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Invited Industrial Session - 1

  1. C. Mohan, IBM Fellow and IBM India Chief Scientist, IBM Research

  2. Sivakumar Ramamurthy, Managing Director, Intel South Asia

    Abstract: The Internet is driving changes across hardware, software and connectivity requirements. This will force each of us to adapt, innovate and change. For the software industry in general and for database systems built to service advanced applications over the Internet, this is a significant shift along with the industry and government. The Internet has largely evolved around the Intel Architecture platform. We are now evolving to meet the current challenges posed by the "Always On, Always Connected" environment with better performance, lower power consumption and multiple form factors. This presentation explores the changes we are seeing around us, with particular reference to India, and how we are gearing up to meet the challenge.

    Bio: Ramamurthy Sivakumar is the Country Manager, South Asia. He is in charge of all sales and marketing operations for Intel products and technologies for all the South Asian countries (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh). As Managing Director, Siva is also responsible for leading Intel towards becoming a platform oriented organization as well as driving Intel's 'World Ahead' initiative which focuses on PC penetration for the next billion citizens in emerging markets. Prior to this, Siva was Worldwide Director, Business Development for the Mobility Group at Intel. Siva and his team were responsible for developing the industry ecosystem and creating alliances around Intel's Mobility products. The Mobility Group included Intel's laptop, cellular handset, WiFi and WiMAX businesses.Four years earlier, Siva was Assistant Treasurer and Director of Mergers and Acquisitions at Intel, responsible for driving acquisition strategy and transactions across Intel Corporation as part of Intel Capital. Prior to this, Siva spearheaded all Intel strategic programs in India and drove the expansion of the company's India operations, serving as Director. Siva started his career as a software engineer at Intel in 1988 and later served as a technologist and engineering manager in the Intel Architecture Labs at Oregon, USA.

    Siva has a Bachelor's degree in engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) at Kharagpur and a Master’s degree in Computer Science from New Mexico Tech, at New Mexico in the USA. He also holds a US Patent in network based audio/video processing using multicasting.

Invited Industrial Session - 2

  1. Sanjeev Kumar, General Manager, BEA

    Title: Data on SOA
    Abstract: Current Techniques, Products & Challenges During the last 15 years there has been a proliferation of new types of data and data sources, and generation of massive amounts of data due to the Web and Web-based systems. Very little of this data is SQL-accessible in the traditional relational database sense. At the same time there have been attempts at building new techniques and commercial products to manage this data outside the database (i.e. in middleware). We look at some of the recent techniques, products and systems that address the problem of data management in middleware and service-oriented architectures, which are beginning to be adopted by the "early majority". The talk also covers in detail open-ended problems and challenges that are at the cross-section of applied research and commercial products for data management in the "middle tier".

    Bio: Sanjeev Kumar is currently the GM of WebLogic Integration (WLI) product at the Bangalore Technology Center of BEA Systems, India. He was previously responsible for managing BEA's AquaLogic Data Services Platform (ALDSP) in San Jose, CA. Sanjeev spent the first 10 years of his career at companies like Oracle, Versant Object Technology, Object Design working on OODBMS and ORDBMS systems. The last eight years of his career have been focused on building clustered, distributed systems, reliable messaging infrastructure and data management middleware for SOA.

  2. Vishal Daga, Director, Netezza
    Title: Realizing Breakthrough Analytical Performance with Integrated Database Appliances
    Abstract: Netezza is a pioneer in the field of data warehouse appliances. Netezza's integrated hardware and software systems deliver 10-100x the performance of other databases while significantly minimizing maintenance and other administrative effort. The performance and simplicity of Netezza's products have opened up new analytical possibilities, and are helping to push the envelope further in the analytical realm. In this session you will gain insight into Netezza's technology and gain an introduction to the company.

Special Talk: Eternal Gandhi Multimedia Museum

Presenter: Ranjit Makkuni
Sacred World Research Laboratory and Foundation
email:info@sacredworld.com

Abstract:The Eternal Gandhi Multimedia Museum is one of the world's first digital multimedia museums. Located at the site where Mahatma Gandhi attained martyrdom, it not only preserves the historical events of Gandhiji's life but presents a spectrum of information technology visions inspired by Gandhian thought. The project revives the values by which India obtained freedom; it also redefines those values in order to animate modern products and design.

The project presents a language of physical interface actions derived from classical symbols of the spinning wheel, turning of the prayer wheels, touching symbolic pillars, the act of hands touching sacred objects, collaboratively constructed quilts, sacred chanting in the collective group, the satsanga and the touching and rotating of prayer beads. These tradition-based interactions inspire a rich panorama of tactile interfaces that allow people to access the multimedia imagery and multidimensional mind of Gandhiji.

The technology developed does not 'merely scan' Gandhian images. It extrapolates Gandhian ideals to newer domains of information technology and product design, and at higher levels, the creation of meaning in a globalised world. For example, the Gandhian commitment to hand-based production and its symbolic relationship with nature is interpreted in the context of modern culture-conscious design.

The contributions of the spectrum of artists, spanning wide geographic boundaries and disciplines, illustrate the universal resonance in Gandhian messages. Computer scientists, modern designers, mosaic makers, craftsmen, artists, and wood carvers offer their work as a dedicated prayer, in remembrance of the Gandhian vision; a collective Likita Japa, the endless remembrance of the Divine through repetition of the written mantra. Each object in the museum, whether a pixel of light, a bit-map on the screen, an animation, a circuit or a handcrafted object is a living prayer. Here lies the reaffirmation of the Gandhian view, a commitment to the dignity of hands, the healing of divides, the leveraging of village creativity and cultural diversity in the face of homogenization.

Bio:Ranjit Makkuni is a multimedia visionary, designer; musician and President of one of the most innovative design think tanks in the world, The Sacred World Foundation. The Foundation is bridging traditional and techno cultures exploring how innovation flows between both the worlds, and leads an interdisplinary team of designers, scholars, artists, programmers and scientists. Prior to his current position, for 17 years he has been a leading researcher at the prestigious Xerox Palo Alto Research Center a world renowned research center responsible for a great many of the innovations relating to personal computing, and the lab director of its multimedia lab in New Delhi. In 1985, Ranjit joined the System Concepts Lab of PARC, and became part of the visionary group, which developed the Smalltalk-80 Object Oriented programming language and the world's first graphic user interface. From that base, Ranjit pioneered explorations in computer-aided design and he developed a rich research space of the Active Learning Project at PARC. The Active Learning projects conduct basic research into new paradigms for interface and presentation, as well as develop cutting edge cultural learning applications. These projects have consistently demonstrated technology paradigms that have been years ahead of the field.

With respect to basic research, Ranjit's work explored and explores non-button pushing based, gesture-based interfaces, and new forms of multimedia access to multimedia content. The Chinese Temple Editor project developed in 1985 explored one of the first pictorial and gestural, non keyboard-based access to visual imagery. The Diagrammatic user interface in 1987 project explored visual retrieval of images through visual diagrams. The Hypertala project in 1993 explored sound based retrieval of a database of sounds. In 1993 Ranjit was part of the PARC team that invented Hyperpaper, a medium that explores `paper as an interface to multimedia imagery. In 1998, Ranjit demonstrated physical and virtual based information access through electronic augmented rings, interactive physical icons, interactive crafts, and wearable computing.

With respect to applications, Ranjit has developed many provocative demonstrations of technology in various museums, which have been years ahead of the field. In 1989, The Electronic Sketchbook of Tibetan Thangka Painting was displayed in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. This project represents one of the world's first multimedia applications of any kind and a pioneering example of a computer based cultural learning tool, and this project continues to be an important reference in a learning field. In 1998, he led the PARC collaboration in India with India's top scholars and artists at the Indira Gandhi Center for the Arts, New Delhi (Ministry of Culture) to develop the Gita-Govinda Multimedia Experience, a pioneering demonstration of a complex physical-virtual multimedia document, which received positive acclaim from all levels of Indian society, media. His recent work on The Crossing has developed futuristic, mobile, multimedia and wearable computing for an in-depth presentation of India's intellectual tradition in Banaras.

Ranjit is currently the director of the Gandhi Multimedia Museum in New Delhi, which he is building for India, presenting Gandhi's contribution to India's freedom struggle, class unity and race unity. The exhibit presents through modern tactile multimedia lexicon of core Gandhian values such as non-violence, non-possession, service to the poor, ecology, and their relevance in today's world.

Ranjit obtained a B.Arch. from IIT, Kharagpur, and a Masters in Design Theory and Computer aided Design from University of California Los Angeles. He is a frequent speaker at the world's leading design conferences in which he has become a spokesperson for putting forth the aesthetics and values of developing cultures. In 2000, Ranjit was nominated to be a founding member of the explorers club of the Ivrea Interaction Design Institute, Italy. He is a consultant to HP Labs Palo Alto, HP Labs India, and also is an adjunct professor at IIT Kanpur, India's leading technology institute.

In parallel with his career as a multimedia researcher and designer he is an active sitar performer, and has performed at the world's greatest learning centers and concert halls. Together, the proficiency in multimedia technology as well as traditional knowledge systems allows Ranjit to bridge multiple worlds, between technology and culture, techno-Man and traditional Man, and between developed and developing worlds.