First BarCamp Kerala Lite on Web Technologies

A workshop on Web Design and Web Technologies, supposed to be the first BarCamp Kerala Lite, was held at College of Engineering, Thalassery, Kannur yesterday 20.Feb.2010.

I was there to take a session on ‘How to easily build Websites using WordPress’.


Building Websites with WordPress

So I boarded the Cannanore Express at Aluva Railway Station, last Friday evening. @TheAnand was supposed to be with me, unfortunately he had to skip the trip since he was busy with the works of new office of @Ayruz.

Luckily I found some of my friends from college at the station. It was my first trip to Kannur, the train was crowded. I got a seat after a couple of stations, the trip was tiring, except for the company with friends.

In the train, I met and old lady in her 60’s (I assume). She looked neat and she was having fun with some kids sitting nearby. She made me feel what a privilege it is to grow old with someone. We got acquainted before I got off at Kannur station at around 11 p.m. where @NijuMohan was waiting with his brother in his new car for me.

I had dinner at Niju’s home, and the plan was to stay there over night. I got introduced to his Dad and Mom, and two of his brothers. We both hadn’t completed our slides. So we sat all night doing it, chit chatting, browsing and sharing stuffs. Thanks to the unlimited internet at his nest. We slept for 90 minutes that night.

After a quick break fast, with Niju and Hari, a friend of Niju and the in-charge of the event, we set out for the day. On the way, I met Praveesh, a Photshop enthusiast and a third year student at CET.

We picked up, @shalvinpd on the way, little did I know that I was going to get my basic .Net lessons from him later in the day.

We reached CET by around 9 a.m. We went to a guest room which was the only room with wifi in the college, where we got refreshed, I did some tweeting. The sessions started by 9.45 a.m.

The first session by Niju, who is an alumni of the college himself, about Web Trends gave an intro to the audience about existing web technologies, concepts of web 1.0 and web 2.0; a general introduction to the web.

He also showed this viral video: Web 2.0ย  – The Machine is Us/ing Us.

Then Shalvin sir did his magic with the basics of Microsoft .net. He came with some DVD’s to give-away, which was taken well by the crowd. (I got a copy on the way back home).

I followed Shalvin with my session. It was the first time that I had practised before a presentation. So it went really smooth. I did a demo of WordPress on local host.

I made a cool looking website in 10 minutes and I believe the crowd liked the speed with which websites could be made. The demo was followed by a segment on How to make money online, which, obviously, got great attention.

[Bad: no one had a camera (even in the digital age). So no photo memoires]

While lunch was getting ready, Niju and Me talked to the audience and inspired them to try blogging. Niju also talked about their campus blog, CeTly Live, which is not officially launched yet, so many didn’t know about it.

It was lunch time, I met up with some guys from the college, then had lunch with Niju, Shalvin in ‘the wifi room’. Fried Rice was good ๐Ÿ™‚

Me and Shalvin left after the lunch, to catch the Ernakulam Express. Praveesh and Varun dropped us off at the station. At the station, me and Shalvin sir exchanged thoughts. I demonstrated WordPress and its working and he gave me an intro of .Net. The train came at 2.45 p.m.

We managed to find a seat after a couple of stations and started working on .Net on Shalvin’s Praseed Sir‘s laptop (Shalvin was using his laptop).

Later when the battery died out, I installed .Net on mine and did some coding on the way. We turned to bits and pieces of paper that we could get hold of, when my battery died.

Shalvin sir was a great company during the trip. He showed me two of his favourite tracks on his mobile. He is a hard-core music enthusiast himself.

Finally I got off at Ankamally Station, said ta-ta to Shalvin. The last bus to Perumbavoor was gone by the time I got a Lime juice. So I walked asked for a lift to a random stranger and hooped on his bike to the Ankamally transport bus stand.

To my surprise, I met @jerilk, my neighbour and friend from school.

A new edition Volvo Bus of KSRTC pulled up right in front of us. We went inside just out of curiosity. It is air-conditioned and the seats are amazing. Took some pictures (later) inside the bus and talked to the driver. He said the bus gets a mileage of 2.5 km per litre.

Later, we came home in another bus, me had dosha and Jeril had omelet at a local Thattu kada. Walked home from town and talked for a long while.

It was one hell of a memorable day. Loved it ๐Ÿ™‚

Related: Slides and Notes are posted on Million Clues.


Comments

20 responses to “First BarCamp Kerala Lite on Web Technologies”

  1. I would like to see more of conferences where we are talking about things like website secuirty, architecture, faster sites, cloud computing, crawling the whole web, analzing 1000 websites in a minute etc and a lot of really high end techy stuffs.

    Lets show the people what is possible on web and how high end web works.

    1. You should show up at a BarCamp. People would be crazed to hear such stuffs. I will let you know when the next one is announced ๐Ÿ™‚

      Next one should be in April or May.

      (I just added you to my To-Do, will send you email when its ready)

      1. Do u know how people can listen through someone’s cellphone microphone?? If you know ANY tips about getting rid of countless app & profile hijackers, I have many questions &no luck finding help. 6-7 cells in 8mths still can’t shake em….ps had met em through mutual people.ANY TIPS U may have picked up I’d b ETERNALLY GRATEFUL

  2. Man, this article is like reading a guy’s diary. Really good thoughts here. I haven’t taken a session, you inspire me to do one (just like you did for blogging). ๐Ÿ˜‰

    1. That is what this blog is meant to be, my personal diary – glad its working ๐Ÿ™‚

      Taking sessions is great to connect and network. Why not take one about blogging in your campus? I bet you are already known as a great Blogger around, rt? ๐Ÿ˜›

      1. Not as great as you buddy! ๐Ÿ˜‰

        I envy you! ๐Ÿ˜›

        1. Lol, good to know that ๐Ÿ˜›

  3. It’s great to read it, personal accounts like this are awesome read; especially when you are part of it :P.

    @Pradeep

    Arun is an awesome presenter, we should take tips from him. In between how are you doing?

    1. Lol, thanks Niju. This is so far the best memoir I have written ๐Ÿ™‚

      Shh, Chumma pillere thettikathe ๐Ÿ˜›

    2. Yeah I agree Niju! ๐Ÿ˜‰

  4. Thanks for the post…it was nice….by the way y did u link my name with that bad site(even though its mine)…link it to http://www.photoshopkeeper.blogspot.com

    1. Just did that ๐Ÿ™‚

  5. I changed my site to wordpress.Now you can link my name to http://www.praveesh.co.cc….

    1. Dude, dont be crazy about back-links. As far as I have seen it, the link you get from your comment and the link from the post are ‘almost’ equal. ๐Ÿ™‚

  6. Nice travelogue/technologue ๐Ÿ™‚ I thought CET stands for my alma mater (College of Engineering, Trivandrum). Btw, thanks for the tube.

    1. I see, so you are a CET product. Since Thalassery also starts with T, they too got the name, I never knew it before this visit.

      Nice to see you here ๐Ÿ™‚

  7. H!
    Arun bhai,
    I want to knw abt Online Earning,

    plz do reply
    ๐Ÿ™‚
    __nistuL

    1. Looks like you are a keralite, why dont you show up for the next barcamp and lets discuss it in the back seats? – http://www.barcampkerala.org/blog/

  8. […] My session is gonna be a demo of Building Websites with WordPress, inspired from the response of the Demo part of my presentation at CET, Thalassery. […]

Leave a Reply to Arun Basil Lal Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *