Team Srijan, had a great time interacting with close to 40 students and faculty members of the institute while discussing open source movement, Drupal and Linux at their campus on the 11th of February.  The facilities provided in the computer lab by the institute were quite good  with each terminal having a high speed internet connection. We could actually play some guessing games with students trying their hands searching for information about CMS’s and Linux.

The training ended with bouts of Samosa’s and Chuttney from the famous Gopal Sweets of Rait and with a promise to take up more such sessions in their campus. There was even more surprise in store as almost all the participants signed up for  a Linux installation fest to be organised by Srijan in the month of April at their campus.

We would like to thank the management of Dronacharya College for giving us this wonderful opportunity to interact with their students.

In an engaging session, which lasted for more than two hours, the participants learnt about the basics of website building, difference between static and dynamic websites, content management systems and Drupal. Varun, our Hello Drupal trainer, also introduced the students to the opportunities which exist in the open source world and especially the career opportunities associated with developing skills in Drupal. The introductory session was followed with hands on Drupal installation and website building sessions.

Hello Drupal training: Introductory session

Q & A Sessions

A BCA first year students lists differences between a Static and a Dynamic website

Srijan team helping participants with Drupal installation

Students were quite excited to be part of this training and were interested in knowing more about the technology. Our team would like to thank the faculty members of Dharamshala College for providing their support and participation in this workshop. We look forward to more such engaging sessions on topics such as Operating systems, System Analysis, Programming techniques, Database & Software engineering with the students of this campus in the days to come.

Next Saturday, we are visiting Dronacharya College, which has a beautiful campus offering educational services to students of rural areas close to a place called Rait.

About the Author: Divyanshu Puri, is working as a Management Intern with Srijan. He is pursuing an MBA degree with a major in Marketing from Himachal Pradesh University Business School at Shimla.

Why Dharamshala?

The town is getting major fillip to its infrastructure as the government is focusing heavily on developing education and sporting facilities in this place. In the last 10 years this district has seen establishment of 3 universities, numbers of engineering and diploma colleges offering quality technical education. With English as a subject being taught from school the graduating engineers are well versed with a language required to communicate with our international clients. We hope to train and offer jobs to engineers graduating from these institutions. In terms of physical infrastructure Dharamshala offers broadband connectivity through a fibre optic backbone connected to the national grid. There are enough backup options with all major telecom operators offering connectivity solutions through DSL or 3G technology. Electricity is another major plus as the state of Himachal Pradesh is a power surplus state with number of hydro power stations setup across the state. Besides quality of supply the cost of electricity is heavily subsidized.

Facilities

With 1200 sq feet of office, we have enough room to house a team of 35 odd engineers. The office also offers a small kitchenette, meeting room and a sleeping room. Yes, we don’t mind if our engineers catching a wink every once in a while. The town offers our engineers an opportunity to live life to the maximum. With clean and green environment, this town gives additional benefits as necessitated by modern lifestyle. The town is well connected by road, railways and air with Chandigarh and Delhi. Being a tourist place there is no paucity of restaurants, resorts and picnic spots. Restaurants here serve excellent food of all delicacies be it Japanese Sushi, German bakeries, Italian pizzas and Israeli falafel. Nights can be fun with live music hangouts in Mcleodganj. With a government medical college and other private hospitals, the medical facilities are well established. Besides the famous cricket stadium the town also offers a well equipped indoor stadium with facilities like gymnasium, badminton, table tennis and an athletics running track.

”

Invitation to code in heaven

We like having guests in our office. Especially the ones who come up to us and say “Hey we can do this thing together”. So if you are the kind who is keen on settling or moving to the mountains then do get in touch with us. We may just have the right work opportunity waiting for you.

We’re sure you are there on Facebook, more Dharamshala pics on our Facebook page

Job location:
Dharamshala, Himachal Pradesh

Perks of working in Dharamshala

Enjoy long walks & treks in the mountains and high passes almost on all weekends
Be part of a global melting pot with people converging all over the world at Mcleodganj
Get to breathe fresh air in office instead of one coming through air conditioning ducts
Spend evenings gazing at the stars with family & friends
Look at the bluest of the blue sky which is free of dust and pollution
Enjoy all the four seasons of a year and actually feel the transition from one to the other
Good sporting infrastructure for sports like TT, Badminton, Cricket, Basketball, Mountain Biking & Football
Volunteer with non-profit organisations working in the field of education, environment and healthcare

Software Engineers at the company work on

• LAMP/WAMP Engineers: Create websites, portals using Drupal, Drupal module development, jQuery, Contribute to Drupal core & new module development, Mobile Apps

• Sys Admin: Maintaining a cloud environment, server optimisation, back-up, maintain JIRA, SVN, Jenkins, Hudson, Maintain local workstation environment of both Linux & Windows.

• QA Engineers: Automated and Manual testing, UI and Functional testing, Selenium RC, Selenium IDE

Desired Skills & Experience

1. Technology

• Graduation in IT/Computer science
• Proficiency in LAMP environment
• Experience in working on any of the open source CMS like Drupal, WordPress, Joomla & CakePHP
• Believer in open source systems
• Contributions to open source projects
• Exposure to tools like Git, SVN, JIRA, Basecamp is appreciated.

2. Personality

• You should be thoroughly bored of staying in cities like Delhi / Chandigarh / Bangalore / Pune / Mumbai / Chennai / Kolkata / Hyderabad.
• Should be a nature lover and a greenie.
• Should have love for the mountains, its ecology and people.
• Understands and values the importance of start-up/entrepreneurship/bootstrapping etc.
• Once in a while be ready to cook meals for self and office colleagues.
• Should be comfortable watching the latest flick on on DVD and not in a multiplex.
• Seeking spirituality yet enough money to lead a comfortable and stress free life.
• Looking forward to adapting to a slower pace of life and slow not because of traffic jams.
• You should be ready to teach the skills honed over the years with the local community & freshers.
• Willing to learn some life skills from the community in return.
• Sees the next one to two years as a journey and not the end in itself.

Additional Information

1. Type:  Interns / Full-time

2. Experience: Freshers to Mid level

3. Functions: Software Development, Project Management, Information Technology, Engineering, Design

4. Industries: Design, e-Commerce, Computer Software, Information Technology and Services, Media & Publishing

5. Compensation: Commensurate with Experience and at par with Industry standards

If you want to discuss this opportunity speak with Varun at +91 98055 10111 or s him your CV at varun@srijan.in

Now that I am here and have lived for more than 3 years high up in the mountains I look forward to networking with like minded people who share similar beliefs such as mine.

Over these years have gained some insights about living in the mountains and I hope to connect / network / team-up with people sharing the following traits:

• You should be thoroughly bored of staying in cities like Delhi / Chandigarh / Bangalore / Pune / Mumbai / Chennai / Kolkata / Hyderabad.
• Should be a nature lover and a greenie.
• Should have love for the mountains, its ecology and people.
• Willingness to walk in wilderness for long distances is a must. (To catch up with the team when not working).
• Understands and values the importance of start-up/entrepreneurship/bootstrapping etc.
• You are comfortable working from an office little larger than a car garage but with amazing views of mountains and river flowing by.
• Once in a while be ready to cook meals for self and office colleagues.
• Should be comfortable watching the latest flick on a pirated CD and not in a multiplex.
• Seeking spirituality yet enough money to lead a comfortable and stress free life.
• Looking forward to adapting to a slower pace of life and slow not because of traffic jams.
• You should be ready to teach the skills honed over the years with the local community & freshers.
• Willing to learn some life skills from the community in return.
• Would like to spend Saturday evenings gazing at stars with family and friends.
• Enjoy the bluest of the blue sky which is free of dust and pollution.
• Sees the next one to two years as a journey and not the end in itself.

Well if you think you are so desperate that you would like to hitch the next bus/tempo or even bailgari up the serpentine roads then lets talks.  Maybe this helps you exercise a choice which you always wanted to.

Read the complete article here

The journey has been long and eventful. In this period I did loose some loved ones and met some many more loving and affectionate people. No doubt that I can now claim of have friends sitting in every nook and corner of this world. Be it micro finance practitioner in Kenya to a techie in New york or a Doodhwala in AMUL.

Over the years I had dreamt of moving back to Himachal and so I did with a IL&FS in 2007. But it is only now that I have truly started exploring my real dreams of being an entrepreneur. Last few months have been quite exciting and at the same time have tested me as well. From managing HimVani.com,one of the largest read news portals about Himachal to hosting the toughest Mountain Biking Challenge in India and helping start GreenKrafts, a handicrafts based social venture near Dharamshala. Have tried my little bit of contributing to the society in a positive manner.

More recently have been involved with few like minded entrepreneurs to start an IT initiative in Himachal Pradesh. We have some interesting plans for up-skilling the youth in the region and hope to generate employment for many. In the process we probably will end up guiding few youngsters in setting up similar initiatives.

So the task is cut out in front of us and we shall use every second of this year working towards fulfilling our dreams.

Ending this piece on a rather selfish note, I seek your blessings, support and guidance throughout the year.

So wish us luck ! Bon Voyage !

The figures are based on the pricing sheet provided by these service providers on 30th March 2010. The Euro and the Dollar conversion rates into Rupees are also of the same date. Hope this is of some value to my fellow internet users.

Exchange rate

1 Euro = 60.53 INR
1 $ = 45.06 INR