Here comes report of yet another small gathering from Kathmandu GTUG, dated June 9th, 2012.

Participants

Bhupal Sapkota, (ktmgtug, Semicolon Developers)
Bhuwan Pokharel (ktmgtug, NAST)
Rupesh Shrestha (Student - Prime College)
Saroj Khatiwada (Tech Enthusiast)
Suresh Ghimire (ktmgtug, RAN)
Pratap Sapkota (Kathford College)
Prakash Neupane (ktmgtug, ASCOL)
Sunoj Das Shreatha (ktmgtug, RAN)

 

Location/Time:

Saturday (Jesth 27th 2069 / June 9th 2012)
Time: 3pm-5pm in the evening
Location: Sundae Cafe, Jawalakhel. (50 meters ahead of Zoo gate)

Meetup Agendas

For this meetup reporting we used Google doc: http://bit.ly/ktmGTUGjune2012 

1) Introduction : Hello session

Getting to know each other. Welcomed new members Saroj, Rupesh & Pratap to Kathmandu GTUG.

 

2) GTUG to GDG (Google Developers Group) migration

 

Starting July 1st 2012, we will rebrand ourselves entirely as GDG Kathmandu (i.e Google Developers Group - Kathmandu)

Google is proposing a change in the GTUG (Google Technology User  Groups) logo and name to the GDG (Google Developer Groups) logo and  name. In addition, they’d like to migrate the GTUG chapter directory on gtugs.org to a new GDG directory on http://developers.google.com/groups

  GTUGs will be legacy groups soon. You can find more information about this migration here : http://wiki.gtugs.org/gtug-gdg-faq

We discussed over proposed changes and how this will affect our GTUG momentum.
Most of the GTUG chapters around the world have already changed their logo/name to GDG. We decided to make this transition slowly. Starting July 1st 2012, we will rebrand ourselves entirely as GDG Kathmandu (i.e Google Developers Group - Kathmandu). As the name suggest, i think it’s time to gradually uplift ourselves to developers from end-users. What do you say ? Please put your thought in a comment about this migration.

3) Google Apps Setup Training

Saroj Khatiwoda, who joined us today will create some presentation slides about Google Apps and how it can help increase organizational productivity in minimum investment. We will meet interested organization and present the slides. In turn, we will host training program for Google Apps setup in respective organization.

4) Google I/O Extended in Kathmandu (possibility ??)

Yes this is about Google I/O 2012



Google IO 2012 is going to happen in San Francisco from June 27th.
https://developers.google.com/events/io/sessions

Google I/O is a great platform to get knowledge of latest Google and overall technology sector. Learn the tech world's latest web, mobile and social breakthroughs and meet the developers who are turning them into tomorrow's startups. Keep yourself and your team driving innovation at Google I/O, which returns to San Francisco's Moscone Center from June 27th - 29th, 2012.

Google I/O Extended in Kathmandu

https://developers.google.com/events/io/io-extended

Together with Google Technology User Groups (GTUGs) and Student Ambassadors, Google is hosting free viewing parties of Google I/O worldwide.

Even if you can't attend Google I/O in person, this is a way to still connect with other talented developers and watch the keynote and other sessions live. Part viewing party and part community building, Google I/O Extended are free events focused on livestreaming parts of Google I/O. Depending on location, the event could also include local developer demos and other speaker sessions.

We decided do a small gathering for Google I/O Extended here via Kathmandu GTUG. First, this event requires a live streaming resources. Second, we might have time zone issues (San Fransisco 9 AM - 6PM timing will be evening/night here) and others feasibility information needs to be gathered. Better we host first few sessions (keynotes) which happens around 9:00PM NST.

We have submitted our interest to host Google I/O Extended event at Kathmandu.
Suresh Ghimire is coordinating this event. Once place and high speed internet gets fixed, detail information about how to participate in the Google I/O extended – Kathmandu will be posted in this blog and our mailing list too.

Stay tuned.

5) Speaker/place for Android Workshop we planned in our February meet.

We will do an event focused on Android mobile platform and android apps development.
The tentative date for the Android Workshop discussed is Mid July, 2012. For the event location Prakash Neupane will coordinate and Bhupal Sapkota (that’s me), I will approach presenters.

6) Unicode.org CLDR survey for Nepali

From unicode.org website,

The Unicode Consortium enables people around the world to use computers in any language. Our freely-available specifications and data form the foundation for software internationalization in all major operating systems, search engines, applications, and the World Wide Web. An essential part of our mission is to educate and engage academic and scientific communities, and the general public.

CLDR – Common Locale Data Repository ( Links : CLDR Project, Wikipedia)

The Common Locale Data Repository Project, often abbreviated as CLDR, is a project of the Unicode Consortium to provide locale data in the XML format for use in computer applications. CLDR contains locale specific information that an operating system will typically provide to applications. CLDR is written in LDML (Locale Data Markup Language).

The Unicode CLDR provides key building blocks for software to support the world's languages, with the largest and most extensive standard repository of locale data available. This data is used by a wide spectrum of companies for their software internationalization and localization, adapting software to the conventions of different languages for such common software tasks as:

• formatting of dates, times, and time zones, 
• formatting numbers and currency values
• sorting text
• choosing languages or countries by name

The CLDR is a component of the Unicode organization, that is used for language-specific data, that is used by pretty much the entire global software industry for supporting languages. Having  Nepali strings in the CLDR is essential for having Nepali supported in software and Internet products - at Google and beyond. See here the members of Unicode (there are of course many more software firms that use Unicode but are not members).

The deadline for submitting strings for the v22 of CLDR is in 6 weeks. Submission is essential to fully support Nepali, at least at the "modern" coverage level, which is what is required by many companies (including Google) in order to release products in Nepali.

4/4/2012 - v22 Data submission starts
06.04 - v22 Data submission ends, vetting starts
07.11 - v22 Data vetting ends, resolution starts
08.29 - v22 Release

CLDR Survey Tool

Translations in the Unicode Common Locale Data Repository are gathered and processed via what is called the Survey Tool, an online tool that can be used to view data for different languages and propose additions or changes. This tool provides a way to propose new localized data, see what others have proposed, and communicate with them to resolve differences.

During each submission period, contributors from Unicode Consortium members, other organizations and the public at large are invited to review the data for their languages and countries, and propose new translations of terms or modifications, including language translations entirely new to the repository

How we are contributing for Nepali CLDR

For this process to work at least two Unicode-member organizations need to approve each string. One can be the organization that entered the string, and the other one would be a separate organization that confirms the translation. Google can be one of these organizations (as Google is a member of Unicode)

People involved in CLDR submission/vetting for Nepali

Translator organization: Language Technology Kendra, lead by Bal Krishna Bal
Vetting Organization: Google, represented by Bhupal Sapkota

We are meeting with Asso. Pro. Bal Krishna Bal, KU who is representing the submitting organization – Language Technology Kendra on Friday June 15th to get knowledge about overall CLDR project, its submission status and to get guidance for vetting phase.

7) 2012 Google Apps Developer Challenge (participation ?)

Google have launched Google Apps Developer Challenge 2012. Read more.
Challenge Page: http://www.google.com/events/gadc2012/

 

Here’s Google+ Hangout video with GDG managers, where Chukwuemeka Afigbo (He is a Program Manager at Google with the Emerging Markets Outreach team where he works closely with developers, startups, businesses and IT professionals in the region to successfully grow their business around Google Developer Tools and APIs) answers GDG manager's questions about the challenge.

 

We will circulate GADC – 2012 message to all our linked organizations/colleges and encourage individual or group participation in the challenge from Nepal. So if you are interested you can submit your apps and win prizes on over 18 apps development categorizes. All the best.

Extra Topics:

Bhupal attending Google I/O 2012

 
It is confirmed few days after the meet that I’ll be attending Google I/O 2012 in person.
Thanks Google Developers Relation Program and Google I/O team for the offer to invite in GTUG managers from around the globe to attend I/O 2012.

Video reporting of Kathmandu GTUG Meets.

Kudos to Saroj for bringing in this topic. Yes, this would be good idea if we could create video content for/out of our events. We will try to do this in our future meets.

Participating in NCE IT Fair and ICT Meetup

Kathmandu GTUG will participate in following events which are happening soon:

NCE IT Fair - June 15th (upcoming friday) – Assigned to: Prakash Neupane
ICT Meetup - Prime College - June 17th - Rupesh will communicate with KTMGTUG for participation.

Our presentations will include:

-> introduction to KTMGTUG, our works so far, our community reach
-> Info about GTUG to GDG Migration (starting July 1st 2012 we will migrate to GDG)
-> Info about Google Apps Developers Challenge 2012 (events detail, prize, submission guidelines etc)
-> Details about Google I/O Extended in Kathmandu

KHEL – The Fest - http://www.khelthefest.com

An Inter-college/ School festival is the time when students leave behind the pressure of everyday assignments, tests and relax. It is the time when students forget their student life burdens and simply chill. Participate in the Khel(s) and have fun.

And of course, The Eurocup ;)

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- bhu1st / Chapter Lead
Photo Credits: Kathmandu GTUG (Official page)

Jan 28^th 2012 Meetup

Time / Venue:

10am - 12pm (+/- 30 minutes)
at Semicolon Developers
Near Shankhamul Chowk

Participation: 12
active GTUG guys, guys from Tribhuvan University and Kathmandu University

Live meetup reporting was done at : http://bit.ly/ktmGTUGjan2012 (2nd page)

Agendas / discussions under following topics.

1) Introduction : Hello session, tea/coffee

2) Divon's Visit Experience / Opportunities we got for future events out of this visit.

3) Guidelines on new GTUG Chapter Formation

Looking at the interest in community it is better we start with universities and tech-hot-spots throughout the country.  (Lalitpur / TU, Dhulikhel /KU, Chitwan, Pokhara, Biratnagar, Butwal)

-> Guys from TU & KU will take initiatives to formulate University GTUGs.

4) Discussions for Next Event.

Topics: Google Apps Training, Blogging in Nepali Workshops, Web Design, Android Development, HTML5 Game Development etc. (to be discussed in meeting)

-> Suggested topics for next event:

a) Android workshops :: NEXT EVENT
b) HTML5 presentations / HTML5 Canvas
c) Presentation on SEO / Blogging platform
d) Data Mining Workshops
e) Web Design Workshop :: Todo for Lalitpur GTUG
- HTML5/CSS3, UX / UI, Design Theory
f) Google Nepali Translation API demo
g) Collaborative Development

We would focus on organizing Android Development workshops in near future.

Other common Discussion Topics during the meet were : Web Design, Android Development, HTML5 Game Development etc.

We started with a rough agenda doc/paper. You can get a view of what it looked like here: KTMGTUG - November 2011 Meetup Agenda

Allow me to share what we came up with:

Participation: 12 + 4

Bhupal Sapkota (this is me, i am reporting now), Bhuwan Pokharel, Sunoj Shrestha, Prakash Newpane, Kedar Bhandari, Bishnu Bidari, Rajesh Khadka, Hem K. Shrestha, Suresh Ghimire, Sushil Gupta, Nawaraj Singh Thakuri, Tek Nath Pokharel

 

and about 4 other guys from Classic Cafe New Baneshwor who welcomed us to the cafe, served us tea and at the same time were wondering what the heck we were gossiping there. I clarified them later that we were talking about something good for our tech community. They winked :) 

Discussions/Decisions:

Agenda: 1) Introduction : Hello session, tea/coffee

It was nice meeting all community members who were present at the meetup in person.

Agenda: 2) Collaborative Blogging @ http://ktmgtug.blogspot.com

This idea is similar to main GTUG Magazine Site http://gtugs.blogspot.com We will formulate a team of blogger who will cover articles/posts on specific topics once in a week on fortnight. Proposed blog topics were : Google APIs, Android News/Tutorials etc.

On this agenda Kedar Reported:

It was really a fun ! Today we discussed, even it is better to say-expanded the idea of Collaborative Blogging at a tea table meeting held at a restaurant (Opposite to College Cafe,about 50 meters away from Baneshor chowk towards Shankhamul). The program was actually scheduled to be organized at the College Cafe but as it was closed at the time, it was then held at the restaurant, opposite to that cafe. Although the meeting was done with just a cup of tea, the sharing of idea was great achievement, and the most interesting part was that we individually paid for that cup of tea too(!).

The idea behind Collaborative Blogging is a group of members or better to say group of bloggers contributing at a specific topic at the same platform.

We were 12 community members present at the meeting. The participants were from different fields and interests of IT including Computer Science & IT, Engineering and Media.Out of this presence, we formulated four blogging groups who will contribute research papers/articles on their respective interest area as described below. (please subscribe to our blog to get these updates in your email.)

1. Robotics/AI

The topic seems interesting. Among the participants Suresh Ghimire, Prakash Neupane, and Hem K. Shrestha showed their interest at this topic so they are going contribute their knowledge, ideas and experience through Collaborative Blogging.

2. Web Design/Development/Presentation/Networking

The most popular and most common topic in today's world. Among the participants Rajesh Khadka, Bhuwan Pokharel, Sunoj Shrestha, Teknath Pokharel and Nawaraj Singh Thakuri showed their interest at the topic and they are going to contribute including the different fields/tools of Web Design.

3. Android

Among the participants Bishnu Bidari from Amrit Science Campus showed his interest in Android so he is going to share his ideas through the Collaborative Blogging.

4. Latest Updates (Technology)

Among the participants, Sushil Gupta, Bhupal Sapkota and myself Kedar Bhandari showed our interest toward Latest Updates in technology sector in our country and around the world. So we are going to contribute in Latest Updates of Technologies through the collaborative blogging.

These were some topics we discussed at the meeting but the idea behind is its never ending collaboration, the new topics will be there. Even you, (the reader) can contribute with different topic!

Moreover, the team decided to  post at least a  blog according to their respective field/interest in a period of 15 days (at least), and this will be his/her responsibility as well.

Agenda: 3) Next Event Planning / Discussion

Theme for the next event will be a “Blogging Workshop”, where KtmGTUG will provide a complete technical presentation on how to create, update and maintain a personal/corporate blog with existing available blogging platforms. Team will decide the target audience within 10 days (i.e till 15th November) which will be one of the

- School level Students,
- College students(+2, bachelors), medical students
- C.A. members
- Media Celebrities.

 

Agenda: 4) Presenters for next events:

Since the next event will be a “Blogging Workshop”, we will call selected external presenters to share their experience in blogging/online content publishing.

Agenda: 5) KtmGTUG Meetup - Every Month

Kathmandu GTUG Community will meet on every first Saturday once in a month. The location and time of the meet-up shall be shared via Google Group of Kathmandu GTUG a week prior to the meet-up.

Agenda: 6) Sharing Member Profiles - (With Google Docs Web Forms)

KtmGTUG member Sushil will create a web form with discussed profile outline. The profile information collected via the web form will be visible to all Kathmandu GTUG community members.

Sushil created a Google Doc Form in the eve that day where, Kathmandu GTUG community members can submit their information. Our main objective for collecting this information is getting to know each others in community. If you are from Kathmandu GTUG community or want to join our community please add your information in the form. You can view the collected info too.

Feedback about the meetup from participants:

Sunoj Shrestha said :

Thanks to all those who have contributed. I am really hoping to step up from being a user to being a developer and KtmGTUG is going to be my platform. Anyone interested in being a developer can join this group and share ideas on various technology.

Rajesh Khadka said:

Though i am late in responding due to some problem. Saturday’s program was awesome. And thanks to  Bhupal dai and all the KtmGTUG member’s to provide us the the information about platform like this. As Sunoj Shrestha mentioned that this is the platform to enhance our knowledge so i would like to  say ”if any one is interested then this is the right place to be”.

Since we had long list of agendas to be discussed we ended up taking a bunch of more hours (about 3 hours) than initially expected (1 hour at max). But, the excitement of getting to know KtmGTUG community members in person, discussing/sharing ideas for improvements of the community were really inspiring. This meet-up was awesome experience for all of us.

We would love to see more of our community members to be present on next meetups/events organized by Kathmandu Google Technology Users Group.

Happy Googling.

P.S.

Photo Credits to Bhuwan.

This report was written using Google Docs - collaborating in real-time with all the participants of the meetup.