From the land of snake charmers ...

Even after India lands people on the moon, even after India sells it's missiles (BrahMos), even after India has the second fastest growing economy, even after Indian rupee races against the dollar like a mad dog, it still is known for it's elephants, snake charmers, Taj Mahal and it's cattled roads! Well, now we are known for accented call centers and for stealing the buck from an American pocket under the name of offshoring, but what happened to what we bring to the table ??

Last week was a pleasant surprise to me and probably an eye-opener to a few who saw us in a different light...We had our Hack Day on Thursday and our presentations on Friday..It was time for the wizards without their hats to showcase their personality, their talent with full freedom..well, just for one day though...brains were put to great use, mid-night oil burnt, pizzas devoured, eyes swelled and brains froze but what came out was just worth it and a lot more...dreams were built and shattered in a day...some very interesting ideas came out...we had ideas on pipes, tagging, very interesting mash-ups, recommendation engines, scatter charts, blogography, some hacks on our green screen (infact, our Green screen partners finished 11 hacks overnight...)..they won the Houdini award!! Whoever said it was difficult and time consuming to code on TPF might have got a smack on their face! If you know your way, you can drive through a flurry of bullets :D..these guys have been around for atleast 20 years and can make a parallel Sabre if they wanted to :)..to me, the best application was the Flex space app that promised to bring some order to the Flex space chaos going around town!! 21 teams participated and every idea was totally different from the other and the best part ..... >

MORE THAN 50% OF THE TEAMS WERE INDIAN/HAD INDIANS...so much for coming from the world of snake charmers!!