Celebrating our chapter's first year anniversary. During the past year, all of us together have given shape to the IITPNW chapter and have helped people make friends. It is time to celebrate!

We are planning this as a joint event of Oregon and Seattle sections of PacificNorthwest chapter. This is a great opportunity for bonding among all the IITians in Pacific Northwest.

Please mark August 18th on your calendar for a day trip & picnic to Mt. St. Helens . You can see the outline of the program below. Stay tuned for details!!

Mt. St. Helens day trip & picnic

A joint event of Oregon and Seattle sections
When:     Saturday, August 18th, 2007
              12 noon

What: Picnic and day trip to Mt. St. Helens - an active volcano

Who: Members and their families - Oregon and Seattle sections

Getting there...

• From Interstate 5 -- take Exit 49 (Highway 504 Exit) 
• Travel 6 miles east on Highway 504 (Spirit Lake Memorial Highway) to reach Seaquest State Park

Food: Potluck (details to come)

Proposed Plan

1. Meet at the Seaquest State Park...
2. Picnic at the shelter#1 (TBD)
3. Choice time: Play around, walk on the wetland trail, or visit the volcano visitor center to see the step-in model of the volcano ...
4. Carpool and drive to Coldwater Ridge center (A wonderful 37 miles drive with many scenic viewpoints)
5. Drive to visit Johnston Ridge observatory and see Mt. St. Helens up close (a winding 7 miles drive from Coldwater Ridge)
6. Drive back to home

For details of the above locations, please see:

http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dhngr9hz_0gqmw9k

PAN IIT Pacific Northwest Chapter Seattle Section Monthly Meetings

 

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

(Meetings will be held every third Wednesday of the month - mark your calendars and let your IIT colleagues know)

at

6:30 PM

 

Venue:

Google, Inc

720, 4th Ave

Kirkland WA 98033

 

Agenda

Introduction & Welcome

IIT PNW Chapter Activities Discussion

Technical Panel Discussion on "Software as a Service"

(see below for details)

Social & Professional Networking

------------

PLEASE RSVP TO

Mohan Venkataramana,  (425) 883-0664

Special thanks to Google, Inc for sponsoring and supporting PanIIT PNW chapter monthly events.

Google is located at Central Way Plaza, 720 Fourth Ave, 4th floor, Kirkland WA

Phone: 425 739 5601

Parking available in the front of the building.

 

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Hi,

If you were disappointed that we had to change the topic from “Software As A  Service” in our first meeting, we would like to make it up to you. We are bringing not one, but four experts who have been involved in the area of SAAS for many years.

Our meeting next week is going to be an exciting panel discussion on the topic and this is your chance to understand about this technology and what it means to your career. Bring your questions along and join us in the fun.

And, by the way, don’t forget to register for the IIT2007 conference coming up in July. We are also co-hosting with TiE the next panel discussion on Wireless on May 31. I will be sending you the details about these meetings shortly. Those and more exciting plans are underway – and we need volunteers to make it happen.

 

Peeyush Ranjan

Engineering Manager,

Google

Peeyush manages the web search related projects being worked on in Google's Kirkland, WA office. His prime area of interest is building large scalable systems. Prior to Google, Peeyush directed the engineering team at Consera Software, a local startup in the area of grid computing. Consera Software was acquired by HP in 2004 and the technology was integrated into HP's datacenter management products. Before that, Peeyush was the Product Unit Manager for the wireless platform group at Infospace where he oversaw growth to peak at 88% of the US market. He has also worked in Microsoft's Windows Operating System Division and contributed to the successful release of Windows 2000 and Windows 98 SE. Peeyush holds a B.S. in Computer Science from IIT-Kharagpur, M.S. in Computer Science from Purdue University, and an MBA in Technology Management from University of Washington. He occasionally blogs at:  http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/ranjan/. 

 

Russ Arun

General Manager, Windows Live Communications

Microsoft

 

Russ Arun joined Microsoft in 1992. At Microsoft he has worked on Windows 95, IE 3.0 & 4.0, .Net, MSN Mobile and currently Windows Live. His current role includes the backend services for Hotmail, Messenger, Spaces, etc. For a couple of years of hiatus in the middle (2000 - 2002) Russ worked at Infospace as CTO and EVP of Engg & Operations. Prior to joining Microsoft in 1992, Russ worked at Sun Microsystems where he was the dev manager for Windows & Networking components in Solaris. Russ has a BS from IIT(M), MS from Syracuse Univ, and an MBA from UCLA.

 

Charlie Bell

Vice President, Utility Computing

Amazon.com

 

Charlie Bell, vice president of Amazon.com’s Utility Computing Platform, began his career as a developer of mini-computer software used in engineering of space shuttle payload mixes in 1979.  After graduating from California State University, Fullerton with a degree in Business Administration/Management Information Systems in 1981, Charlie continued to write application software in DGL (ALGOL 60) against a hierarchical DBMS called INFOS II.  In 1984, he took a hiatus from software development and moved into project engineering of integrated space shuttle cargoes.  Charlie owned the payload complement for STS-61B, working a console in Johnson Space Center through the Thanksgiving 1985 mission less than 2 months before the ill-fated Challenger disaster.  Charlie also owned the Hubble Space Telescope deploy mission, STS-31, and visited the Hubble in its clean room at Lockheed Sunnyvale before shipment to Kennedy Space Center for launch.  Charlie had been playing with database programming in his spare time, which was voluminous during the post-Challenger accident “stand-down”.  He’d picked up an old license of Oracle purchased by NASA in 1980 to run on an early Dec Unix box and discovered the religious nirvana of the Relational Model.  In 1989, he joined Oracle’s field services team where, for seven years, he wrote c-language Oracle apps and managed numerous transactional systems projects.  In 1996, Mr. Bell left Oracle and joined Server Technologies Group as CEO and co-founder to build internet commerce transaction software.  The team at Server Technologies fell in love with a client, and in March 1998 closed doors, moved across the lake, and joined Amazon.com.   Charlie became the Director, and later, VP of Infrastructure.  He has held several executive posts at Amazon since then leading to his current job as VP of Utility Computing.  Utility Computing products today include the Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), a web service that provides on-demand compute instances billed by the hour, and the Simple Storage Service (S3), a web service providing storage and retrieval of data objects.

 

 

Kevin Marcus

Chief Technology Officer
Intelius

 

Kevin Marcus is a co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of  Intelius. Previously, Marcus co-founded and served as Chief Software Architect for InfoSpace. As Chief Software Architect, Marcus developed the technology framework for the foundation of InfoSpace including the creation of a highly scalable database infrastructure. Marcus also built XML based technologies to unify disparate databases to produce integrated product offerings. As a member of the InfoSpace M&A (Mergers and Acquisitions) team, Marcus was responsible for evaluation of more than 30 companies. Marcus also has been issued patents related to user authentication, messaging, and geographical searching. Prior to InfoSpace, Marcus worked at Symantec where he helped develop Symantec's Norton Anti-Virus, including building the foundation technology for the Symantec Anti-Virus Research Center. During this time, Marcus was also issued a patent for a CPU emulation technology.

 

 

 

PAN IIT Pacific Northwest Chapter Seattle Section Monthly Meetings

 

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

(Meetings will be held every third Wednesday of the month - mark your calendars and let your IIT colleagues know)

at

6:30 PM

 

Venue:

Google, Inc

720, 4th Ave

Kirkland WA 98033

 

Agenda

Introduction & Welcome

IIT PNW Chapter Activities Discussion

Technical Talk:

Technical Panel Discussion on "Mobile Advertising – Technical Challenges and Business Opportunities"

Coordinator: Chetan Sharma

 (see below for details)

Social & Professional Networking

------------

PLEASE RSVP TO

http://services.google.com/events/paniit_rsvp

For more details, or if you or someone in your organization want to give a talk in one of the monthly meetings, please contact

Mohan Venkataramana,   (425) 883-0664

Special thanks to Google, Inc for sponsoring and supporting PanIIT PNW chapter monthly events.

Google is located at Central Way Plaza, 720 Fourth Ave, 4th floor, Kirkland WA

Phone: 425 739 5601

Parking available in the front of the building.

 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PAN-IIT Event: Mobile Advertising – Technical Challenges and Business Opportunities

Where: Google Kirkland Campus When: April 18th, 6:30-8:30pm

Mobile Advertising is the hottest topic in the wireless industry right now. Analysts are forecasting a multi-billion industry within a few years. Everyone from operators to Internet powerhouses to device manufacturers are jostling for position in the value chain. This session will define mobile advertising, look at the current industry landscape, and brainstorm the technology challenges and business opportunities in this emerging segment of the market. With executives from Infospace, Medio Systems, Google, and VoiceBox, this will be an exciting discussion on mobile advertising.

Brendan Benzing, VP of Products and Marketing, Infospace
Brendan Benzing, vice president of Product and Marketing, is responsible for defining InfoSpace's product strategy in Mobile Search as well as its industry leading Mobile Media platform. He also oversees the emerging mobile advertising solutions group. Benzing joined InfoSpace in 2005, bringing experience in sales, marketing and interactive media product development. He has over 15 years of experience in the media industry and over a decade with interactive media products including mobile, internet, and interactive TV. Prior to InfoSpace, Benzing spent seven years with America Online, most recently serving as an Executive Director, in AOL's Search and Directional Media Group.

Jai Jaisimha, Vice President Development, Medio Systems
Jaisimha comes to Medio with more than 15 years of software development and management experience. Most recently at Microsoft, he was involved in connectivity solutions development for the portable digital media device market, including handsets, for the Windows OS. He was also responsible for a new line of business, which included solutions for Windows Media nomadic devices in the automotive space. Working with Nokia and other mobile terminal vendors, he deployed Windows Media DRM, codec and connectivity technologies.

As founder of ContentTone Systems, Jaisimha oversaw a startup focused on personalization and recommendation system technology, improving the premium-content commerce experience on mobile phones. During his more than five years at RealNetworks, Jaisimha led the company’s entry into several new product lines focused on the embedded device, digital music and service infrastructure markets, including RealJukebox, RealServer, RealEncoder, and embedded versions of the RealPlayer product.

For his research in multimedia content management and databases, document filtering and information retrieval at MathSoft, Inc. (now Insightful, Inc.), Jaisimha received research awards and grants from the U.S. Department of Defense, National Security Agency, National Institutes of Health, NASA and the NSF. Jaisimha has a bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Communications from the Indian Institute of Technology, an MS in Electrical Engineering from Tulane University, New Orleans and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Washington, Seattle.

Victor Melfi, EVP and Chief Strategy Officer, Voicebox Technologies
Victor Melfi Jr. is the chief strategy officer (CSO) and senior vice president (SVP) of Voice Services at VoiceBox. Previously, Melfi served as CSO of InfoSpace. Throughout his career, Melfi has been called-on to provide extensive technology strategy consulting for the CEOs of the world’s leading tech companies. His professional expertise in tech strategy, direct marketing and advertising served him well during his tenure at the Strategy and Media practice of the office of Booz-Allen and Hamilton, and while he re-engineered the Global Promotion, Selection and Analytics business and systems at Reader's Digest Inc.
Melfi led a successful 1997 IPO of Multiple Zones as CEO, and subsequently also led and sold two other technology companies. Victor was educated at Shimer College, Oxford University, and Yale University, where he got his MBA.
Kosar Jaff, Engineering Manager, Google

Kosar Jaff is an Engineering Manager at Google's Kirkland office and leads the Mobile engineering efforts there. Prior to Google, Kosar worked at Intel, WebTV, and Microsoft in various engineering and management roles over the course of 20 years.

Chetan Sharma, President, Chetan Sharma Consulting
Chetan is Founder and President of the firm. He is a recognized industry expert on strategy and Intellectual Property. Executives from leading wireless companies around the world seek his accurate predictions, independent insights, and actionable recommendations. He has served as an advisor to senior executive management of several Fortune 100 companies in the wireless space. Some of his clients include NTT DoCoMo, Disney, KTF, Samsung, Virgin Mobile, Sony, Sprint Nextel, AT&T Wireless, Cincinnati Bell, Reuters, Qualcomm, Reliance Infocomm, SAP, Merrill Lynch, American Express, Infospace, BEA, and HP. Chetan is author of number of books, articles, and reports on the industry. He is currently writing a book on Mobile Advertising. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------

PAN IIT Pacific Northwest Chapter Seattle Section Monthly Meetings

 

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

(Meetings will be held every third Wednesday of the month - mark your calendars and let your IIT colleagues know)

at

6:30 PM

 

Venue:

Google, Inc

720, 4th Ave

Kirkland WA 98033

 

Agenda

Introduction & Welcome

IIT PNW Chapter Activities Discussion

Technical Talk:

IITPNW Chapter Sponsored Project:
"IITians for ITI" by Atul Mathur.

(see below for details)

Social & Professional Networking

------------

PLEASE RSVP TO

http://services.google.com/events/paniit_rsvp

For more details, or if you or someone in your organization want to give a talk in one of the monthly meetings, please contact

Mohan Venkataramana,   (425) 883-0664

Special thanks to Google, Inc for sponsoring and supporting PanIIT PNW chapter monthly events.

Google is located at Central Way Plaza, 720 Fourth Ave, 4th floor, Kirkland WA

Phone: 425 739 5601

Parking available in the front of the building.

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------

 
IITians for ITI

Atul Mathur,

Autodesk

 

Atul Mathur
"IITians for ITI" Program Launch Team (Coordinator)
President, PanIIT Pacific Northwest (Oregon) Chapter
www.iit.org
(503)-544-0101(c)

 

 PanIIT : background

In 1950 the first of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) was started in India with the mission of developing the technology leaders of tomorrow. Since that time, IIT has expanded, and the seven campuses of IIT's, are considered as some of the best in the world. IITs have been known for quality education to its students in various engineering, science, technology and management disciplines. IIT alumni have gone on to contribute significantly to the economic and social context of the global community and have made the IIT brand a synonym for excellence in technology and leadership. A 60-minutes program and a US Congress resolution recognizing the role of IIT alumni in USA is a testimony to the same.

 

The PanIIT Alumni organization was started in 2003 to represent the common interests and goals of all graduates from the seven IITs. Some of the relevant purposes for formation of PanIIT are to:

 

• Provide a platform for Advocacy and to share Best Practices  in education governance,
• and Offer services and nurture a culture of giving back to our alma mater and Nation Building.

We are proud of the many accomplishments of the IITs and its graduates ("IITians") in India, the United States and elsewhere around the world. The US Congress passed House Resolution 227 last year to appreciate the many contributions of IIT alumni to the US Economy and to furthering ties with India - the first time such an honor has been bestowed on a foreign educational institution.

 

We are desirous of creating such synergies and economic growth in countries around the world. We see such cultural and business ambassadors nurtured by the education system at the IITs have truly made our world a much flatter, smaller and hopefully, a better place!

 

"IITians for ITI" - a synopsis                                                                  

What are ITIs: ITI stands for Industrial Training Institutes and there are more than 5000 of these institutes in India. However, the quality of training at the ITIs is rather uneven. These ITIs produce 700,000 technicians each year. Improving their skill level would be a very powerful channel of advancing India's technical/manufacturing capabilities.

 

What is "IITians for ITI" program: "IITians for ITI" is a Program envisioned to improve ITIs and drive sustainable excellence in India 's vocational/technical training. The Program will consist of many simultaneous projects at different ITIs around India . The PanIIT Organization is uniquely placed to make the program a success. PanIIT can leverage IIT brand to work with government agencies to clear roadblocks and solicit support.  The Program is predicated on the active involvement of local IIT alumni, who will work at the local level, mentoring an Institute's principal, its instructors, students and also liaise with the local industry. Other IITians will support the local IIT Alumni by taking up program administration, governance and monitoring, as well as by financially contributing for instructor training, equipment and student scholarships.

 

http://iitiansforiti.cfsites.org/ (temporary program website)

 

The Program has been publicly announced during the recent PanIIT global conference in Mumbai, and will be launched in the upcoming PanIIT global conference in Santa Clara , CA in July 2007.

 

Program achievements to date:

• Broad consensus based formulation of the IITians for IIT charter and mission- "360 degree improvement in India's ITIs recognizing the urgent need for such an effort"
• Successful entrenchment of the Program's importance as a PanIIT branded initiative, worthy of PanIIT's continued sponsorship and championing
• Program charter and mission highly received at the recently concluded PanIIT 2006 conference in Mumbai. Ensuing plans to position a workshop at PanIIT Santa Clara and elsewhere as part of the continuing effort to actively promote the program within PanIIT circles
• Program launch team and think tank groups seeded- representation from both India and US- draws a diverse cross section of the talent required for the success of the inititiative- US and India
• Identified supportive IITians from industry, technology and management academia, IAS officers and other distinguished alumnus
• Nexus with CII (Confederation of Indian Industry) being established to leverage CIIs effort for potential leapfrogging 
• Full support from the Central government of India (Ministry of Labour & Employment)
• Pledges of support from over 70 IITians to date.

PAN IIT Pacific Northwest Chapter Seattle Section Monthly Meetings

 

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

(Meetings will be held every third Wednesday of the month - mark your calendars and let your IIT colleagues know)

at

6:30 PM

 

Venue:

Google, Inc

720, 4th Ave

Kirkland WA 98033

 

Agenda

Introduction & Welcome

IIT PNW Chapter Activities Discussion

Technical Talk:

"Search Engine Freshness" by Peeyush Ranjan, Google, Inc.

(see below for details)

Social & Professional Networking

------------

PLEASE RSVP TO

http://services.google.com/events/paniit_rsvp

For more details, or if you or someone in your organization want to give a talk in one of the monthly meetings, please contact

Mohan Venkataramana,  (425) 883-0664

Special thanks to Google, Inc for sponsoring and supporting PanIIT PNW chapter monthly events.

Google is located at Central Way Plaza, 720 Fourth Ave, 4th floor, Kirkland WA 9033

Phone: 425 739 5601

Parking available in the front of the building.

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------

 
Search Engine Freshness

Peeyush Ranjan,

Engineering Manager, Google

 

Search Engine Freshness

About the speaker:

Peeyush Ranjan, Engineering Manager
Peeyush manages the web search related projects being worked on in Google's Kirkland, WA office. His prime area of interest is building large scalable systems. Prior to Google, Peeyush directed the engineering team at Consera Software, a local startup in the area of grid computing. Consera Software was acquired by HP in 2004 and the technology was integrated into HP's datacenter management products. Before that, Peeyush was the Product Unit Manager for the wireless platform group at Infospace where he oversaw growth to peak at 88% of the US market. He has also worked in Microsoft's Windows Operating System Division and contributed to the successful release of Windows 2000 and Windows 98 SE. Peeyush holds a B.S. in Computer Science from IIT-Kharagpur, M.S. in Computer Science from Purdue University, and an MBA in Technology Management from University of Washington. He occasionally blogs at:  http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/ranjan/.