I came back this morning from San Francisco after presenting a paper Extending Gurmukhi Script to Twenty First century and beyond at Sikholars – First Graduate Sikh Conference held on February 20, 2010 at Stanford University Campus. I had coauthored the paper with Amanpreet Singh Brar.

The manuscript pdf of the paper can be downloaded here. Schedule pamphlet can be downloaded from here and here

I recently returned from Web 2.0 expo in New York.

What fascinated me the most is the fast pace and energy in the entrepreneurs compared to some of my friends doing startups on the West Coast.

I have compiled notes for reference. Feel free to help yourself and if you use an idea to create next web 3.0 products, 5% of your company belongs to me

Web 2.0 Expo Notes – NY November 16-19, 2009 | Learn.ArvinderKang.com

Creative Commons image by Magify.net

I am back from a trip to Toronto, Canada after attending Spinning Wheel Film Festival. I was there on the invitation of Mr T. Sher Singh of SWFF International.

I first got aquatinted with Mr T Sher Singh, when I submitted one of my post-debate articles to SikhChic.com.

I’ll post more on the details of my journey later. However, I have put up a web album of the pictures I took while traveling to Toronto.

Last month I travelled to San Jose, California to see my younger brother. California is beautiful. Went around the Silicon Valley campuses, enjoyed the California beaches,

drove around San Francisco,

saw the famous Golden Gate Bridge,

went for a game of beach-ball at Half Moon bay,

and went on 17 Mile Drive.

And yes! I forgot to tell you, I was there for just a day and a half:).

July 4th and I’m heading to Canada to see my siblings. I haven’t seen my eldest sister and her family in years.

The day is sunny and beautiful. At the moment, we are flying over Tennessee.

At Memphis airport while checking in, I was asked by the security officer that I needed to step out for additional checking. No scanners beeped, no other reasons, except the fact that I was wearing a turban.

It was one of the very few moments in the last three years that I have been in the United States, (I would suppose very few compared to Biharis in Punjab or Haryana would have to deal with), that I felt that congress still makes racist laws. I wonder why TSA does not check for a women’s bra or men’s undergarments, if the sole concern is that some chemical might be hidden in the clothes. Why target only turbans? Simple – Because congress has been known to use scare tactics throughout the history.

My take on the whole thing -

1. Dumb politicians and idiot right wings responsible for selecting them exist in every country – doesn’t matter how democratic it is.
2. Racism and regionalism is often painted as patriotism.
3. Few random incidents should not change your opinion about anything or anyone.

I still believe US is one of the most free nations in the world – definitely more than India is. And I hope to retain this view unless something happens that drastically changes it. In the latter case, I am moving to “ANTARCTICA”!!

So the conference came to an end.

I liked the city, the people, the weather.

And the food. (Unlike Mississippi, where everything has to be meat, or creamy, or barbecued:)

From the plane, I took a picture of Mt. Hood, and I gave it a promise – A promise to come back to see it.

There is lot of homework to do. I’m excited. And I have got a reality check. And I’m excited:)

The main event of the day was keynotes by the core team. DHH got standing ovation from the crowd before he left early to catch his plane.

This has been one of the best conferences I have been to. Inspiring, knowledgeable and mind opening. Mingling with so many hackers and enterpreneurs was fun and will act as a reality check on where I am heading and should be heading.

Later in the evening, Shabbir and I both had rest of the day to check the city. We went to eat at an Indian place, roamed around the city and checked out the largest bookstore in the world. Found a complete section on each – India, Punjab and Sikhism.

Sessions today were pretty interesting. Went to Optimizing Rails by Michael Koziarski, a talk on integration testing, and a talk on Mongrel by Philippe Hanrigou.

The demand for Ruby jobs seemed to be posted everywhere. There were parties hosted in the evening, kept by companies to woo Ruby hackers.

Ajay and I went to party hosted by Geni.

Met very diverse set of people. Jeff is a developer from Texas and single hand behind MinistryCentered.

Grant works at Toronto General Hospital. His pretty girlfriend is half Bengali.

I also met Micheal from Geni team. The guy has lived all over the globe. The party was fun, and we got back pretty late.

Portland looks beautiful and young outside my window.

Joel Spolsky’s keynote presentation, if nothing else, was weird, informative and interesting.

Joel has been critical of the Rails at times, and it was very bold of the conference organizers to invite him.

Dan Benjamin’s session Entrepreneur on Rails was overfilled. It turned out to be one of the few a great non-code talks.

The other sessions I attended today were Hosting Woes by Engine Yard guys, Managing Complex searching in Rails by Steve Midgley, The profitable programmer panel, and Do’s and don’t of real life deploys by Chris Wanstrath. Chris is not just smart, but very hilarious too.

I also met few more people from India.

I’m meeting Vishal and few other guys for dinner. There is a lot of information to digest. The day is beautiful. The sessions were informative. I’m excited by the knowledge dip I’m getting.

And you gotta drink the beer from a brewery and you would never drink from a bottle again.

I attended Design for Developers – a Hands-On Workshop by Bryan Hogan. The most interesting thing I learnt was the use of Adobe Kuler in deciding colors.

Met a lot of interesting people at lunch, including Doug Hall and Jason Cavines. Doug is from Alabama.

Jason has lived in Portland for a while, so we used the lunch time to explore the Llyod mall.

Developer Testing Tricks session was too advanced for me. So I sneaked into Powering Air Applications With Rails session.

Later in the evening, met Vishal Sharma after a gap of 10 years. I and Vishal went to same school in India till 1997.

Met a lot of people from versatile backgrounds. Patrick Moss, who is a scientist in Alder Biopharmaceuticals. Anita Kuno, who traveled all the way from Toronto to attend conference. Shabbir Merchant, who did his MS in US, and now runs a company from Pune, India.

By dinner time we were quite a versatile group, from very different walks of life. We dined Rock Bottom Brewery, and headed out for Birds-of-the-same-feather sessions.