 100 rupees and then I bought them for 25!) and a beautiful nylon sari (for 600 rupees)… Pictures to come…

Visited places:

- Mysore palace, the palace of the Wadyar family – 16^th century - was amazing especially the Durbar Hall where the maharajas welcomed the Indian population and the Kalyana Mantapa (marriage pavilion) with murals on the Dasara ceremony and stained glass ceiling with peacocks. There are paintings of a famous Indian painter called Raja Raviverma. The Dasara ceremony is about the celebration of the victory of good over evil. Dolls are worshiped during that festival.

- Chamundeswari temple – 12^th century - a South Indian style temple – very 35 meters high.

- St. Philomena’s church – a medieval architecture church.

- Brindavan gardens – Gardens with water fountains, color, light and music. Fountain spectacles seem to be very popular in India! IIITB had also a fountain with lights and music.

- Lalithmahal Palace – an amazing hotel I saw on TV . There is also a 5-star hotel in the Brindavan gardens.

Iphone and tata car

The iphone lauched in Indian this week for 35,000 rupees (around $900 US).

Tata is trying to launch the cheapest car in the world for $2000.

Autorikcha and other transportations

There are more than 30 different types of transportation means in India. Autorikcha, tonga and cyclerikcha, cars, motobikes are some examples… We went to a mall in Bangalore called Center… Was like Macys in New York City… To go home we spent 30 minutes bargaining and trying to have the driver use the meter instead of giving us a random (western/tourist) price… We eventually made it by asking a policeman to help us! :-(

Visit of companies

I visited some of the famous IT companies in Electronic City and Whitefield in Bangalore. I will not list the companies here such that I do not release some information that should be kept confidential. I was more impressed by Whitefield than Electronic City. In Whitefield it looks like you are in the US. Lots of security before entering one of these companies – no laptop, no camera, no cell phone with camera… Lots of ideas coming from these companies who are trying the bridge the gap between the educational system offering and their needs. Lots of new private schools that are very expensive and also not as competitive as the established universities and institutes – education is becoming a business…

ICGSE conference

The ICGSE conference (International Conference on Global Software Engineering – http://www.icgse.org/) took place at the IIITB (International Institute of Information Technology in Bangalore, http://www.iiitb.ac.in/) in the Electronic City Area of Bangalore. We were just one street away from Infosys, Siemens, Wipro… all the famous IT companies…

Conference was quiet interesting – not a big crowd but nice and dedicated people. The countries that were represented were: Ireland (high), India (medium), Germany (high), US (low)… France is absent from the GSD research field! Lots of people are using students for studies but there is a need of looking more at the industry practices.

Got some references that I need to study further… The talks I preferred were on the use of Scrum in a distributed setting and the experience report from Siemens on a project involving students in Brazil, the US and Italy. The keynotes were also well chosen with a talk from the president of CSC (K. Subrahmaniam) on the differences between software development and manufacturing, innovation in India (Deependra Moitra) and virtual collaborations (Thomas A. Finholt). One of the talks I would have loved to hear about is the one of the possible use of Wonderland (the virtual world from Sun) in GSD – the speaker was not present.

The conference reception introduced us to the traditional dance in India. The interest was that the dancers mixed traditional Indian prayana with some modern moves.

Our GSD talk was at the end of the conference in the Education track. The talk was very well appreciated – with a thumb up from some people and congratulations from Indian and Irish researchers. What we are doing with my colleagues is both doing GSD and studying it. That is the plus! When doing the GSD project I really feel like a project manager…

I am in Bangalore - Bengaluru

Bangalore is in the Karnataka region. Lots of people in Bangalore speak neither English nor Hindi. Another important aspect of Bangalore is that traffic is very dense – so to do 20 kms one may need 2 hours. The climate is nice all year long from 15 to 28 degrees… with monsoon from June to September. It is well known for cakes :-)

Bangalore

I did not manage to update this blog when in Senegal. Let's try from India... Just arrived in Bangalore the Sillicon Valley of India... It will be interesting to discover this side of the software development industry...

Senegal

Already one week in senegal... The best experience ever... I waited years to do something in africa and I hope that it is the beginning of something amazing!