CSI Communication - Soft Skills - March 2011

Composite Default screen

CSIC March Cover.ps D:\CSI\2011\March 2011\re CSI march cover cc.cdr Tuesday, March 08, 2011 2:41:31 PM

IT IDOL 2011 (Final Round) Date : 9th April 2011 Organised by : CSI Goa Chapter For details contact : Vinayak Nayak, delatgoa@gmail.com International Conference on Emerging Trends in Networks and Computer Communications Date: 22-24, April 2011 Organized by: CSI Udaipur Chapter and IE-I Computer Engg Division and Udaipur Local Centre For further details contact: Dr. Dharm Singh, dharm@mpuat.ac.in

May 2011 March 2011 One day workshop on Business Process Modelling with Unified Modelling Language Date: 22 March, 2011 Organised by: CSI Mumbai Chapter Foe details contact: info@csimumbai.org, csimumbai@vsnl.com Southern Regional Conference SRC 2011 Date : 22-23 March 2011 Organised by : CSI Coimbatore Chapter For details contact: www.karunya.edu/cse/csi/downloads Region-VI Regional Student Convention Date : 24-26, March 2011 Organized by: JNEC-Student Branch-CSI and CSI Aurangabad Chapter For details contact: dhingra.param@gmail.com Two days workshop on Software Effort Estimation (Function Point Analysis and its applications) “Based on latest release 4.3.1” Date: 25-26th March, 2011 Organised by: CSI Mumbai Chapter Foe details contact: info@csimumbai.org, csimumbai@vsnl.com IT Idol 2011 (3rd Round) Date : 25, March 2011 Organised by : CSI Goa Chapter For details contact : Vinayak Nayak, delatgoa@gmail.com Region-III Student Convention Date : 26-27 March 2011 Organized by: CSI Jaipur and Udaipur Chapters For details contact: Naveen Hemrajani, naven_h@yahoo.com, Dr. Dharm Singh, dharm@mpuat.ac.in, Dr. M Chandwani, rsc3@csi-india.org National Conference on next generation computing and information security “Emerging Trends for Future Challenges” NCNGCIS 2011 Date: 25th & 26th March, 2011 Organized by: Department of IT, IMS Noida, SIG-WNS CSI, CSIR, CSI, Noida Chapter For details contact: Dr. Dharm Singh, dharm@mpuat.ac.in Regional-III CSI Student Convention (RSC -2011) & 1st National Conference “Secure Data Communication & Networks” (SDCN-2011) Date: March 30-31, 2011 Hosted by: Dept. of CSE, Suresh Gyan Vihar University, Jaipur Organized by: Dept. of CSE and CSI Student Branch, Suresh Gyan Vihar University, Jaipur, SIG- WNs, SIG-Hardware and Embedded Systems Design, CSI Udaipur and Jaipur Chapters For details contact: Naveen Hemrajani, naveen.vpgv@gmail.com Dr. Dharm Singh, dharm@mpuat.ac.in

April 2011 NCVESCOM-11: 4th National Conference on VLSI, Embedded Systems, Signal Processing and Communication Technologies Date : 8-9, Apr 2011 at Chennai Organized by: Dept. of Electronics & Comunications Engg., Aarupadai Veedu Institute of Technology, Vinayaka Missions University and supported by CSI Div. IV (Communication), IEEE madras Section, IEEE COMSOC, IEEE CS, IETE, BES(I).

For details contact: D Vijendra Babu, ncvescom2011@gmail.com Mr. H R Mohan, hrmohan@gmail.com Website: www.avit.ac.in

2nd National Conference on Innovation and Entrepreneurship in ICT Date: 14- 15 May, 2011 Organised by: SIG on Innovation and Entrepreneurship in ICT, CSI Ghaziabad Chapter & Mahamaya Technical University, NOIDA For details contact: Prof (Dr.) Anil Kumay Pandey dr.anilkpandey@yahoo.co.in Seminar on Advances in Information Systems Date: 17th May, 2011 Organized by: CSI Vellore Chapter For details contact: pkalyanaraman@vit.ac.in; gjagadeesh@vit.ac.in Computer Society of India, First Rajasthan State IT Convention On Better Life in Rural Communities with ICTs Date: May 17-19, 2011 Organized by: CSI SIG-WNs, e-Agriculture, CSI Udaipur Chapter and Sunrise Group of Institutions, Udaipur For details contact: Dr. Dharm Singh, www.ieiudr.org, dharm@mpuat.ac.in Workshop on Programming using Processing Language Date : 26th to 31st May 2011 Organised by: CSI Goa Chapter For details contact : Dr. V.V. Kamat, vvkamat@gmail.com

June 2011 Research Symposium on Information and Communications Technologies Date : 3-4 June 2011 Organized by: CSI Vellore Chapter For details contact: pkalyanaraman@vit.ac.in; gjagadeesh@vit.ac.in Worksshop on Social Netwroking Date : 11th June 2011 Organised by : CSI Goa Chapter For details contact : Vinayak Nayak delatgoa@gmail.com

July 2011 Seminar on ERP Date : 16 June 2011 Organized by : CSI Goa Chapter For details contact: S A Khedeker, sakhedeker@gmail.com ACC-2011: Intl. Conf. on Advances in Computing and Communications Date : 22-24, Jul 2011 at Kochi, India Organized by: RASET, Kochi in association with CSI Div. IV & Cochin Chapter, IETE, IE(India) and PMI,Trivandrum, Kerala Chapter For details contact: Dr. Sabu M. Thampi, acc2011.rset@gmail.com Website: http://www.acc-rajagiri.org

August, 2011 Annual state student convention Date : 15 August 2011 Organised by : CSI Goa Chapter For details contact : Abhay Bhamaikar, abhay_bhamaiykar@redffmail.com

September, 2011 ECAP 2011 Date : 17-19, September 2011 Organised by : CSI Goa Chapter For details contact: Santosh Kamat, santoshkamat.goa@gmail.com M D Agrawal Vice President & Chair, Conference Committee, CSI

Executive Committee 2010-11/12 President Prof. P Thrimurthy president@csi-india.org Vice-President Mr. M D Agrawal vp@csi-india.org

Volume No. 34

Dr. S Subramanian div3@csi-india.org

Division-III (Applications)

Mr. H R Mohan div4@csi-india.org

Division-IV (Communications)

Prof. Swarnalatha Rao Division-V div5@csi-india.org (Edu. & Research)

Hon. Secretary Prof. H R Vishwakarma secretary@csi-india.org Hon. Treasurer Mr. Saurabh H Sonawala treasurer@csi-india.org

Nominations Committee

Immd. Past President Mr. S Mahalingam s.maha@tcs.com

Prof. (Dr.) U K Singh

Dr. Shyam Sunder Agrawal

Theme Section : Soft Skills

05 08 11 13 15 19 20

Soft Skills? Who needs them?

Sushila Rao Soft Skills, Hard Truths Dave Zielinski Assertive Communication – 6 Tips for Effective Use Lee Hopkins Tips for Successful Cross Cultural Communication A J Schuler Leading Virtual Teams Joyce Thompsen 5 Steps to Poor Listening: The ordinary professional’s guide.

Paul Glen The Ace of Soft Skills – Book Review Gopalaswamy Ramesh & Mahadevan Ramesh

Current Topics

Publications Committee

Mr. M P Goel rvp1@csi-india.org

(Region I)

Chairman Prof. S V Raghavan svr@cs.iitm.ernet.in

Dr. D P Mukherjee rvp2@csi-india.org

(Region II)

Prof. S G Shah rvp3@csi-india.org

(Region III)

Mr. Sanjay Mohapatra rvp4@csi-india.org

(Region IV)

Dr. D B V Sarma rvp5@csi-india.org

(Region V)

Mr. C G Sahasrabuddhe rvp6@csi-india.org

(Region VI)

Mr. S Ramanathan rvp7@csi-india.org

(Region VII)

(Region VIII)

Chief Editor Dr. T V Gopal gopal@annauniv.edu

Director (Education) Wg. Cdr. M Murugesan (Retd.) director.edu@csi-india.org

Resident Editor Mrs. Jayshree Dhere jayshree.dhere@gmail.com

Executive Secretary Mr. Suchit Gogwekar hq@csi-india.org

Division Chairpersons

Published by

Dr. Deepak Shikarpur Division-I div1@csi-india.org (Hardware)

Mr. Suchit Gogwekar For Computer Society of India

Dr. T V Gopal div2@csi-india.org

March 2011

CONTENTS

Dr. Suresh Chandra Bhatia

Regional Vice-Presidents

Mr. Jayant Krishna rvp8@csi-india.org

Issue No. 12

Division-II (Software)

21 22

NKN - Computer Science Research (CSR): Past, Present, and Future S V Raghavan

23 25 28 32

ICT for Disaster Risk Reduction – Compliled by T V Gopal

ICT can help predict natural disasters: RK Pachauri [Ahmedabad] & Google makes search social, excludes Facebook

Articles Ultra Jazz Mobile Internet Device: Flight of Fancy Suman Kumar S. A survey on opportunities and challenges of Wireless Mesh Networks Dhanaraj Cheelu & P Venkata Krishna An Introduction to FiOS TV Sumit Kumar Yadav

Departments

02 03 35 31 36 39 41 42 43 45

Community Talk President’s Desk ExecCom Transacts

CSI Topics Developing Web Applications — Book Review Ralph Moseley CSI National and International Conferences and Seminars: Transformation and Climate Change – M D Agrawal CONSEG - 2011 : International Conference on Software Engineering – A Report : Anirban Basu EAIT 2011 – A Report : Debasish Jana & Pinakpani Pal Intl. Conference on Computer Architecture, Networking and Applns.

(IC-CANA 2011) – A Report : Swarnalatha Rao & N N Chiplunkar 25th National Convention of Computer Engg. and National Seminar – A Report : Dr. Dharm Singh From CSI Chapters CSI Calendar 2010-11

(2nd Cover)

New Editorial Board for CSI Communications.................Back Cover

CSI COMMUNICATIONS | MARCH 2011

1

COMMUNITY TALK CSI Foundation Day 6th March, 2011 Some of the “1st of CSI” Excerpted From: http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Computer_Society_of_ India#The_1st_of_CSI Founder President: Prof. R. Narasimhan Founder Secretary: Maj. Gen. A Balasubrahmanian 1st Lady Individual Member: Ms. V. K. Joglekar 1st Lady Institution Member: Ms. Shanta Telang 1st Technical Paper Presented by Lady at Calcutta Convention in 1965: Ms. V. K. Joglekar 1st CSI Convention: Calcutta in 1965 1st CSI Chapter: Bombay Chapter 1969 1st CSI Executive Secretary: Col. H. K. Ranji 1st Newsletter Editor: Maj. Gen. A. Balasubrahmanian 1st Member of IFIP General Assembly: Prof. R. Narasimhan 1st CSI Student Branch: Hyderabad Student Branch 1st CSI’s own Chapter Premises: Calcutta 1st Fellows of CSI: Prof. R. Narasimhan, Mr. F. C. Kohli (at CSI-1979 Convention in B’lore) 1st CSI International Conference in India: Networks’80 1st National Students Convention: Tiruchirapally, 1986 1st Lady Execom Member: Ms. Lynette Saldanha

Software complexity and demands for increased functionality are exponentially increasing in all industries. The Web Browser Mozilla Fire fox is more than 3 Million Source Line of Code. Debian Linux 3.1 is more than 216 Million Source Lines of Code [SLOC]. Both of them are Open Source Projects.

Commercially, it is becoming very difficult to develop more than 20 million lines of code of high quality within the given time and budget. Moreover, the economics of developing complex software are such that the development (virtual) teams are spread all over the globe.

Thanks to the ICT the formation of “virtual teams” and “virtual organizations” is the order of the day.

Communication channels and modes are explicitly defined based on the task. There are too many alternatives such as e-mail, mailing lists, chats, blogs, tele-conference, video-conference and face-to-face meetings to communicate many aspects pertaining to the Software Development. It is difficult to compare and judge the efficacy of deploying the alternatives.

However, it is important to note that the face-to-face meetings with a good measure of Kinesthetics usually tend to be highly productive.

Developing and deploying Computer Supported Collaborative Work [CSCW] tools is in the list of top 10 challenges faced by the IT Industry today. The overall objective of CSCW Tools is to provide Right Information to the Right Person at the Right Time.

Communications for software development must facilitate strong collaboration both within virtual teams spread across the globe and teams operating in physical proximity.

In fact, it is useful to note that technology has only 10% weightage in the success of virtual teams.

People have 90% weightage. Training personnel on ‘soft skills’ is thus becoming an imperative need world over. However, IT Professionals tend to be less endowed with soft-skills than some other disciplines.

The classical book “The Unwritten Laws of Engineering” published by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), with ideas dating back to 1944 from W.J.King and revised and enlarged by James G Skakoon, clearly shows that the softer and practical attributes of engineering work have endured across generations. The instructions include areas such as self management, being proactive, assertive, keeping commitments, relating to supervisor, always keep records, being clear and concise in documentation, tips for an engineering manager, and professional ethics.

A Harvard University study revealed that 85% of jobs & promotions happened because of the candidate’s attitude and only 15% due to the facts and figures he packed under his belt. A report from NASSCOM says that of the large number of

engineering and other graduates being churned out every year, only 10% are employable in the IT industry.

Most are unsuitable because of a lack of soft skills, particularly communication skills, which are essential for industries like IT. The most important characteristic of software development is the incredible speed with which the requirements change. The acceleration of change is accompanied by an increase in the information needed to keep up with all these developments. Inadequate soft skills lead to two major stumbling blocks namely “Information Overload” and “Information Black-holes” which adversely impact the software development process. The consequences of not dealing with these stumbling blocks deftly are: stress, accepting false information and impaired judgment.

A world-wide survey (Reuters, 1996) found that two thirds of managers suffer from increased tension and one third from ill-health because of information overload. The psychologist David Lewis, who analyzed the findings of this survey, proposed the term “Information Fatigue Syndrome” to describe the resulting symptoms. Other effects of too much information include anxiety, poor decision-making, difficulties in memorizing and remembering, and reduced attention span (Reuters, 1996; Shenk, 1997).

“Information Black-Holes” happen when critical data is not transferred, is distorted, or never discovered in the first place. Non-quantified intangible factors [tacit knowledge] at the technical level compound the resulting uncertainties in the software development process. This phenomenon compounds the Fear – Uncertainty – Doubt [FUD] factors associated with the software development processes.

“Indian educational system is too narrow to provide required skilled people. Soft skills of people in India are not at par with their academic capabilities.”

- Peter Sands Group Chief Executive, Standard Chartered, United Kingdom, India Economic Summit, 2007 Building soft skills is a difficult but richly rewarding challenge. India is at IT in true earnest.

“Reputation is the shadow. Character is the tree.”

- Abraham Lincoln Eventually IT Industry must mature the character of their developers.

On behalf of the CSIC Team, I thank Dr. Sushila Rao for Guest Editing the theme section for this issue.

Dr. Gopal T V Hon. Chief Editor gopal@annauniv.edu

CSI COMMUNICATIONS | MARCH 2011

2

PRESIDENT’S DESK From

: president@csi-india.org

Subject : President’s Desk Date

: 1st March, 2011

My Dear Affectionate Members of CSI Family, It has been an excellent time that I had as the First Person to serve you for the past 12 months.

Academicians, Industry and Governments continued to support us in our attempts to meet the objectives of CSI. I take this opportunity to gratefully acknowledge with thanks for the support that each member of the CSI had extended to me. I request you on my kneel, to kindly forgive me if I had caused inconvenience to any person/ institution, knowingly/unknowingly during my term as President of CSI. I am glad that I could spare my time, through out the year, exclusively for the services of CSI (with out getting attracted to the new assignments on my retirement from Government Services). Thanks to my wife Prof. Syama and son Dr. Maruti for their support to my decision to serve our bigger CSI Family.

Presidents Council: Happy that we are able to get back our past Presidents in our midst at annual convention, in the form of Presidents’ Council. It has been a new experience when all of them are involved in the Convention deliberations. Thanks to the ExecCom for forming the council.

HQ@ Mumbai: Nice that we are successful in establishing our offices for housing both CSI HQ and Mumbai Chapter in Samruddhi Venture park of MIDC, Andheri (East).

Grateful to the CSI National Council for their kind support in this initiative and for Mumbai Chapter members for their cooperation in bringing up corporate environment for CSI family.

Catch them Young: Many thanks to the CSI members for giving good mandate through the recent CSI Polls for our proposal to enroll the 11th and 12th class (+1/+2 stage) students and Polytechnic students as “student members of CSI” with effect from April 2011. This would help in promoting the youth in the country for professional outlook.

National School level QUIZ in Science and ITC: India has been blessed with such kind of human resource that the entire world is looking at the Indian talent. It is necessary that we continue to encourage our youth for facing the challenges and get them fit in

meeting the global challenges. To catch the youth in right time and to contribute in developing professional competitive spirit, we have launched a National Quiz for the youngsters.

National ICT Quiz Committee consisting of Mr. Ranga Rajagopal of Coimbatore as the Convener and members including Mr. H R Mohan, Mr. C G Sahasarabuddhe, Mr. Venkatesh Parashuram, Prof.

(Ms.) Mini Ulanat, Mr. S. Ramasamy, Mr. N Valliappan, Prof. M.N. Hoda, Mr. Sabapathy, Mr. Sushantha Sinha.

The regional student coordinators/ Champions and chapter chair persons had extended their services in this initiative.

Having set the ground, Mr. Ranga Rajgopal has coordinated all the regional events successfully and set the schedule of final quiz during March 2011.

My salute to all these members for sparing their time to promote CSI Science & ICT Quiz in the country. As you all know, this event has been initiated by keeping in mind that CSI would reach to untapped areas in the country. Our coordinator and members have made it a grand success. I am glad all their contributions have yielded in catching the YOUNG at the right time and make India as a competitive Knowledge Society. The quiz is expected to continue and TV Channels would be invited to broadcast live CSI- Quiz programs.

KM Portal and CSI Publications: Mr. S. Mahalingam and TCS deserve our salute for creating the KM portal for CSI. Mr. Raj Saraf is remembered for hosting the Portal site on a cloud.

Thanks to the efforts of passionate members of the CSI family to help in developing the content for the portal. Thanks to Mr. H.R.Mohan for creating fire with the e-news letter. This has increased the hits to csi-india.org. Thanks to Prof. H. R. Viswakarma for helping in our initiative to get the CSI Adhyan hosted in our portal. We admire the contributions of Prof. T. V. Gopal and his team for bringing up high quality articles every month on a specific theme in CSIC. The outlook of CSIC changed in such a way that members at large appreciated and developed interest and taste for CSIC. We are grateful to Dr. Manohar Chandwani & his team for bringing back the CSI Journal to lime light.

CSI COMMUNICATIONS | MARCH 2011

3

FeatureNet 2011@ Nashik: The National Conference at Nashik during February 5-6 has been a great opportunity for discussing about the emerging technologies and to get ready for facing the challenges on the advancements of technologies. A student track is arranged in parallel at K K Wagh Institute with key note speakers from M/s. Persistent, Pune. It is the “Nashik Model” of involving the “chairperson’s council” consisting of all the past chairpersons for working the logistics of all events in Nashik, along with the chapter MC. They work like a family to host the events. Congrats to Mr. Srikant Karode for creating the interwoven culture to promote knowledge sharing environment on continuous basis. Congratulations to Mr. Aravind Mahapatra and Mr. Mangeshar Pisolkar on their success in steering the event, a grand success. Thanks to Mr. Avinash Shirode for instituting “YASOKEERTHI “award for promoting professionals, every year in Nashik. We appreciate the contributions of Regional Vice President Mr. Sekhar Sahasrabuddhe and the National Treasurer (Elect) Mr. V. L. Mehta for encouraging the event at Nashik.

Indore-IET Student Branch: Devi Ahilya Viswa Vidhyalaya has a Jewel in the campus in the form of Institute of Engineering & Technology (IET). Students are so much self motivated that they managed the whole process of forming the IET-student branch and conducted professional events during February 2011. Hearty Congratulations to Prof. M. Chandwani for his success in bringing up such professional culture in the institute where the Final year students( who have already succeeded in getting placements) have come forward with innovative programs for the Juniors. The chairman of the Chapter Prof. M.C.Chowdhry had administered the oath to student representatives. Prof Durgesh Mishra, Prof. H.R.Viswakarma and the rector of the University Prof.

Ashutosh Mishra joined to honour Prof Manohar Chandwani on his achievements in Research, Professional Development and Academic achievements. One has to see the Lion in the Lion’s den.

Technology Driven Society (TDS) @ Uka Tarsadia University: Historical Town Bardoli had attracted a galaxy of academicians, Researchers and IT practitioners to the National Conference on TDS that was organized at the student Branch of Srimad Rajachandra Institute of Management and IT. We admire the efforts of Director of the Institute: Prof. Bankim Patel and Dr. Naren Burade, Chairman of Surat Chapter for their “Personal Connectivity and follow up” to attract resource persons from Bangalore, Mumbai, Indore, Gandhinagar and other cities to this rural institution which is about 35 KMs from Surat. The event reflected that CSI is the loving brand for sharing the knowledge. We appreciate Daana-Veer-Seth Mr. B.U.Patel, NRI for his huge donation to the institution to promote new courses in this rural institution. Such kind of successful attempts would help Rural India to make our youth to sit on our shoulders of knowledge to see new heights in professional growth.

CONSEG-2011 @ Bangalore: I am glad that the Bangalore chapter has successfully organized the International Conference on Software Engineering: CONSEG-2011 during 17-18 February 2011. With the theme of Software Quality: The Road Ahead. The conference has attracted very good researchers and practitioners. Congratulations to Dr. Anirban Basu, Prof. H.R. Viswakarma and Prof T.V.Gopal on their success in conducting a High Quality event.

Lean Six Sigma @ Hyderabad: 2011 Lean Six Sigma International Convention has been successfully organized by Hyderabad Chapter during 26-27 February 2011. We appreciate the team work of Mr. Venkatesh Parasuram, Mr. Raju Kanchibotla, Prof. Narasimharao and Mr. Pavan Kota in bringing up the chapter to new heights during the past couple of years. The chapter is brought back to its glory with sincere, committed and dedicated efforts of them with Chapter MC. The convention has been conducted with international participation. It has been a feast of learning and exchange of ideas on the use of Lean Six Sigma methodologies in different sectors. Congrats to the Hyderabad Chapter and I am sure that the chapter would continue to organize such excellent events while progressing towards the CSI Land mark of Golden Jubilee celebrations and the annual convention-CSI2014 in Hyderabad.

Corporate eGovernance @ Visakhapatnam: It has been a great event that brought Visakhapatnam chapter of CSI, NASSCOM and Vizag IT Association (VITA) together to serve the society at large in sharing the experiences on technologies and case studies on corporate eGovernance during 27-28 February 2011.

We appreciate the involvement and support of Vizag Steel Plant in promoting the events at Visakhapatnam. Hearty Congratulations to Mr. Umesh Chandra, Mr. A.P.Choudhary, Mr. KVSS Rajeswara Rao and Mr. Patamata Satyanarayana for their success in involving other directors of the Steel Plant with the blessings of Mr. P.K.Bishnoi. The chapter is successful in inviting resource persons from almost all major cities of the country.

Student Branch @ Krishna’s Pragati Institute of Technology, Rajahmundry: Hearty congratulations to the students of the Krishna’s Pragati Institute of Technologies on successfully organizing several innovative programs, marking the inauguration of the Student branch on 28 February 2011. The management of the institute deserves appreciation for encouraging the events by sponsoring all the expenditure for the events.

My Salute to CSI: A retired teacher could become a President of CSI because of the noble feelings of the members of CSI. You all deserve my salute friends. The voluntary strength is so powerful that there is no parallel for CSI Voluntary strength. We are all the birds of the same feather with passion to help the society at large. My affectionate Pranams to you all.

I take this opportunity to thank Mr. Suchit Gogwekar, Commander Murugesan and their teams of dedicated staff members at Mumbai and Chennai respectively for their support.

I am ever Grateful to the learned Office Bearers, ExecCom members, National Council, Presidents Council, SIGs, NC members, Chapters, Student Branches, SB Counselors, Student Coordinators( National, Regional and State level), for their continuous support to me in my services to CSI. I wish the new team headed by Mr. M D Agrawal and Mr. Satish Babu to be successful in hoisting the flag of CSI at new heights.

Prof. P Thrimurthy President, Computer Society of India

CSI COMMUNICATIONS | MARCH 2011

4

GUEST EDITORIAL

Soft Skills? Who needs them?

Sushila Rao Soft Skills India Pvt. Ltd., 4th Floor, Purni Plaza, Raj Bhavan Road, Khairatabad, Hyderabad 500 004 Email: Sushila.Rao@softskillsindia.com

The concept of soft skills as a requirement for success in business is not a new one. Neither is it new to the IT and software sectors. The term ‘soft skills’ has been in common use in the business world since 1990. It is generally accepted that the term evolved from the word ‘software’ used to differentiate computer programs from the technical specifications in computer hardware. Yet, the word ‘soft’ associated with ‘skill’ has led to the misconception even today that these skills are easy to acquire.

As early as February 2002, an article in Dataquest magazine by Amit Sarkar entitled ‘Wanted: Software Professionals with Soft Skills’, pointed out that an independent study conducted by Stanford Research Institute and Carnegie Mellon in the US found that CEOs believe long-term job success depends 75% on people skills and only 25% on technical knowledge.

The article went on to say that there is a growing recognition in India of the importance of having more than just technical skills. Among the soft skills that were perceived to be required by HR heads in leading companies in the IT sector in 2002 were cross-cultural sensitivity, communication, customer interface skills such as listening, influencing and persuasive communication; presentation skills, meeting skills, and so on.

A huge competence gap was also being felt at the time at the project manager/leader level since people were good at doing, but not at getting things done.

This brought into focus the need for leadership and team working and the need for soft skills training to develop employees as “people” in order to retain them into sharp focus Why then is the lack of soft skills still very much a matter of concern in India? Why are soft skills so hard to find?

The answer lies broadly in these areas: It is widely recognized that there is a great shortage of employable people in India at a time when we are seeing high growth rates in virtually every sector of the economy. There has been a proliferation of educational institutions to meet the demand for technical skills – however, many offer

very poor education due to the lack of qualified faculty and suitable facilities. Neither is there room in the curriculum for training in soft skills, nor are there enough trainers available. Companies, particularly in the IT and software sectors have to devote enormous resources to training/retraining people in order to make them productive.

Unlike in the West, college graduates have virtually no exposure to the people skills required to be effective at work since they have little opportunity to work part time when they are students. Employees also fail to recognize that they need soft skills to work with others.

The typical Indian professional believes that technical skills are the most valued skills in the workplace and that their performance evaluation is based primarily on technical output. This belief is reinforced by the fact that companies continue to hire on the basis of technical skills to meet their immediate needs.

Employees are often willing to devote their own time and money to upgrade their technical skills but are less inclined to spend their time and money on improving their soft skills There is still considerable confusion about what soft skills are. For example, in our experience at Soft Skills India, many CEOs and HR mangers still think of English language skills when they say that the communication skills of their employees need improvement. While some companies recognize that soft skills are acquired only after a lot of practice, and are not just concepts that can be learned within a short period of time, corporate India still tends to expect quick fixes through short training programs.

There is reluctance on the part of many SMEs to invest in training on soft skills when attrition is high, particularly among entry level employees. Even many large companies are unable to release enough time from billable hours to training on soft skills.

What are soft skills and what soft skills are required

by IT and software professionals?

According to IEEE, one of the world’s largest professional associations, “Soft skills are the techniques you need to work with others. The things you weren’t directly taught in engineering school.

CSI COMMUNICATIONS | MARCH 2011

5

Skills like working on a team, networking with other engineers, public speaking, successfully and gracefully convincing others of your viewpoint all are considered to be soft skills.”

Google, Inc. sees soft skills as “Personal management skills such as attitudes and behaviors that drive one’s potential for growth, and team work skills. “ “To a techie, anything outside of product and development skills could be considered soft skills”, says Paula Moreira, writing on “Soft Skills for IT professionals”. Among her unofficial list of skills required to get to the top, she lists teamwork, communication skills ranging from answering the phone to writing e-mails and proposals; presentation skills, selling skills, running meetings, leadership, problem solving and customer service.

A survey of 1420 CIOs done by an independent research group for Robert Half Technology found that the most important soft skill for IT staffers was perceived to be interpersonal skills by 37% of respondents, written or verbal communication (20%), ability to work under pressure (17%), overall business acumen (11%), professional demeanor (7%) and other skills by 8% of the respondents.

A study by BATEC (Boston Area Advanced Technological Education Connections) on Information Technology Workforce Skills found that there was general agreement on 8 attributes and skills for employability. These are:

Communication (oral and written) and ability to converse courteously

Ability to work productively in teams and groups

Customer service focus

Ability to listen and comprehend

Ability to be resourceful and constructive when solving problems

Ability to analyze, prioritize work, evaluate and work with minimal supervision

Ability to comprehend and express concepts in quantitative terms

Ability to develop original solutions to novel problems quickly Respondents to the BATEC study also made comments like: Technical skills get you the interview – soft skills get you the job I ask “Can I spend 4 hours in a car with this guy”?

Unfortunately depending on need we will hire without soft skills but individual will not advance.

Gopalswamy Ramesh and Mahadevan Ramesh take an even broader view of what soft skills comprises and group over thirty

skills into three broad categories Attitude, Communication and Etiquette. A review of their book The ACE of Soft Skills by Sonali Dutta is part of this special issue.

The Articles in the Theme Section Clearly there are many views of what soft skills comprise and whether they should even be called soft skills. We cannot cover all the skills that are relevant to IT and software professionals in this special issue.

The articles selected for inclusion in this issue are intended to give a broad overview of soft skills, and highlight a few of them, which from my experience I think need special attention.

In his article “Soft Skills, Hard Truths”, Dave Zielinski writes about the changing focus from technical skills to soft skills in training for project mangers. He points out that people do the work, not software programs.

He states that a project’s success depends on the managers’ understanding of organizational dynamics, their skillful and timely communication with stakeholders, and the extent to which they can create working environments where team members can speak openly and candidly about problems before they reach a critical melting point. There is a new respect for soft skills, he says, with technical skills being viewed as baseline competencies and skills such as communication, negotiation, persuasion, and conflict management being regarded a higher order skills.

The articles on listening skills and assertiveness have been included to draw attention to skills that generally don’t get the same level of attention in India as communication skills such as conversational skills and presentation skills. These, however, are areas in which we at Soft Skills India have found that most software professionals are rather weak and that companies underestimate the high cost of poor listening. Companies also tend to underestimate the high cost of poor listening.

Paul Glen subtly highlights both the importance of listening skills for IT professionals and how to listen well in his humorous article “5 steps to poor listening: The ordinary professional’s guide” by offering a few thoughts on how to ensure poor client and peer relationships, projects that focus on solutions to the wrong problems, and working at cross-purposes with your team. This can be achieved, he says, by just talking; thinking about what you’re going to say next when you’re not talking, interrupting frequently, looking away, and never asking clarifying questions.

An area not talked about much in articles on soft skills is ‘assertiveness’.

Assertive communication offers many advantages such as building one’s self esteem, enabling one to make decisions and free choices in life, protecting us from being taken advantage of by others and so on. These are among the points made

by Lee Hopkins in his article on “Assertive Communication – 6 tips for Effective use”. Hopkins discusses four styles of communication – direct aggression, indirect aggression, submissive and assertive and argues in favour of assertive versus the other styles. He gives six main characteristics of assertive communication involving eye contact, posture, gestures, voice, timing, and content and six techniques of assertive communication and also cautions that it is not appropriate to be assertive in all situations.

Articles on cross cultural communications and managing virtual teams have also been included. These are crucial skills for the Indian IT industry that operates across more borders and time zones than any other industry in India.

In his succinct article “Tips for Successful Cross Cultural Communication”, A. J. Schuler gives six important points to get started with cross cultural communication and follows it up with eight potential hot spots. He highlights the hotspots in communication : opening and closing a conversation, taking turns speaking, interrupting others, use of silence and humor, and topics to touch on and avoid, and knowing how much to say and when. He makes a case for looking for commonalities and urges the reader to remember that differences between cultures are less important than commonalities, and that there is always more variation within groups than between them. He also suggests resisting the tendency to over generalize and the need to interact with other cultures to understand our own culture.

Joyce Thompson writing on” Leading Virtual Teams” points out that while effective distance leadership includes the typical fundamentals for leading people and managing resources in a traditional office environment, the difficulties of doing so are magnified in the virtual or remote situation.

Effective leaders need to place even more emphasis on the use of appropriate communications skills to fit the needs of the people and the situation. She discusses five core categories of skills for effective leadership of virtual teams : communicating effectively and using technology that fits the situation; building community based on mutual trust, respect, fairness and affiliation among project team members; establishing clear and inspiring shared goals; leading by

CSI COMMUNICATIONS | MARCH 2011

6

example; and coordinating/collaborating across organizational boundaries. She also talks about the advisability of selecting team members who are self-disciplined; goal-directed; flexible; collaborative; willing to share and exchange information; open to feedback, change, and differences in people and culture; and competent in using technology required for their roles. She likens leading a virtual project team to operating a

camera with a telephoto lens and says that to secure a clear, focused image of a far-off situation; effective leaders must adjust their communications and technology.

I hope that these articles contribute in some small measure to increasing the readers’ appreciation of the role of soft skills in increasing the employability of the over 600,000 engineering graduates produced annually in India. Corporate India

may hire employees based on technical skills, but more companies must recognize that soft skills equip employees with the necessary skill set to make the transition from technical or functional specialist to the role of team leader, supervisor or project manager. These skills are imperative for successful collaboration on projects in the global marketplace and continued high growth of Indian companies.

About the Guest Editor Dr. Sushila Rao is a Director and cofounder of Soft Skills India Pvt. Ltd. Dr. Rao has a rich and varied experience in management consulting, management education and research, and business. She has extensive experience in executive education and has designed and taught management training programs for executives at junior, middle, senior and top management levels in India. She has consulted for companies in a variety of industries in India and the U.S. in the areas of marketing strategy, new product introductions, marketing research, customer satisfaction and service, organization design, and executive training.

Dr. Rao received her DBA in Marketing from Indiana University, USA, MBA from IIM, Ahmedabad, and MSc. in Physics from Osmania University. Dr. Rao has taught at various management schools in India and the U.S. She was Associate Professor at Boston University and a Faculty Member at Administrative Staff College of India. She was Visiting Professor at the Sloan School of Management at MIT, Northeastern University, and IIM, Bangalore.

She has been a guest faculty member at several management institutions such as the IIM, Ahmedabad, SBI Staff Training College, and ICICI Training Institute She served on the Board of Directors of several companies including the State Bank of Hyderabad. Dr. Rao was Chairperson, Southern Regional Council, AIMA, 1991-1993., and President, Hyderabad Management Association, 1989.

The Soft Skills required to be a Great Project Manager

Editor’s Choice

Richard Morreale [Excerpted from http://www.articlealley.com/article_1635483_24.html] For a person to be a truly great project manager they must certainly understand the tools and how to use them - but I believe that is only 20% of the success equation. A very important 20%, without a doubt, as it is the foundation that the project is built on, but still only 20%. In addition, most of all, they must have the right attitude and what I call ‘The Right Stuff’.

The ‘Right Stuff’ includes, among other things and in no particular order, the following: Enthusiasm - They must be truly enthusiastic about their job and what they are doing. - Passion - They must be passionate not only about the project but also about being a project manager. Not just a project manager, however, but the best project manager they can be.

Energy - Project Management is sometimes a tiring job and they must have the energy required to hold up and stay fresh.

Great inter-personal skills - They need to know when to listen, when to talk and when to shut-up.

Commitment to Excellence - They must be committed to excellence. They must do what it takes to make their project excellent.

Commitment to Success - They must be committed to delivering their project and delivering it successfully.

Sense of Humor - They must see the humor in certain situations and not take themselves too seriously.

The ability to motivate his/her team - They are responsible for putting the environment in place that allows the persons natural motivation to come through.

Self-motivation - They must be able to motivate themselves. Recognize that action usually motivates.

Excellent communication skills - They need to be able to communicate both orally and in written form.

Good negotiation skills - They must know how to go for a win-win solution in all negotiation Honesty - Honesty with their project team, their peers and their superiors. Especially when reporting on the health of the project.

Approachability - They must be available to their team members and also be the type of person that is easy to approach.

CSI COMMUNICATIONS | MARCH 2011

7

THEME ARTICLE

Soft Skills, Hard Truths Dave Zielinski Publication: Training Date: Friday, July 1 2005 Freelance Writer - Training, E-mail: zskidoo@aol.com

This article is reprinted with special permissions from Lorri Freifeld Editor-in-Chief, Training magazine Lakewood Media Group lorri@trainingmag.com The original article may be found at: http://www.allbusiness. com/services/educationalservices/4284400-1.html

In a world full of demanding, tear-your-guts-out jobs, few occupations can compete with the challenges and pressures faced by the humble project manager. A CEO might have hostile shareholders to appease, and a front-line trainer might have apathetic audiences to overcome, but project managers are regularly asked to perform a miraculous magic juggling act that David Copperfield himself might envy. These “accidental” managers must simultaneously satisfy the needs of often-finicky clients, adhere to tight deadlines, and marshal limited or sometimes nonexistent resources to get the job done – all while shepherding, motivating and cajoling a diverse universe of personalities up and down the organizational food chain. They are held accountable for project results, but often have little power over personnel or resource matters—and they must find a way to get things done without ruffling too many feathers, because the next project on the docket might involve many of the same people.

Traditionally, the focus of project-management training has been on the technical skills deemed essential to the position, from mastering planning or budgeting processes to cost containment and evaluating risk. People skills haven’t been emphasized, and figuring out how to deal with the unpredictable human elements in any given project hasn’t been much of a priority.

That’s changing, though, because many organizations are beginning to wake up to the fact that when all is said and done, it’s people who do the work, not software programs or metrics calculations.

Having learned from hard-won experience, and armed with new insights into what constitutes effective project leadership, these organizations are making interpersonal or so-called “soft” skills a higher priority in their training strategies. Their guiding epiphany is that most projects rise or fall based not on a manager’s facility with Microsoft Project software or work-breakdown charts, but on the manager’s skillful and timely communication with stakeholders, their understanding of organizational dynamics, their ability to manage expectations, and the extent to which they can create working environments where team members can speak openly and candidly about

problems before they reach a critical melting point.

Underlying most project-management training efforts are standards and practices created by the Project Management Institute (PMI), the Newtown Square, Pa.-based advocacy association for the project-management field. The group’s Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK), a distillation of the knowledge, skills, tools and techniques generally accepted as best practice in the discipline, serves as a training blueprint for many organizations. PMI’s popular certification, the Project Management Professional (PMP), also is a credential of choice for organizations preparing employees for project-management roles. In 2002 there were some 55,000 credentialed PMPs worldwide, says John Roecker, PMI’s manager of professional development, and by April 2005 that number had mushroomed to 108,000.

The PMBOK details five key processes for the effective management of most projects (initiating, planning, executing, monitoring, and controlling and closing), as well as nine supporting knowledge areas. It’s in two of those areas—communication and human-resources management—where many organizations have started to migrate more of their training resources.

New Respect for Soft Skills There’s no denying the importance of technical expertise to successfully orchestrating a project.

Managing an initiative’s scope, cost, risk, resources and schedule are all essential skills. Indeed, the quality of up-front planning—and a project leader’s skill at replanning as project conditions change— can determine a project’s fate all on its own. But in rethinking skill hierarchies, many companies have come to view these more as baseline competencies.

Now they regard soft skills (some prefer to call them “strategic” skills) such as communication, negotiation, conflict management and persuasion, as higher-order skills that are best taught the old-fashioned way– through low-tech, highly interactive, participationoriented classroom approaches.

When Jennifer Stanford, director of professional development for Robbins-Gioia, a program

CSI COMMUNICATIONS | MARCH 2011

8

management consulting firm in Alexandria, Va., asks project managers in her training seminars what their toughest challenge is, she usually gets the same response: expectations management.

“Often it’s a matter of not nailing down all the project requirements correctly up front,” Stanford says. “[Problems arise when] what the project team thinks and what the customer or sponsor thinks aren’t aligned, and a project proceeds without a documented consensus. Things rarely go as planned on most projects, and if project managers aren’t adept at managing client expectations and problem-solving along the way, they will struggle throughout a project.”

Stanford believes any projectmanagement training approach that doesn’t stress presentation and meeting-facilitation skills, negotiation, conflict management and how to deliver effective performance feedback, is overlooking the most crucial piece of the project-management puzzle.

In ranking skills needed for successful project management, Kirsten Hale places communication skills squarely at the top, ahead of such time-honored tools of the trade as scope management, scheduling or budgeting proficiency. “Communication often determines whether a project succeeds or fails,” says Hale, product director of project-management training at Global Knowledge, an information technology training provider in Cary, N.C. “Project managers need to know the most effective ways to communicate both up and down the organizational chain to a variety of audiences, and how to manage and influence people who don’t report directly to them.”

J.B. Hunt Transport Services understands the importance of emphasizing soft skills. The Lowell, Ark.-based transportation logistics company has created a new balance of interpersonal and technical skills instruction for project managers, says Phil Kindy, director of enterprise services and head of the company’s projectmanagement office. J.B Hunt found many of its new IT project managers were long on technical competence but often short on communication skills. “Coming from technical backgrounds, they know what needs to be done and are skilled at doing it, but they aren’t always aware of the necessary level of communication with stakeholders or team members required to run a project effectively,” Kindy says.

At Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Richland, Wash., project and line managers receive a heavy dose of soft-skills training during a three-

year management development program.

A complement to more technically oriented “essentials of project management” training, the first two years of the program feature 360-degree developmental surveys, conflict-management training and use of Edina, Minn.-based Wilson Learning’s Social Styles instrument to give managers greater insight into others’ preferred working and communication styles.

The centerpiece of PNNL’s third-year curriculum is a course in reflecting on the future, during which small groups of managers engage in dialogue with PNNL’s senior leaders. “It’s designed to help them think about their purpose as leaders, how we define effective leadership at PNNL, and what they want from their management careers,” says April King, manager of staff development and compensation at the laboratory.

Other organizations are even introducing a note of compassion to their programs. Acknowledging the emotional toll of managing complex projects, they include stress-management training in the project management curriculum. “Anyone who’s ever managed a significant project can tell you that the work and stress don’t stop, and leaders have to learn how to manage that stress for their teams as well as for themselves,” says Hale.

One Size Doesn’t Fit All While the project-management methodologies of most organizations are fairly standard, experts say there are some practices that exemplar companies use to make their projects—and their training strategies—consistently stand out from others.

Most use a common projectmanagement language and framework across the organization, often adapted from external standards like those of PMI. The key distinction is that they leave considerable room for flexibility within that structure.

Project life cycles and management structures are different in every organization, so pre-packaged solutions rarely work as advertised. In more flexible models, training is tied to project-management processes that are iterative and incremental rather than linear or “check the boxes” in nature.

Training content also leans heavily on case studies developed from the organization’s own experience, rather than hypothetical cases that offer generic lessons but have a tenuous connection to managers’ real-life challenges.

J.B. Hunt culls most of its training case studies from its own project history.

In one case that represents a composite of challenges often faced by project leaders,

manager-trainees are asked to make a difficult decision about assigning oversight responsibility for a key project function. A team leader is told by a maintenance group that unless the function is moved under its control, they will not sign off on project results. But other subject matter experts say they won’t ratify the results unless the function is moved under the auspices of human resources. If the issue isn’t resolved in a few days, it will affect the scheduled end date for the project’s analysis phase. To add another layer of aggravation to the exercise, key executives who need to review the issue are on business trips and unavailable for two weeks. Trainees are asked how they would address the conflict and what documents they would create or update to support their arguments. A trainer debriefs participants after the exercise, leading a discussion on appropriate ways to handle the situation.

Michael Greer, a project-management consultant and author of The Project Manager’s Partner (HRD Press, 2001), says many best-practice organizations also steer clear of a one-size- fits-all approach to use of project “artifacts”—the tools, templates, or documents key to managing a project.

Teaching managers how to pick and choose tools and processes as they see fit, depending on the unique project characteristics and organizational requirements, is a better option than requiring use of certain artifacts across all projects, he says.

“If organizations respect people enough to make them project managers, I think they should respect their ability to discern, with the proper training, which artifacts they need to use on their projects and which ones they don’t,” Greer says.

Developing Political and Sales Skills Besides superb communication and problem-solving abilities, project leaders also need sound political instincts and effective sales skills, and some organizations are modifying their training approaches to address this oft-overlooked reality.

Project managers often find themselves negotiating with sponsors or executives for more resources or time—or, in some cases, arguing against adding new projects so ongoing projects aren’t compromised.

They also need to know how to cultivate client confidence, persuade supporting departments to play their agreed-upon roles, and shield their teams from outside influences or unbudgeted work so they can stay on task.

For example, after identifying a need for improved influence skills, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory developed a twoday “consultative selling” class for project managers.

CSI COMMUNICATIONS | MARCH 2011

9

“Scientists often see selling as the antithesis of their mission, which is research, so we teach them how to interact with our clients in ways that are consultative and don’t feel like overt sales pitches,” says PNNL’s King.

Author Michael Greer believes one of the most powerful sales tools in the project manager’s arsenal is the “high resolution” project plan – a set of documents that shows in great - but - understandable detail the resources, personnel, time and work processes required to meet project objectives.

“The question I get again and again in my classrooms is, ‘These training concepts are great, but how do I get the resources to make them work?’ “ Greer says. “I tell people that they can’t just complain about a lack of resources to senior managers; they have use high-resolution plans to demonstrate the resources needed on comparable projects in the past and what will be needed on the current project. They have to view the interaction as a formal sales presentation.

Senior people are often guessing from a distance about the time, money and effort it takes to pull off a project, and coming prepared with these kinds of plans can open their eyes to the realities.”

Sometimes the best projectmanagement lessons are learned not in classroom or e-learning sessions but by picking the brains of battle-tested veterans.

Indeed, mentoring relationships are effective complements to—and in some cases replacements for—formal learning methods.

“Mentoring ensures that new project

Q

managers are not only learning the textbook version of how to do their jobs but also are getting real-world experience and guidance from those who’ve been in the trenches, which can be particularly valuable when they hit rough patches during projects, “ says Jennifer Stanford of Robbins-Gioia.

Mentors in her organization often relish the duty, she says, because it provides a chance to pass on hard-won knowledge and is a welcome change from the daily grind.

Mentoring often is used to help project managers develop along a formal career path, one that might progress from team member to technical lead to junior project leader and finally to senior project manager. But creation of such paths is still the exception rather than the rule, according to the Project Management Institute. In a recent international survey, the association found that only 50 percent of respondents had developed a career path for project managers, and three-quarters of those were informal in structure. “Even though they believe in the project-management discipline, and see career paths as good retention tools, executives haven’t taken the next step to invest in creation of formal career paths,” says PMI’s Roecker.

Cures for upper-management myopia As crucial as quality skills training or mentoring are to a project’s success, it also can be dangerous to view project performance only through the training lens.

Projects fail for many reasons other than poorly-funded or ill-conceived projectmanagement training, and many of those

uotable uotes

“Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; But make it hot by striking.”

- William B. Sprague “It is hard to fail, But it is worse never to have tried to succeed.”

- Theodore Roosevelt “Fortune favors the brave.”

- Publius Terence “Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude

causes can be traced to organizational support or structural issues.

Projects launched haphazardly without a strong tie to organizational strategy, for example, can lead to burned-out project managers who are juggling too many projects with too few resources. The outcome, predictably, is usually projects that fall short of quality goals or don’t entirely accomplish what was intended.

Use of a “project portfolio” approach, which gives executives a broad view of ongoing projects across the organization, as well as creation of project-management offices that integrate portfolio tracking and oversee project manager training, can help avoid such problems.

“The biggest fix for what ails project performance often isn’t training, it’s getting people at the top of the organization to create a portfolio approach so they can look across the organization and see where projects are overlapping or aren’t aligned with strategy, and track, sort, fund or kill them as needed,” says Greer.

If you had asked project-management gurus five years ago to name the most important competencies project managers should have, most would have said technical skills. Today they’d be more inclined to place communications or negotiations acumen at the top of their lists. And that’s good news for budding project managers, who require the best of both soft and hard skills instruction to prepare for jobs that will likely test them in ways they never dreamed of or expected.

from achieving his goal; Nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.”

- W.W. Ziege “There is only one success – To be able to spend your life in your own way.”

- Christopher Morley People often say that motivation doesn’t last.

Well, neither does bathing – That’s why we recommend it daily.”

- Zig Ziglar “That some achieve great success, Is proof to all that others can achieve it as well. “ - Abraham Lincoln

CSI COMMUNICATIONS | MARCH 2011

10

THEME ARTICLE

Assertive Communication – 6 Tips for Effective Use Lee Hopkins PO Box 503, Magill 5072, South Australia. E-mail: Lee@LeeHopkins.com

This article is reprinted with special permission from the Author.

The original article may be found at: http://EzineArticles. com/?expert=Lee_Hopkins

What IS assertive communication?

Assertive communication is the ability to express positive and negative ideas and feelings in an open, honest and direct way. It recognises our rights whilst still respecting the rights of others. It allows us to take responsibility for ourselves and our actions without judging or blaming other people. And it allows us to constructively confront and find a mutually satisfying solution where conflict exists.

So why use assertive communication?

All of us use assertive behaviour at times... quite often when we feel vulnerable or unsure of ourselves we may resort to submissive, manipulative or aggressive behaviour.

Yet being trained in assertive communication actually increases the appropriate use of this sort of behaviour. It enables us to swap old behaviour patterns for a more positive approach to life. I’ve found that changing my response to others (be they work colleagues, clients or even my own family) can be exciting and stimulating.

The advantages of assertive communication There are many advantages of assertive communication, most notably these:

It helps us feel good about ourselves and others

It leads to the development of mutual respect with others

It increases our self-esteem

It helps us achieve our goals

It minimises hurting and alienating other people

It reduces anxiety

It protects us from being taken advantage of by others

It enables us to make decisions and free choices in life

It enables us to express, both verbally and nonverbally, a wide range of feelings and thoughts, both positive and negative There are, of course, disadvantages...

Disadvantages of assertive communication Others may not approve of this style of communication, or may not approve of the views you express. Also, having a healthy regard for another person’s rights means that you won’t always get what YOU want. You may also find out that you were wrong about a viewpoint that you held. But most importantly,

as mentioned earlier, it involves the risk that others may not understand and therefore not accept this style of communication.

What assertive communication is not...

Assertive communication is definately NOT a lifestyle! It’s NOT a guarantee that you will get what you want. It’s definately NOT an acceptable style of communication with everyone, but at least it’s NOT being aggressive.

But it IS about choice Four behavioural choices There are, as I see it, four choices you can make about which style of communication you can employ.

These types are:

direct aggression: bossy, arrogant, bulldozing, intolerant, opinionated, and overbearing

indirect aggression: sarcastic, deceiving, ambiguous, insinuating, manipulative, and guiltinducing

submissive: wailing, moaning, helpless, passive, indecisive, and apologetic

assertive: direct, honest, accepting, responsible, and spontaneous Characteristics of assertive communication There are six main characteristics of assertive communication. These are:

eye contact: demonstrates interest, shows sincerity

body posture: congruent body language will improve the significance of the message

gestures: appropriate gestures help to add emphasis

voice: a level, well modulated tone is more convincing and acceptable, and is not intimidating

timing: use your judgement to maximise receptivity and impact

content: how, where and when you choose to comment is probably more important than WHAT you say The importance of “I” statements Part of being assertive involves the ability to appropriately express your needs and feelings. You can accomplish this by using “I” statements. These indicate ownership, do not attribute blame, focuses on behaviour, identifies the effect of behaviour, is direcdt and honest, and contributes to the growth of your

CSI COMMUNICATIONS | MARCH 2011

11

relationship with each other.

Strong “I” statements have three specific elements:

Behaviour

Feeling

Tangible effect (consequence to you) Example: “I feel frustrated when you are late for meetings. I don’t like having to repeat information.”

Six techniques for assertive communication There are six assertive techniques let’s look at each of them in turn.

1. Behaviour Rehearsal: which is literally practising how you want to look and sound. It is a very useful technique when you first want to use “I” statements, as it helps dissipate any emotion associated with an experience and allows you to accurately identify the behaviour you wish to confront.

2. Repeated Assertion (the ‘broken record’): this technique allows you to feel comfortable by ignoring manipulative verbal side traps, argumentative baiting and irrelevant logic while sticking to your point. To most effectively use this technique use calm repetition, and say what you want and stay focused on the issue. You’ll find that there is no need to rehearse this technique, and no need to ‘hype yourself up’ to deal with others.

Example: “I would like to show you some of our products” “No thank you, I’m not interested” “I really have a great range to offer you”

“That may be true, but I’m not interested at the moment” “Is there someone else here who would be interested?”

“I don’t want any of these products” “Okay, would you take this brochure and think about it?”

“Yes, I will take a brochure” “Thank you” “You’re welcome” 3. Fogging: this technique allows you to receive criticism comfortably, without getting anxious or defensive, and without rewarding manipulative criticism. To do this you need to acknowledge the criticism, agree that there may be some truth to what they say, but remain the judge of your choice of action. An example of this could be, “I agree that there are probably times when I don’t give you answers to your questions.

4. Negative enquiry: this technique seeks out criticism about yourself in close relationships by prompting the expression of honest, negative feelings to improve communication. To use if effectively you need to listen for critical comments, clarify your understanding of those criticisms, use the information if it will be helpful or ignore the information if it is manipulative. An example of this technique would be, “So you think/believe that I am not interested?”

5. Negative assertion: this technique lets you look more comfortably at negatives in your own behaviour or personality

6.

without feeling defensive or anxious, this also reduces your critics’ hostility.

You should accept your errors or faults, but not apologise. Instead, tentatively and sympathetically agree with hostile criticism of your negative qualities. An example would be, “Yes, you’re right. I don’t always listen closely to what you have to say.”

Workable compromise: when you feel that your self-respect is not in question, consider a workable compromise with the other person. You can always bargain for your material goals unless the compromise affects your personal feelings of self-respect. However, if the end goal involves a matter of your selfworth and self-respect, THERE CAN BE NO COMPROMISE. An example of this technique would be, “I understand that you have a need to talk and I need to finish what I’m doing. So what about meeting in half an hour?”

Conclusion Assertiveness is a useful communication tool. It’s application is contextual and it’s not appropriate to be assertive in all situations. Remember, your sudden use of assertiveness may be perceived as an act of aggression by others.

There’s also no guarantee of success, even when you use assertive communication styles appropriately.

“Nothing on earth can stop the individual with the right mental attitude from achieving their goal; nothing on earth can help the individual with the wrong mental attitude” – W.W. Ziege

[Excerpted from http://www.rediff.com/getahead/2007/jan/08soft.htm] The Workforce Profile defined about 60 “soft skills”, which employers seek. They are applicable to any field of work, according to the study, and are the “personal traits and skills that employers state are the most important when selecting employees for jobs of any type.”

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

Math.

Safety.

Courtesy.

Honesty.

Grammar.

Reliability.

Flexibility.

Team skills.

Eye contact.

Cooperation.

Adaptability.

Follow rules.

Self-directed.

Good attitude.

Writing skills.

Driver’s license.

Dependability.

Advanced math.

Self-supervising.

Good references.

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

27.

28.

29.

30.

31.

32.

33.

34.

35.

36.

37.

Being drug free.

Good attendance.

Personal energy.

Work experience.

Ability to measure.

Personal integrity.

Good work history.

Positive work ethic.

Interpersonal skills.

Motivational skills.

Valuing education.

Personal chemistry.

Willingness to learn.

Common sense.

Critical thinking skills.

Knowledge of fractions.

Reporting to work on time.

38.

39.

40.

41.

42.

43.

44.

45.

46.

47.

Use of rulers and calculators.

Good personal appearance.

Wanting to do a good job.

Basic spelling and grammar.

Reading and comprehension.

Ability to follow regulations.

Willingness to be accountable.

Ability to fill out a job application.

Ability to make production quotas.

Basic manufacturing skills training.

48.

49.

50.

51.

52.

53.

54.

55.

Awareness of how business works.

Staying on the job until it is finished.

Ability to read and follow instructions.

Willingness to work second and third shifts.

Caring about seeing the company succeed.

Understanding what the world is all about.

Ability to listen and document what you have heard.

Commitment to continued training and learning.

56.

57.

58.

59.

60.

Willingness to take instruction and responsibility.

Ability to relate to coworkers in a close environment.

58. Not expecting to become a supervisor in the first six months.

59. Willingness to be a good worker and go beyond the traditional eight-hour day.

Communication skills with public, fellow employees, supervisors, and customers.

CSI COMMUNICATIONS | MARCH 2011

12

THEME ARTICLE

Tips for Successful Cross Cultural Communication A J Schuler Schuler Solutions, Inc, 6300 Stevenson Avenue, Suite 916, Alexandria, Virginia 22304.

E-mail: Speaker@AJSchuler.com, AJ@AJSchuler.com

This is article is reprinted with special permission from the author.

“Dr. A. J. Schuler is a speaker, consultant and leadership coach. To find out more about his programs and services, visit www.AJSchuler.com or call (703) 370-6545.”

The original article may be found at: http://schulersolutions. com/html/cross_cultural_ communication.html

In today’s global business environment, more and more of us are required to understand people who comes from countries and cultures different from our own. While there is no short and easy way to learn about a given culture in any depth, there are some general principles that lead to success in communicating and conducting business with people of backgrounds unlike our own.

Getting Started Communication

with

Cross

Cultural

Here are some important points to understand: 1. Direct experience is the best way to begin to learn any culture. Just as the best way to learn a new language is to become immersed in that language, so too is it most helpful to learn another culture by jumping right in. This may not always be practical, but radio stations, music, trips to religious organizations or other clubs that cater to members of a specific group – all of these things can be helpful ways to begin.

2. Differences can feel like a threat at first. No one likes to feel like a stranger, and feeling unable to communicate or to decipher aspects of behavior that don’t fit with our own habitual experiences can make any of us feel alone. This is a natural part of human experience, but even so, it is important to keep these feelings in perspective and remember that differences are less important than commonalities.

3. We tend to overlook similarities and notice just the differences when we first begin to interact with members of another culture. And then, when we apply the standards of interpretation that we would use in our own cultures to the behavior of those in the unfamiliar culture, we will draw mistaken conclusions. We all share 98% of the same DNA, and we are all far more alike than we are different, but that’s easy to forget in the beginning.

4. Stereotyping due to overgeneralization is a common occurrence, especially among those who only interact with another culture

4.

5.

infrequently. When we are faced with uncertainty, the human mind naturally seeks to create some order or system from what we observe. This is especially true when we may feel vulnerable due to uncertainty. So the mind creates its own set of rules or generalizations– which may be based on some surface realities and patterns – but which fail to account for real experience and individual variation. What’s more, since we may feel threatened, the human mind can presume negative motives or draw negative inferences from the generalizations we create/ observe, which forms then forms the basis of prejudice.

There is always more variation within groups than there is between them. What does that mean? That means that no matter how much we may perceive groups A and B as different, the amount of difference between those groups is dwarfed by the amount of variation within each group. In other words, both groups have shy people and daring people, honest and dishonest, bellicose and accommodating types, etc. There each group is much more of mixed stew of types of people, and the patterns within each group are more alike than different. It’s just that culture and history shape the customs and rituals though which those various aspects of human nature are expressed. Think of it this way: both Apple and Microsoft operating systems allow you to accomplish work with a word processing system. The work is the same, but the language, the coding, though which that basic work is accomplished or expressed is different. This is why cross cultural communication takes work – we have to go back and examine aspects of our own “operating systems” and understand the “systems” of others to be able to communicate between the two “platforms.”

For precisely the reason described above, our own cultural identities are not apparent to us until we begin to interact with others from different backgrounds.

CSI COMMUNICATIONS | MARCH 2011

13

6.

Finally, cultures are always changing, especially as they interact with each other. Even from within, cultures move and flow and change through time, even when they think they don’t. But the pace of change is accelerated when cultures that reinforce different styles of communication, and which accent different binding customs and values, interact with each other. The result is often disorienting (to say the least), but the result is inevitably that both cultures change in the process. Individuals who begin to bridge these gaps are like pioneers, blazing paths and creating plausible options for hybrid identities for others to copy and test in the future.

Potential Hot Spots in Cross Cultural Communication This is not meant to be an exhaustive list, but when working with other people, or traveling abroad for work or pleasure, it may pay to ask some experts about the following communication styles of the area you plan to visit. A little research at the outset can stave off a host of misunderstandings: 1. Opening and Closing Conversations: Different cultures may have different customs around who addresses whom when and how, and who has the right, or even the duty, to speak first, and what is the proper way to conclude a conversation. Think about it: no matter where you are, some ways of commencing a conversation or concluding one will be considered as rude, even disrespectful. These are artificial customs, to a certain degree, and there is probably no universally right or wrong way to go about these things, short of behaviors that all cultures would likely consider to be vulgar or abusive. This topic includes modes of address, salutations, levels of deference to age or social position, acceptable ways to conclude gracefully and so on. Obviously, and to the dismay of many of us in the West, this will also cover gender differences.

2. Taking Turns During Conversations: In some cultures, it is more appropriate to take turns in an interactive way, and in others, it is more important to listen thoroughly and without comment, without immediate response, lest a

uote

3.

4.

5.

response be taken as a challenge or a humiliation, particularly depending on the context of the conversation, the audience, and the levels of personal knowledge/relationship between the two people interacting. For example, a Western couple or pair of executives may feel perfectly comfortable interacting in a give and take way in a public market, but if that public market is in a part of the world where such a public display of give and take is considered to be in bad taste, then they may be giving offense without ever realizing it.

Interrupting: The same issues arise over the issue of interrupting. In some cultures, interruption, vocal, emotional expression, etc. are considered to be the default conversational style, particularly among those considered to be equals, or among men. Many people of Northern European or American extract might mistake this kind of conversation for argument and hostility, but that would not be the case.

Use of Silence: In some forms of communication, silence is to be expected before a response, as a sign of thoughtfulness and deference to the original speaker, yet at other times, silence may be experienced as a sign of hostility. In the West, twenty seconds of silence during a meeting is an extraordinarily long time, and people will feel uncomfortable with that. Someone invariably will break in to end the uncomfortable silence. But the same customs around silence are not universal.

Appropriate Topics of Conversation: In some places, it is considered vulgar to speak openly about money, for example, let alone about the kinds of intimate family issues that commonly form the basis of afternoon television “talk” shows in the West. Travelers or business people should learn the customs that surround the making of deals, the transaction of commerce, and the degree to which details are specified in advance and enumerated in writing across cultures (not all places are as prone hire lawyers and create detailed contracts as we are in the West).

6.

7.

8.

Use of Humor: In the West, we often try to build immediate rapport through humor, but of course, this is not universally seen to be appropriate in all contexts. The use of laughter can be experienced as a sign of disrespect by some, and so it is important to understand that this is another area where misunderstandings can be very likely to occur.

Knowing How Much to Say: In some places, less is definitely more, whereas in other places, it is more valued to wrap a rather small point up in a longer preamble, followed by an extended wrap-up. For Westerners, this can be maddening, as we tend to value speaking directly and to the point. Then again, there are clearly circumstances where Westerners say too much and lose their ability to communicate well, depending on the context. Of course, patterns around presumed areas of deference based on age and social standing can influence how much is appropriate to say, depending on the culture.

Sequencing elements during conversation: At what point during a conversation – or an extended conversation or negotiation – is it appropriate to touch upon more sensitive issues? Or how soon in a conversation is it appropriate simply to ask for directions? Since all cultures develop customs through which sensitive issues can be addressed in a way that connotes respect to all involved, and since those systems all can differ, it is important to understand the influence that sequence has on effectiveness. For us in the West, think about the process of asking, or being asked out on a date (a very Western process and one whose customs can be very fluid indeed). The right question, asked in the right way, but asked too soon or too late, according to custom, can connote very different things to the listener, and highly influence subsequent behavior. Sequencing and timing do matter.

Copyright (c) 2003 A J Schuler, Psy. D.

“Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.”

– Albert Einstein

CSI COMMUNICATIONS | MARCH 2011

14

THEME ARTICLE

Leading Virtual Teams Joyce Thompsen Practice Leader - Leadership and Management Development, AchieveGlobal, 8875 Hidden River Parkway, Suite 400, Tampa, Florida 33637. E-mail: jthompsen@qualitydigest.com

This article is reprinted with special permissions from Mike Richman, Publisher, Quality Digest e-mail: mrichman@ qualitydigest.com The original article may be found at: http://www.qualitydigest. com/sept00/html/teams. html

“Quality Digest is today’s leading online resource for quality, risk management, lean, standards, and compliance. Register now at http://www. qualitydigest.com/ subscription/subscription. lasso&destination=ind ex.html and receive the Quality Digest Daily e-newsletter at no charge.”

Efficient participation in today’s economy demands high reliance on effective leadership of technical and support teams whose members are scattered across many geographic boundaries.

There are unique and distinctive requirements for leadership attention in the virtual project team or remote management situation, where individuals who share responsibilities for common goals reside in geographically dispersed locations.

Key findings from both research and best practices across many industries reveal that effective distance leadership includes the typical fundamentals for leading people and managing resources in a traditional office environment.

However, difficulties in the traditional environment can be significantly magnified in the virtual or remote situation. Difficulty with communicating; working together; and producing high-quality, on-time results is typically heightened by distance. Effective leaders need to quickly, confidently and competently diagnose such issues and take deliberate actions to keep project team relationships, productivity and outcomes on track. There is even more emphasis on the use of appropriate communications skills to fit the needs of the people and the situation.

There are five core categories of effective leadership skills in virtual project team or distancemanagement situations: Communicating effectively and using technology that fits the situation Building community, based on mutual trust, respect, fairness and affiliation, among project team members Establishing clear and inspiring shared goals, expectations, purpose and vision Leading by example with a focus on visible, measurable results Coordinating/collaborating across organizational boundaries Research also reveals a profile for employees who operate well in virtual project team situations. When possible, it’s advisable to select team members who already demonstrate these characteristics or who are willing and able to develop them quickly. Employees tend to be more comfortable and effective if they are capable of performing the core tasks for their roles;

self-disciplined; goal-directed; flexible; collaborative; willing to share and exchange information; open to feedback, change, differences in people and culture, ways of thinking, other discipline models or signature skills, and alternative approaches to processes; committed and connected to the business; and competent in using technology required for their roles.

Communicating effectively Communicating effectively is the key with virtual project teams. In distance situations, effective communication requires careful attention to listening, presenting one’s own thoughts and ideas as clearly as possible, focusing on conveying positive and constructive intent, choosing the right technology to quickly and sensitively express a clear message, and taking extra care to respectfully ensure understanding and expectations for action. It includes important feedback loops and networking and often requires daily contact during especially fast-changing times.

Effectively communicating in a virtual project team also necessitates careful diagnosis of any given situation to discern not only the task or work objective in question but also the emotional content (obvious or hidden) within the situation. It requires deliberate attention to the needs of the project team members and their desire for action or a remedy in a timely and sensitive manner. An especially effective technique is establishing ground rules that meet the needs of the project team and its leader.

The following are observable leadership actions for communicating effectively with a virtual project team: Modeling the organization’s values and members’ ground rules in all communications Choosing a method of communication that best fits the mutual needs of members and the situation Applying a communication technology that best fits the needs of the situation Helping all members apply available communication technology with confidence Formulating specific objectives and an organized delivery plan for communications Linking messages to the members’ shared purpose, goals and performance contributions to results

CSI COMMUNICATIONS | MARCH 2011

15

Encouraging all members of a conversation to participate fully Engaging in proactive listening Verifying team members’ understanding of the message and expectations for action Guiding communications to achieve a positive and constructive outcome Conducting coaching and feedback in ways that convey respect and support Communication within a virtual project team setting requires careful consideration of two factors. First, the effective leader determines which communication method is appropriate for the situation and adheres to the project team’s ground rules. Then, the leader chooses the technology form (if any) that fits best or is preferred by the team members.

Effective skills for leading from a distance emphasize the importance of strategically using face-to-face communication. This is an especially important choice when the project team needs to establish and build trust. It’s also an important choice when particularly sensitive news or feedback needs to be delivered to an individual or the project team.

Face-to-face communication can be used as an antidote to anxiety, loss of group cohesion, self-doubt, over-sensitivity to an issue, under-performance, alienation from other members, restlessness, distrust, dissatisfaction, paranoia, indecision, confusion, worry, disconnection, mental fatigue, ambiguity, burnout and social isolation.

In addition, face-to-face communication can be very helpful in developing sensitivity to diversity of all types.

It’s important for social contracting, bonding and realizing the benefits of human contact on performance. In all of these cases, there is high emotional content. Face-to-face communication, when properly positioned and managed, can build community and connections to the business.

Building community Another key for effectively leading from a distance is building community among the members of the project team. A sense of community includes demonstration of sensitivity to differences, establishing and adhering to ground rules, project team etiquette or agreement among the members for how the team will work together.

It’s essential to begin establishing mutual trust between members at the beginning of a work relationship. Trust is fragile, and it requires clarity of intent. Over time, actions that fulfill any commitments tend to solidify the trust. This is especially important for virtual project team members

who have diverse signature skills or represent different technical disciplines. While people with differing modes of thinking are now frequently chosen for accelerated product development teams to stimulate creative tension and produce heightened creativity and innovation, the effective leader should consider an initial face-to-face meeting to purposefully orient the members toward a constructive intent built on community and trust.

For example, an international, privately held software development firm with multiple virtual product development and project support teams began to miss critical development deadlines with key customers.

Management uncovered and addressed specific roadblocks to their mutual sense of community and trust and quickly helped the teams get back on schedule.

Trust is also essential to social contracting, especially among knowledge workers. It often begins or grows when knowledge is willingly shared. It requires reciprocity (i.e., mutual trust.) Consistent, positive and respectful interactions among the members can create a strong bond of trust that unites the community.

The perception of fairness is another important element. As members observe day-to-day activity, they naturally form opinions about the fairness of any given situation. An action or situation that prompts members to perceive unfairness can directly affect their desire to contribute effort and support to the project team and its goals.

If there is a perceived hint of bias, cultural insensitivity or unethical or unbalanced treatment of others, the typical reaction is to skeptically with- hold or reserve full effort and creativity.

The need for affiliation in building community is also essential. The strong human need for belonging, identifying with a respected group, pursuing a worthy objective or noble purpose with colleagues, and cultivating some level of bonding is important for overcoming social isolation, alienation and disconnection.

All of these elements are typically portrayed in the unique ground rules or rules of etiquette that a virtual project team establishes for itself. These rules demonstrate attention to communitybuilding. They often include keeping commitments, providing feedback in preferred ways, giving everyone an equal voice, sharing important information, and acknowledging preferences for type and frequency of communications and other unique points for how the project team wants to harmoniously work together.

Here are the observable actions that

promote and build community: Modeling the behaviors expected of all members Maintaining the self-confidence and self-esteem of others Demonstrating respect for all members and their opinions Encouraging all members to participate fully Focusing on the situation, issue or behavior, not on the person Confronting issues with others directly Taking initiative to make things better Keeping confidences Maintaining constructive relationships Keeping commitments Admitting mistakes Establishing a purpose The importance of establishing a clear and inspiring shared purpose, a common vision and accompanying goals and expectations for performance has received a great deal of attention in recent years.

This category of leadership skills constitutes another essential area that requires deliberate attention in effectively leading from a distance. It requires taking initiative to ensure that all members are involved in creating or understanding the purpose and vision of the group or a specific project. It’s important for all members to have sufficient opportunity to voice their respective opinions.

This full involvement in creating a shared purpose or common vision serves as a foundation for unified project team commitment. When coupled with clear expectations for contributions and measurable performance, this combination of elements can be an effective driving force for self-discipline and motivation. Combined with a sense of community, there can be a reduced need for continuous monitoring and control mechanisms in order to achieve team goals. This category can become one of the effective secrets for shifting from control to member self- management. Day-to-day, moment-to-moment and transaction-totransaction, the members can self-coach on the organization’s vision; the project team’s vision; and the team’s sense of purpose, specific goals and expectations for contribution. This common vision is essential for virtual project teams that are purposefully undertaking highly creative or innovative approaches.

The observable leadership actions for this category include: Sharing information about the organization’s mission, vision, strategies and goals Clarifying the rationale and intent of

CSI COMMUNICATIONS | MARCH 2011

16

strategies and goals Providing clear expectations for contributions and measurable results Ensuring that members are involved in decisions that affect their work Seeking ideas and opinions from all members Ensuring consideration for the needs of customers in planning work Using the organization’s core values to guide the members’ planning, decisions and actions Promoting creativity and innovation in undertaking new goals or opportunities Helping members develop positive approaches to the needs of the organization Challenging assumptions that may inhibit progress Demonstrating flexibility in adapting to changes in goals and expectations

Leading by example The leadership skill of leading by example with a focus on visible, measurable results is a natural extension of the previous category. The clear and inspiring shared purpose, the vision, and the resulting project team’s goals and expectations become the targets for establishing individual and team contributions. The important distinction for virtual project teams is the need to make “out of sight” contributions as visible as possible. The individual members need to know how their roles and tasks directly contribute to the achievement of the group and organizational goals. They need to understand how the needs of the customers are met by their contributions. On a day-today basis, they need to self-direct and selfdiscipline their work on clear priorities. They need to deliver visible, measurable outputs, transactions or next steps in key processes.

Preferably, they are able to self-track their contributions and measurable progress toward specific goals.

Often, this means that the project team needs to ponder the critical path for the achievement of a specific goal. Deliberate attention is focused on how each member contributes content and/or key process transactions each step of the way. Particular attention is paid to the interdependencies among members’ contributions. There are detailed discussions about what information or output needs to be delivered by when and in what condition in order for the next member to take action. One way of describing this activity is managing intersections of mutual accountability or handoffs.

In adopting this approach for dayto-day activity, the members of the group

engage in goal-directed self-discipline for completing essential tasks and making those visible, measurable contributions to results. In essence, control subtly shifts from the traditional manager role to the members of the group. Personal responsibility and ownership for results set in, and members tend to deliver more energy, creativity, and innovation and even greater achievement.

For example, a virtual project team possessing a variety of signature skills was brought together for the first time to turn around a disappointing situation with a major customer. Each member needed a clear understanding of performance expectations and how their respective contributions fit into a complex, critical path of product development activity. The project team leader decided to set even more aggressive schedules to renew the confidence of the customer and provided more frequent opportunities for the team to come together electronically with the customer to demonstrate progress. The actions were akin to joint innovation to restore the business relationship while meeting the product requirements.

In this category of effective leadership, each opportunity for communication on an individual or a project team basis includes clear focus on the visible, measurable contributions that produce results with high impact. Effective leaders inspire the members to reach and exceed the expectations for performance. They understand the capabilities required for such achievement and ensure that all members have the skills and knowledge necessary.

They also ensure that the team members have the equipment and tools to make their critical contributions.

Effective leading from a distance also means asking the right questions, staying alert for early opportunities to coach the members, providing constructive feedback and reinforcing contributions.

The observable leadership actions for this category include:

Linking work contributions to the organization’s goals

Ensuring that all members know how their contributions affect customers

Helping all members understand their roles and responsibilities

Emphasizing verifiable goal-setting and the identification of visible contributions

Tracking contributions and measurable progress on goals

Ensuring that members complete appropriate planning to achieve results

Inspiring members to reach or exceed expectations for performance and results

Emphasizing the need for goal-directed self-discipline in completing daily work

Using performance contributions and results to guide communications and agendas

Seeking opportunities to recognize members’ contributions to results

Coordinating and collaborating across boundaries Coordinating and collaborating across boundaries includes extending the same level of mutual trust and respect, teamwork and collaboration, and focus on visible contributions that appears within your own project team to other individuals or groups anywhere else within your organization, as well as to customers and suppliers. This set of behaviors includes the smooth coordination of a key process or a project that may cross a number of natural organizational boundaries. Information or technical assistance outside the project team’s capabilities may be needed.

While such coordination and collaboration across boundaries can be uncomfortable or difficult in the traditional organizational structure, this condition can once more become magnified when complicated by distance. In many cases, a project team leader needs to remove protective “firewalls” that have been constructed at those boundaries. There is also often a need to diagnose and handle differences, challenge assumptions, and defuse the potential for conflict.

Effective observable actions for coordinating and collaborating across boundaries are as follows: Seeking ways to build teamwork and collaboration across groups and functions Establishing mutual involvement in situations that cross organizational boundaries Linking the need for coordination and collaboration to the needs of the organization and its customers Helping members identify opportunities for improvement in projects and processes that cross organizational boundaries Helping members plan, coordinate and implement projects and processes across boundaries Helping members diagnose and solve problems Helping members track progress in projects and processes across

CSI COMMUNICATIONS | MARCH 2011

17

boundaries Promoting sharing of information in situations of mutual interest Asking for specific support you will need and what you will do in return Challenging unnecessary barriers to collaboration across boundaries Helping members constructively move from conflict to collaboration

A model for leading from a distance Leading effectively from a distance or with a virtual project team is much like operating a camera with a telephoto lens.

To secure a clear, focused image of a faroff situation, effective leaders adjust their communications and technology.

Leaders of virtual project teams typically receive a series of brief snapshots

of situations by means of voice mail, e-mail or pager messages. Effective leaders need to quickly and skillfully diagnose what is happening, determine a course of action, and adjust their means of communication and the technology they use to achieve the desired results. ooo

About the Author Joyce A. Thompsen, Ph.D., is consulting practice leader for leadership and management development with AchieveGlobal (www.achieveglobal.com). Clients include the White House, NASA, GTE, Dell, Ericsson, Qualcomm, Shell Chemical, Anthem and the Department of Justice. Before joining AchieveGlobal, Thompsen was vice president of an engineering and manufacturing company.

E-mail her at jthompsen@qualitydigest.com.

Computer Society of India

FORM IV

Special Interest Group on Cyber Forensics (SIGCF)

Statement about ownership and other particulars of the ‘CSI Communications’ 1. Place of Publication 122, T.V.Industrial Estate, S. K. Ahire Marg, Worli, Mumbai 400 030

(Rule No. 8)

2. Periodicity of its publication Monthly A SIG has been formed under Computer Society of India in the area of Cyber Forensics.

The objectives of SIGCF are: To undertake R & D in the areas of Cyber Forensics To create a repository of Cyber Forensics tools and literature To develop Cyber crime prevention program development To organize workshops, conferences, short term courses throughout the country to disseminate knowledge among professionals and public To support organizations, research units working in the area of Cyber Forensics To collaborate with government agencies working against cyber crime To provide online support through CSI knowledge portal to cyber users To increase awareness, promote knowledge sharing and, to foster interaction between academia, industry and government IT in addressing challenges associated with digital forensics All researchers, professional working in the area of Cyber Forensics are invited to join SIGCF [Google group http://groups. google.com/group/csisigcf ] and share their experiences, views in this area.

Contact for details : Dr. Vipin Tyagi Convener - SIGCF, Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering Jaypee University of Engineering and Technology Raghogarh - Guna (MP) - 473226 Email: csisigcf@gmail.com Web : https://sites.google.com/site/csisigcf

3. Printers Name Nationality Address

Mr. Suchit Gogwekar Indian Computer Society of India 122, T.V.Industrial Estate, S. K. Ahire Marg, Worli, Mumbai 400 030

4. Publisher’s Name Nationality Address

Mr. Suchit Gogwekar Indian Computer Society of India 122, T.V.Industrial Estate, S. K. Ahire Marg, Worli, Mumbai 400 030

5. Editor’s Name Nationality Address

Dr. T V Gopal Indian Assistant Professor Dept. of Comp. Sc. & Engg.

Anna University Chennai 600 025

6. Names and Addresses of Individuals who own the newspapers and partners or shareholders holding more than one percent of the total capital

Computer Society of India 122, T.V. Industrial Estate S. K. Ahire Marg, Worli Mumbai 400 030

I, Suchit Gogwekar, hereby declare that the particulars given above are true to the best of my knowledge and belief.

1st March, 2011

Sd/Suchit Gogwekar Signature of the Publisher

CSI COMMUNICATIONS | MARCH 2011

18

THEME ARTICLE

5 Steps to Poor Listening: The ordinary professional’s guide.

Paul Glen Computerworld, P.O. Box 9171, Framingham, MA 01701. E-mail: info@paulglen.com

This article is reprinted with special permission from the author.

The original article may be found at: http://www.paulglen.com/5_ steps_to_poor_listening.html

The development of non-technical, soft skills represents a significant choice in the career of IT professionals. For those who choose to take the road most traveled, here are a few thoughts on how to ensure poor client and peer relationships, projects that focus on solutions to the wrong problems, and working cross-purposes with your team.

1. Just Keep Talking Let’s face it – the more you talk, the less time others get to talk. This way, you completely avoid the issue of listening all together. Why risk having to pretend you’re listening when you have the opportunity to completely prevent others from talking.

There’s also a particularly useful secondary effect of this recommendation. The more often you do this, the less often others want to be around you. Voila! You have also reduced the frequency of situations where you might be forced to listen.

If you take only one useful tip you take away from this article, this one is it: Flapping your gums will save your ears.

2. When you’re not talking, think about what you’re going to say next On occasion, even the best talker among us either runs out of things to say or is rudely interrupted. When this happens, be prepared to jump right in to step 2. As soon as your mouth stops moving start thinking about how to resume talking. It’s that simple.

Whether you’re trying to think of the wittiest thing anyone ever said or the most brilliant way to bring the conversation back to your ideas or issues, poor listeners often use this time to regroup. Be grateful for the opportunity. Remember, poor listeners feel that talking is a big chance to look smart, important, caring or charming. When not talking, prepare your next words.

You may want to consider bobbing your head up and down a few times while you are thinking. If you’re not careful, the speaker will notice that you are not listening, and will ask you a question for which you are unprepared. Then you will be stuck stammering some sort of answer which won’t position you well to continue your speaking. (The rude solution to this, of course, is to say something condescending like clearly, you don’t understand, and then talk about whatever

you were thinking about. It’s inelegant, but it usually makes others stop talking. Anyway, when you talk again, it should be on your terms.

3. Interrupt Frequently Once you have figured out what you want to say next, then you are ready for step 3, interruption. Interruption takes two major forms: finishing the speaker’s sentence and just doing it. Finishing the speaker’s sentence is particularly effective since it brings closure to their thought and demonstrates that you understand it completely.

Just starting to talk is usually best done when the speaker is forced to take a breath. This way, you are not both talking at the same time, which becomes a nasty battle of the talking wills. Remember, others want to talk as much as you do. If you give them a chance, they will just keep talking forever.

4. Look Away Whether you are talking or not, you always have one tool at your disposal, avoiding eye contact. This prevents the speaker from getting non-verbal feedback indicating that you are not listening. Some like to just stare, unfocused into space. I personally find this difficult to pull off. Some poor listeners prefer to silently hunt the room for more important or attractive people. There is always someone better to talk. If you must look at the speaker, focus on some odd aspect of their appearance, like a piece of spinach between teeth.

5. Never ever, ask clarifying questions Finally, when you do get the chance to talk, don’t ask questions that help clarify the comments of other speakers. Doing so would require that you listened to what was said in the first place. It also seals the transfer of information by confirming what you heard. Additionally, questions invite others to talk, ensuring that you are spending too much time listening.

If you consistently follow these guidelines, you will secure your position as an ordinary IT professional. Good Luck.

“To confront a person with his own shadow is to show him his own light.”

– Carl Jung

CSI COMMUNICATIONS | MARCH 2011

19

BOOK REVIEW In the global village of today, skill proficiency is the greatest differentiator and the back bone of business. As per Thomas Friedman, every professional is well placed in the global market and has to be more advanced than his or her peers in his domain; to contribute effectively and thereby be an employer’s choice in the unpredictable economic times. The top talent is always the first choice for the industry leaders, thus, a challenge for every organisation in IT, ITES, KPO and BPO sectors is bringing other employees up to par so as to run a successful business. To address this paradigm shift, human resource and training professionals are coming up with innovative methods to better manage the human capital erosion and development.

Both hard and soft skills are equally important in this knowledge era. In fact, the higher one goes up the organizational pyramid, the more the need for softer aspects becomes imperative.

Managing clients, reportees, vendors and also the various stakeholders necessitates high emotional and social intelligence for every business leader. Thus, to create a skilled workforce, understanding of the various dimensions of soft skills is very significant.

Authors

Gopalaswamy Ramesh Mahadevan Ramesh • • •

ISBN: Pages: Imprint:

9788131732854 472 Pearson Education

Reviewed bv:

Ms. Sonali Dutta Associate General Manager (Corporate HR) CBay Systems (India) Pvt. Ltd. #147, Anjaneya Techno Park 4th Floor, Kodihalli, Airport Road Bengaluru - 560 008 sonali.dutta@cbayindia.com

The ACE of Soft Skills can be used as a reference manual for this need. It can play an extremely important role in development of talent and in constantly upgrading skill levels. This book, authored by Gopalaswamy and Mahadevan Ramesh, explores three crucial segments of soft skills namely Attitude, Communication and Etiquette.

Part I of the book focuses on the various aspects of Attitude, right from a personal grooming perspective to managing escalations when things go wrong at work. The linkage of every topic with vivid examples and how the same relates to the larger picture definitely helps the reader to relate things back to work environment.

Part II of the book showcases the most significant aspect of life whether personal or professional–communication! How every method of communication can accomplish results is a very important aspect of the book. This is one area where there is a global challenge in all walks of life… economic, political and business. These can all be improved if people understand and use the techniques of communication appropriately. It is never one size fits all, thus one needs to tweak the style in accordance with the requirement or the need of the hour.

Part III of the book is on etiquette –where the cultural dynamics play havoc. Hopefully, learning about the important aspects of etiquette shared in this book would allow professionals to navigate through some of the day to day challenges.

The book covers a wide range of topics—a gamut of nearly 40 essential soft skills—including personal accountability, listening skills, business proposals, and the role of small talk and humour at work. The numerous case studies, illustrations, figures, tables and quotations offer insightful, practical and ready to emulate practices for young professionals. The book can be used as a tool for self paced learning for executives and first line mangers. Soft skills have often been treated with ridicule by people who cannot fathom the importance of the same.

However, with increased emphasis on cultural sensitivity, working across global teams, project work, presence, poise, client dealings and so on, the need for soft skills has become mandatory.

The book could also serve as a repository of soft skills topics for learning professionals and institutions for their workshop content.

While the book addresses the challenges for executives, young professionals and also for first line managers, middle and senior levels would need more in-depth coverage of the same topics to develop finer social and emotional attributes and skills.

Though experience is the best teacher, following practices of some of the experienced preachers can also go a long way in accomplishing milestones in one’s journey to success in life. Thus, the lucid and candid language with lots of business scenarios cited by the authors in this book is surely exemplary and will give every reader an insight into soft skills and how they can be used to great advantage in day to day business or even personal life.

About the Reviewer: Sonali Dutta is presently the Associate General Manager (Corporate HR) with the CBay Systems, Bangalore. She has been the Learning and Human Resource Strategist in Infosys & Hewlett Packard. Sonali is in industry for last 15years associated with the industry leaders in grooming and development of Human resource, Knowledge and Talent Management.

CSI COMMUNICATIONS | MARCH 2011

20

CURRENT TOPICS

NATIONAL Knowledge Network Inaugurated on 5th February 2011

Computer Science Research (CSR): Past, Present, and Future (Aka Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow) S V Raghavan Scientific Secretary, Office of the Principal Scientific Advisor to Government of India Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Madras Chennai 600036. Email: svr@cs.iitm.ernet.in

This article pre-supposes that Research: Enables understanding and naturally leads a nation into innovation in products and services creating IPR and consequently wealth to the nation, a significant part of which can be re-deployed in research that Enables… read recursively!!

Any introspection in CSR will include sustainability of the process that requires Vision and Vision Continuity and administrative mechanism(s) to accomplish the same.

CSR Yesterday: India gained significant competence in Computer Science Research during the past five decades. India built its own digital computer from early days culminating in the ability to build her own Super Computer. Human resources generated by India are acknowledged as the best in the world. India made a mark in “services” industry – “simple labor” at the low end of the spectrum to “contract design” at the high end of the spectrum. India is today poised for exponential growth in CSR. Design Paradigm Yesterday and Today: Do your Best and Share it with the World at Large.

CSR Today: India is rediscovering herself in Computer Science Research. The National Knowledge Network (NKN) has enabled opportunities for integrated thinking (across geographies and disciplines) seamlessly. From building NKN to productively using it, CSR is involved in abundant measure. Besides, social programs such as Uniquely Identifying individuals (UID), Employment Guarantee (NREGA), and a host of Citizen-centric applications, challenge the research community with Large Scale problems that require “home grown” solutions. Language Translations in real time, High volume transactions, High volume (intelligent) searches across databases under different administrative domains (that too in real time), Dependability of ICT infrastructure, Reliability and Availability of Platforms and Applications are a few representative examples. All of them underline intensive Computation and Search in real time.

Besides, India needs to develop her own portfolio of IPR in several areas in hardware and software for ensuring Sustainable Progress in using ICT for Social Benefit. Of course, re-engineering the manpower quality at all levels and disciplines is a pre-requisite.

Design Paradigm Today and Tomorrow: Visualize and Realize for your Nation and the Rest of the World will come to you because they see a benefit.

CSR Tomorrow: In the New India, surcharged with young manpower

enthusiastic to work in inter-disciplinary areas, articulating the Research Challenges in concrete terms is itself a mammoth task.

Relevance to the social environment will be the key. Normally, for such articulation one needs an end goal, which may appear to be a product or service. For example, NKN is visualized as “An Instrument of Social Change”. NKN focuses on Education, Health, and Agriculture. NKN believes that: An Educated Nation is a Creative Nation A Healthy Nation is a Productive Nation Agricultural Excellence will result in a Satisfied Nation These are in essence the end goals of a nation. CSR should concentrate on issues that will enable these. For example, Country Wide Class Room, which will result in achieving the Educated Nation, requires that CSR understands the following: 1. Automating the establishment of a Classroom for immersive experience.

2. Sharing “nuggets” of learning material by “stitching” them into a lesson 3. Personalizing the delivery in content, container, and communication (CCC) 4. Real-time creation of virtual networks under user control 5. Ensuring the highest degree of Cyber Security in NKN Space and so on.

All these efforts require building of Supercomputers, creating software assets in various disciplines, carrying out Collaborative Directed Basic Research in various areas for enhancing understanding, and indulge in collaborative applied research to develop technologies that require significant and diverse input that are available in different pockets in the country.

For all these, NKN is the vehicle!

The journey has just begun; exciting times are ahead; deliberations such as these are definitely helpful.

CSI COMMUNICATIONS | MARCH 2011

21

CURRENT TOPICS

ICT can help predict natural disasters: RK Pachauri [Ahmedabad] Times of India, The, Feb 1, 2009

Articles reprinted with special permission from The Resident Editor and Mr. Arun Ram of The Times of India.

Gandhinagar: Addressing the fifth convocation of the Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology (DA-IICT), top environmentalist RK Pachauri asked students to use information and communication technology (ICT) to predicting natural disasters and climatic change.

Pachauri, who was the chief guest, said, proper ICT infrastructure could have saved perhaps 4,000 lives lost in 2003 as a result of the heat wave in Andhra Pradesh.

“There was no early warning provided to victims of heat wave,” he said, adding, “Nor was there any follow-up in terms of providing medical advice to those who suffered from heat stress, such as the need for oral rehydration therapy and simple healthcare for those who were affected. Institutions like DA-IICT can use ICT to broaden their vision and explore areas of

application and lead us towards a pattern of sustainable development.”

DA-IICT, which is rated as one of the top 10 private ICT institutes of the country, on Saturday conferred degrees to 339 students, including 44 MTech students, 52 MS IT students and 245 BTech students. Two PhD students, Zakir Laliwala and Vikram Sorathia, received doctorate degrees as well. The institute has claimed cent per cent placement to its pass-outs, with 34 companies providing 410 offers to 339 students. The maximum placement was for Rs 10.4 lakh, with an average of Rs 3.6 lakh per annum.

Copyright Bennett, Coleman & Company Limited Feb 1, 2009 Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved

Google makes search social, excludes Facebook AFP, Feb 18, 2011, 10.56am IST

Washington: Google is making Web search more social, weaving posts from the Twitter, Flickr, Blogger and other accounts of a user’s friends into search results.

However, it will also not display any input from the largest social network of them all – Facebook – which has previously declined to share data with Google.

Google said the new social search feature is only available in English for the moment. The move is an expansion of “Google Social Search,” which the Internet giant introduced in 2009.

Instead of featuring at the bottom of a page of search results, relevant posts from the social media

accounts of a user’s friends are now integrated into the list of results themselves.

A Google search for camping, for example, may bring up a Twitter post by a friend about hiking trails or a link to campsite pictures uploaded by a friend to Flickr.

“Relevance isn’t just about pages -- it’s also about relationships,” Google product management director Mike Cassidy and product manager Matthew Kulick said in a blog post.

“Today we’re taking another step forward -enabling you to get even more information from the people that matter to you, whether they’re publishing on YouTube, Flickr or their own blog or website,” they said.

“This means you’ll start seeing more from people like co-workers and friends, with annotations below the results they’ve shared or created,” they added.

Social search will only be available to users who have a Google account. Google account holders will also have the option of linking their social media accounts to their Google profiles.

Mindful of potential privacy concerns, Cassidy and Kulick said, “The new setting enables you to choose whether or not to show your connected accounts publicly on your Google profile.”

CSI COMMUNICATIONS | MARCH 2011

22

ARTICLE

ICT for Disaster Risk Reduction Information and Communication Technologies for Environmental Sustainability (ICT Ensure) is a general term referring to the application of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) within the field of environmental sustainability. Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are acting as integrating and enabling technologies for the economy and they have a profound impact on our society.

Recent changes in ICT affect as well the environmental sustainability regarding the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) set up to ensure environmental sustainability in this century. With the usage of new technologies the global community, can be supported in their collaboration to preserve the environment in the long term. New technologies provide utilities for Knowledge acquisition and awareness, early evaluation of new knowledge, reaching agreements and communication of progress in the interest of the human welfare. This includes ethical aspects of protecting human life as well as aspects of consumer safety and the preservation of our natural environment.

[Excerpted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Information_and_communication_technologies_for_ environmental_sustainability] The Millennium Development Goals Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women

Goal 4: Reduce child mortality

Application areas More and more application areas are becoming relevant to sustainable development in industry, health care, agriculture and the information society.

And they have an impact on the perspectives of ICT, the environment, policy and science. More and more interest has been emerged as well to risk and disaster management, adaptation to climate change and resource use.

ICT in Energy Consumption/Efficiency

ICT in Climate Change

ICT and Sustainable Use of Natural Resources

ICT for Biodiversity

Eco-industrial Applications and ICT for Industrial Ecology

ICT in Agriculture

ICT for Landscape Ecology

Personal Information Systems and Quality of Life

ICT for Sustainable Urban Development

ICT in Health Care

ICT for Environmental Risk Management Natural Disaster [Excerpted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Natural_disaster] A natural disaster is the effect of a natural hazard (e.g., flood, tornado, hurricane, volcanic eruption, earthquake, or landslide). It leads to financial, environmental or human losses. The resulting loss depends on the vulnerability of the affected population to resist the hazard, also called their resilience. This understanding is concentrated in the formulation: “disasters occur when hazards meet vulnerability.”

A natural hazard will hence never result in a natural disaster in areas without vulnerability, e.g. strong earthquakes in uninhabited areas. The term natural has consequently been disputed because the events simply are not hazards or disasters without human involvement. A concrete example of the division between a natural hazard and a natural disaster is that the 1906 San Francisco earthquake was a disaster, whereas earthquakes are a hazard.

Goal 5: Improve maternal health

Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases

Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability

Compiled by : T V Gopal Honorary Chief Editor

Goal 8: Develop a Global Partnership for Development

Source: http://www.undp.org/mdg/goal7.shtml

“Since the 1990s, natural disasters have killed on average some 60,000 people a year and have also undermined decades of investment in infrastructure and social development. Developing countries’ losses due to natural disasters are estimated to be 20 times greater (as a percentage of GDP) than those of industrialized nations. For example, during the 1990s the cumulative loss of economic assets due to natural disasters is

CSI COMMUNICATIONS | MARCH 2011

23

estimated at about 16% for Nicaragua (World Bank, 2008). This loss included network infrastructure (e.g. bridges, power transmission lines, pipelines, etc.) and most visibly, urban infrastructure. Climate change is expected to increase this vulnerability. Developing countries are at highest risk from climate change because they lack the financial and material resources, including technological and institutional capacity, to prepare and to respond. In this context, it is important to support leading international initiatives such as the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UN/ISDR), aimed at building disaster-resilient communities through more integrated sustainable development. The ISRD has recognized the important role that can be played by information and communication technologies (ICTs) in fostering disaster resilience.” infoDev, “Disaster Risk Reduction in the Information Age”, June 2009 ICT for Disaster Risk Reduction – The Indian Experience [Based on report by the Government of India, Ministry of Home Affairs, National Disaster Management Division]

The unique geo-climatic conditions have made India highly vulnerable to natural disasters. In India, 54% of landmass is prone to earthquakes, 40 million hectares of landmass is prone to floods, 8000 km of coastline is prone to cyclones and almost 68% of total geographical area is vulnerable to droughts. The recent occurrence of massive Tsunami on 26.12.2004 has worsened the situation.

Though complete prevention of natural disasters is beyond human capabilities, the adverse impact of any disaster on human lives and their livelihoods can be minimized by taking adequate early warning, preparedness and mitigation measures. The state-of-art Information and Communication Technology (ICT) systems play a crucial role for implementing such preventive measures.

The IDRN (India Disaster Resource Network) The IDRN (India Disaster Resource Network – www.idrn.gov. in) is a nation-wide electronic inventory of essential and specialist resources for disaster response, covering specialist equipment, specialist manpower resources and critical supplies. IDRN has been initiated by Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) in collaboration with United Nations Development Program (UNDP) to systematically build the disaster resource inventory as an organized information system for collection and transmission of information about specific equipments, human expertise and critical supplies database from District level to State level to provide availability of resources for disaster response, so that disaster managers can mobilize the required resources within least response time.

The IDRN lists out the equipment and the resources by type and by the functions it performs and it gives the contact address and telephone numbers of the controlling officers in-charge of the said resources so that the equipment can be promptly mobilized.

The IDRN is a live system providing for updating of inventory every quarter. Entries into the inventory are made at two levels – District and State level.

This online information system can be accessed by authorized Government officials, District level nodal persons, corporate bodies and public sector units. District nodal authority will be responsible for collecting, compiling and updating their inventory data to the central server with the help of concerned District departments. Adequate authorization and security has been in-built and is being maintained in the portal to prevent unauthorized access to this inventory. The user may avail the facilities like analyzing or querying the information resource inventory through given user friendly interfaces to get a list of resources available in the District and State level.

Target Audience The users and partners of IDRN initiative are: 602 District administrations of 35 States and UTs, all 35 State/ UT administration of India, around 5000 member corporate bodies with Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), around 33,000 builders, contractors and construction companies with Builders’ Association of India (BAI), the entire Indian Railways and numerous public sector undertakings in the country.

How it works?

The India Disaster Resource Network is a web-based application with controlled access to the database. 226 items mainly consisting of equipments, human resources and critical supplies are categorized in the system. The data related to these items are collected from the line departments and various organizations at the District level. The data is entered in to the portal at the District level.

GIS in Disaster Management During any emergency situation, the role of a reliable Decision Support System is very crucial for effective response and recovery.

Geographic Information System (GIS) provide most versatile platform for Decision Support by furnishing multilayer geo-referenced information which includes hazard zoning, incident mapping, natural resources and critical infrastructure at risk, available resources for response, real time satellite imagery etc. GIS-based information tools allow disaster managers to quickly assess the impact of the disaster/ emergency on geographic platform and plan adequate resource mobilization in most efficient way.

National Emergency Communication Plan In emergency response and management, it is extremely important to have the communication links operational between decision makers at various levels and operational response teams/personnel on the site. Unfortunately at the time of emergency situations such as natural or man-made disasters, the first casualty is the regular telecommunications infrastructure of public wired and wireless (GSM/CDMA) telephones. Considering the crucial role of MHA during such emergencies, it is essential to set-up reliable information and communication network employing both terrestrial and satellitebased communication technologies with redundancies to establish a network for emergency communications.

The Home Page of IDRN

CSI COMMUNICATIONS | MARCH 2011

24

ARTICLE

Ultra Jazz Mobile Internet Device: Flight of Fancy Suman Kumar S. No. 290, 52nd Cross, 4th Block, Rajajinagar, Bangalore-560010. Karnataka, India.

Email: Suman.Prasanna@aricent.com

Nowadays, electronic gadgets like Mobile Internet devices are gaining increasing importance in our day to day life. These pocketsized devices offer rich internet experience taking mobile to its true extent. They come with host of applications ranging from email to suduko. Digital content opening endless possibilities to offer highdefinition video with multistereo audio, these gadgets tend to provide a hometheatre effect. The interactive looknfeel making them more userfriendly attracts wide variety of consumers.

These devices being a bit shortsighted, market view camouflages the expectation of the consumers. These devices targeted towards a range of consumers rather than specific category like business executives is creating a dramatic shift in the market place. Analysts forecast reveal a growing consumer interest for this new category of lightweight, small, truly mobile equipment. This paradigm shift created in minds of consumers alleviates the expectations market players have to offer. In this article, we envisage the next generation Ultra Jazz MID (UJMID) with the usage of these gadgets primarily for entertainment to the new market expectations in this global personal infotainment arena.

UJMID, on the other hand, takes a farsighted view to enhance the lifestyle of the consumers. It may offer lucrative features like Instant Movie Maker, ESG (Electronic Service Guide and so on fuelling highly mobile lifestyle. Consumers can enjoy outstanding performance for high definition digital video content like DivX. It can further enrich user experience by providing exceptional picture quality like 720p, resolutions up to 1920*1080 and advanced stereo support for audio. UJMID is also aimed to empower consumers to enjoy digital content (e.g. music) anytime, anywhere and on any device too. It may leverage on technological convergence like Digital Network Living Alliance (DLNA), 4G at different levels to provide features of various form factor. The host of features, services may include staying connected via social networks, having portable digital content available anytime and all the time. This makes it an ideal traveling companion that lets you enjoy “lifeonthego” for all entertainment needs.

Like most Net Books, UJMID can use efficient processor architectures like ARM which are dominant

in consumer entertainment segment for smooth and swift transformation to mobility world making technological convergence a reality. Furthermore, using architectures like ARM will not only provide the compute power of a highend PC but the customization, design and integration of software and hardware that will give users the Internet experience they really want, wherever they happen to be. UJMID can leverage services of these new families of lowpower, high computing, industrystandard processor architectures instead of processors which are designed specifically only for MID’s. The multiple cores within such processors dedicated for digital consumer devices may run languages like Java up to 50% faster than competition embracing application developers as well. An open source software platform like Android already finding success in mobile handsets, best suits UJMID for the rich feature set it offers. This will significantly reduce the input cost at the same time makes it a viable candidate for application development on such highend processors.

These combinations of components having thin, small designs and open source platforms can work together to enable the best mobile computing and Internet experience on such devices.

UJMID can be visualized to be much smaller, sleeker, and lighter than ever, with incredibly long battery life thereby opening up a new market segment for such equipments. This coupled with an appealing touch screen display with applications like Face Beautifier, slideshow, music players (Ex: juke box), camera and a list of feature combination possibilities are an addon to the user excitement. UJMID having screen resolution comparable to that of a laptop, it can possess a filter that is understood to streamline the interface to execute quick searching. UJMID may have a simplified “fingerfriendly” user interface optimized for smaller screens. This enriches “consumers and prosumers” entertainment experience, especially for information, locationbased services like Google Maps, Webbased office and enterprise applications.

It can be tipped to be an extension of google’s successful accelerometer logic used within Android to provide such a “Staying in Touch” experience. In this competitive landscape, users always demand a better browsing experience. The plugins becoming more

CSI COMMUNICATIONS | MARCH 2011

25

important in this space, users of UJMID can download Firefox to run on ARM. But that’s a much more powerful device compared with the breadth of what is available running ARM’s instruction set. With the chip giant already pushing to ensure that popular software, browsers and operating systems worked on its instruction set, combining the expressiveness of interoperability, portability with the power of the ANDROID platform, in our opinion, a product like UJMID brings a strong value to gain favor with device makers and the end consumers.

Recent years have seen devices with a rapid adoption of mobile broadband, shrinking device form factors and the emergence of cloud computing. Simply put, UJMID can be seen to be accepted universally to include the convergence of any consumeroriented handheld devices with computing power connected to the Internet.

UJMID also sets the pace for Mobile Innovation by having applications developed using languages (like java) which are ‘write once’ runanywhere on any machine. UJMID can offer advanced features like RT (Real Time) video transcoding, advanced gestures and haptics to keep on the technology trends. With UJMID, consumers can share every video moment as it happens by extensively using the support like Radio Interworking (WiFi + WiMax, VCC) provided by underlying platform. UJMID also aims to keep you entertained and connected all the time with comprehensive support from single and multicore based chipsets. It envisions transforming their home into a smart living network with DLNA enabling the user to watch recorded TV or Internet content anywhere in his living space too. Android with the prime motto of “All Applications are created Equal” and the strong ecosystem contributing with wide variety of Android applications available for download free of cost will be an addon for the consumers. UJMID may also support applications that will allow users to conduct all sorts of transaction on the fly including the purchase and exchange of gift cards, the redemption of personalized sales and marketing offers and the ability to manage all of a user’s various reward and loyalty programs from their device. With consumers looking forward for that kind of magical experience from their consumer electronic devices, UJMID can intensify competition a lot more in the future.

Technologies like UJMID receiving good attention from silicon giants like ARM, Intel and Texas Instruments for its alternative compelling solutions creates a winning combination to drive this new consumer entertainment segment. UJMID may utilize the twofold increase in the processing power

Fig. 1 : Recent Markets Trends on Mobile Internet Devices

of the silicon chips every year to attain high performance for multimedia applications like VVOIP (Video Voice over IP). This coupled with the exponential decrease in the cost of memory units further reduces the input cost. UJMID can make its debut to breakthrough the performancememory constraint by costeffectively bringing exciting new functionality to the nextgeneration of connected devices including DTVs, STBs and Bluray players. ARM, after success with its lowpower architectures in Mobile Phones, is embracing the mobile Internet device as next big growth markets for the consumer electronics industry.

Given the potential of the chip giant and the prevailing ambivalence toward the form factor, new products like UJMID based on Android running ARM will cannibalize sales from established lines. Analysts forecasts reveal that ARMbased ultramobile devices will surpass x86based devices by 2013, a reversal from this past year when 90 percent of the ultramobile devices were x86based. CE devices segment which has long been a territory owned by ARM, their IP cores form the basis of many of the smartphones out there today. 2010 will be pivotal for building momentum behind nonx86 solutions and gaining adoption in both distribution channels and by enduser populations worldwide, UJMID will definitely be a window opportunity to cater to the untapped market potential. With a strong ecosysteminplace, the availability of readytodeploy, reusable solutions like codecs reduces the TimetoMarket while ensuring to meet global quality standards.

These enable exciting new usage models and provide significant new growth opportunities. This coupled with very high

portability and a realistic integration effort, looms to attract new business opportunities to launch a variety of flavors of UJMID under different price ranges to cater to the vast majority in the market place. This assures a favorable environment for ecosystem partners, silicon partners and Early Access Customers, in making incredible progress in transforming Android from Mobile to Mobility. Wireless technologies having impact on every aspect of our lives, UJMID based on Android making its debut on ARM has a vast potential to open up a new era for the mobile Internet.

The fastestgrowing consumer electronics device market in the world for several years has been the cell phone.

UJMID emphasizes the fact that power management is the most important thing in a portable device, more important than how fast the core processor is. UJMID also emphasizes importance of webcentric applications and creation of new advertisement models. The emergence of new types of devices in the saturated mobile market means OEM’s, ODM’s are focusing on meeting user needs by offering differentiated handsets, rather than exploring new markets. In line with the trend, majority of the operators, content providers have already triggered collaborative partnerships with OEM’s and ODM’s to offer services like Instant Recording, on these smaller chipset and less battery consumption devices. The revenue based model not only encashes on the market conditions but also stimulates investment demand in areas like advertisements which are selfrevenue generators. UJMID can leverage the extended DRM (Digital Rights Management) capabilities to safeguard the

CSI COMMUNICATIONS | MARCH 2011

26

technology influencing the consumer demand also creates an opportunity for synergy, cocreation among the market players. This new landscape unveiling in the mobile industry, the future trend looks positive. UJMID offering features like “Gaming on Globe” through the coexistence of WiMax makes it indispensable in the Next Generation consumer electronics space. Big players like Intel, ARM betting big on seamless mobility, high battery life mantra, the environment assures to propel its growth moving forward. UJMID being extensively accepted by key players will aid to establish its presence to support enhanced features like live recording, flash games, flv codecs and so on. With consumer’s interest for entertainment lasting for the next decade, this nifty little device can be an ideal candidate to embark its entry in the near future.

UJMID, tending to be a “OnestopUniverse” device also avails implicit inertia among the market players. First, being the pricing. Pricing which has always likely an important role in prompting more people to buy, an optimal price tag just over a midrange featurephone will increase revenues as well as volumes. The input costs involved in development being surprisingly very low, will further increase the profits. UJMID will emerge as a groundbreaking reality for millions of consumers anticipating a device who are not interested in lugging around a heavier device but also prefer not to go with a cell phone that has Internet capability.

UJMID tends to be an ideal solution and a perfect compromise between the devices currently on sale today.

Second, being TimetoMarket.

Analysts believe the trend is the result of many consumers waiting to upgrade their phones, and those who do upgrade are gravitating toward more sophisticated devices like MID. The availability of reusable

commoditized features, backed with skilled manpower reduces the turnaround time of product development. The support from open source communities being an added value reduces the AMC (Annual Maintenance Cost) too. All these factors influencing the market conditions, UJMID is lies at the epicentre of the consumers taste.

These advantages provide an ample time to realign the business road map to suit the market demands following its initial launch.

Both ARM and Google have built a highly vibrant ecosystem around their offerings.

Unsurprisingly, both have the lion’s share of their respective markets. UJMID making its debut on Android based on ARM tends to be a dominant force in this burgeoning market.

The collective effort of both segment camps should do wonders to jumpstart a market for UJMID built for real people. OEM’s, ODM’s launching in early next quarter will have the benefit of having gotten there first and gain a ton of experience developing more products for advanced computing.

Third, being TimingtoMarket. It’s not just the mobile revolution that is expected to do well in the future. As the economy picks up again, high end of the market is also expected to sell well over the next few years.

The total time required developing a UJMID being nearly same like any other device, a plan to launch by mid2010 will be ideal to take on the leadership position.

End users desire the ability to take the full Internet with them, the experience they have on their PC, in a nomadic or mobile fashion. Google and its partners actually making headway in this area, UJMID will be “The Next Big Thing“ in the near future.

“A Ring in your Cell, Saved by the bell A Message to Tell, that all’s well, A friend in need, in augur well, is A friend in deed, with UJMID’s to sell.”

A belly quote on UJMID to convey its noble motive to all.

iSuppli Figure 1 Global MID-Class Forecast with Smart Phones, 2007-2012 (Thousands of Units) 450000 400000 350000 Thousands of Units

content provided by the user. This opens up another new area of revenue generation to the content providers by offering their secure protection solution as a service to the user. ARM having an advantage in mobile segment due to its instruction set which were designed to sip power rather than glugging it, a longer battery life and presumably a smaller form factor makes it best suited for products like UJMID. Recent efforts from ARM to port software to its instruction set, and the overall movement of applications to the web, UJMID can whittle features like “alwayson connectivity” on Next generation of ARMbased devices launched in the consumer market.

On one hand, PC sales growth is slowing in the US and Western Europe (PC vendors shipped 239 million units during 2006, according to Gartner, up 9.5 percent from 2005), and while PCs are still hot in emerging markets, it’s only a matter of time before growth there settles in at a respectable 10 percent clip Smart phones, on the other hand, are taking off. Mobile phones as a whole already sell more than a billion units a year, and Gartner thinks smartphone shipments (defined as phones that can run sophisticated operating systems and access the Internet) are set to grow 52 percent from 2007 to 2008, from 102 million units in 2007 to 156 million by the end of next year. The number of MID users witnessing a promising increase of 15 % in last one year, analysts expects this number will triple by 2012, with 42 % of total handset device segment. Given this explosive growth and the vibrant market, especially emerging markets like India, in particular, UJMID has the potential to be the biggest “gamechanging” technology.

India adding 87 million subscriber’s yearonyear, with an expected total of 350 million by end of 2009 with and other emerging markets like China’s 534 million, US’s 257 million and Russia’s 172 million, electrifying the market competition lies within the ambit of UJMID. The mobile internet revolution continuing to do extremely well despite most difficult periods in consumer spending in recent memory, UJMID is definitely a window opportunity to unleash the potential revenues of this constantly expanding dynamic sector.

Recently, players in the industry, actively pursuing a market for Mobile Internet Devices, UJMID being both technology and market driven is capable of yielding a promising Return on Investment.

Subsequently, industry leaders are increasingly gaining momentum as a part of strategic business to boost their market share as well. Consequently, this evolving

300000 250000 200000 150000 100000 50000 0 2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

Figure: Growth Forecast of Mobile Internet Devices

CSI COMMUNICATIONS | MARCH 2011

27

ARTICLE

A survey on opportunities and challenges of Wireless Mesh Networks Dhanaraj Cheelu & P Venkata Krishna School of Computing Science and Engineering, VIT University, Vellore, TN, India 632014

Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) are acquiring an increasingly significant role in the next generation wireless networks. Their rapid advancement is due to their high-performance and cost-effective solutions over the other networks. The technology engages a mesh of wireless routers passing along each other’s packets in a multi-hop manner. In this paper, we have given an overview of the technology along with their advantages and challenges to be overcome.

I.

Introduction In the recent years, IEEE 802.11 compliant Cellular and Wireless local area networks (WLANs) have seen an awful growth. Though Cellular Networks offer wide area coverage, it is comparatively expensive and suffers low data rates. On the other hand, WLANs offer high data rates but restrained by their limited coverage. In addition, increasing the coverage of WLANs is very expensive and laborious. The emergence of IEEE 802.16 compliant Wireless Metropolitan area networks (WMANs) partially bridged the gaps by offering high data rates, wide area coverage and high quality signal.

But still its advancement is restricted by its inability to support mobile users and Line of Sight (LOS) problem.

The potential advantages of WMNs can fill all these gaps by offering wide area coverage, higher data rates at a very low-price and high quality signal. It also overcomes LOS problem supporting both stationary and mobile users.

WMNs have been an influencing field of research in recent years. In this paper, we have given an overview of the technology in section 2 and identified some characteristics which are inherent to WMNs in section 3. Section 4 briefs on the applications of WMNs. In section 5 and 6, anomalies, challenges and research issues; and in section 7, security related issues faced by WMNs are discussed briefly.

of the network several relay nodes also can be employed. Centralized access points for mediating the wireless connection are not needed which is the case in traditional wireless networks. The same wireless links can be used to connect mobile nodes and stationary nodes or completely different technologies can also be adopted. WMN technologies can be deployed based on mobility speed also [15]; Some fit for contexts involving high mobility speed, some for strain less roaming, while others are only meant to be used by stationary clients.

The rapid growth of WMNs is due to: High speed packet delivery across wider coverage area, easy, fast and cost-effective deployment and maintenance, flexibility in terms of coverage, capacity and availability.

II.

III. Inherent characteristics of Wireless Mesh Networks: WMN is a multi-hop conjunctive communication infrastructure. It is a decentralized infrastructure, aimed right at distributed data acquisition and control [13].

The following three characteristics are inherent to the nature of WMNs. Reliability: Route redundancy can greatly influence the reliability of any network. WMNs promise reliability since they offer high route redundancy. Since Point-

Overview of the Technology: A WMN is a network of radio mobile or immobile nodes forming a wireless mesh cloud for communication among the nodes. The network stays connected as each node relies on the other nodes in a multi-hop fashion via radio signals. Fig.1 shows an example of a WMN. Each node can maintain a one to many communications with the peer nodes. Also, each node acts both as a host as well as a router. All the nodes need not support client nodes; just to increase the coverage and performance

Router Gateway

Stationary Clients Mobile Clients

Internet

Wireless Link Physical Link

Fig. 1 : A simple wireless mesh network

CSI COMMUNICATIONS | MARCH 2011

28

to-Point or Point-to-Multipoint networks lack redundancy (they are basically single hop networks), failure in a single RF link results in communication failure. But multihop routing WMNs always provide more than one path between any pair of nodes promising and enhancing reliability [14].

Adaptability: Adaptability of WMNs hails from the Self-Configuring and SelfHealing lineaments.

Self-Configuring: Nodes in a WMN are programmed in such a way that they eliminate the need of any human intervention upon deployment. The moment, a node is powered-on, it listens to the network, introduces itself, and joins the network upon meeting the requisites.

Self-Healing: If a node (or a link) is dropped from or relocated-in the existing system, the network automatically reorganizes itself keeping its services alive with out any external administrator. In cases where the signal quality is poor, just adding few repeater nodes can give rise to the signal strength.

Scalability: In a WMN, each node relies on its adjacent nodes for data transmission.

And a node can act as a transceiver as well as a router. Also, deploying a node in a WMN is relatively easy since it completely eliminates physical links. Hence, in a short period of time with minimum cost, minimum preparation the coverage of the WMN can easily be scaled across large distances by simply deploying more number of nodes.

IV. Applications of wireless Mesh Networks Broadband Internet Access: WMNs offer Internet Broadband Access with potential advantages like low upfront investments, easy and fast deployment, better connectivity, wide area coverage and reliability [3][13]. Low investments stem from the fact that WMNs bypass investments in buying and installing cables and Digital Subscriber Lines. Wide area coverage comes from its multi-hop routing ability. Since WMNs overcome the line of sight limitations stumbled by point-tomultipoint networks, they can give better connectivity in complex scenarios including trees, high-rise buildings, and mountains [11]. Deploying a fresh node in a WMN is incomparably easy. WMNs offer reliability since always there exist more than one path between any pair of nodes.

Mobile User Access and Connectivity: WMNs give a cost effective support for high performance mobile multi-media applications. Mobile connectivity and seamlessly transferring the call between different networks can be implemented with out interruption and loss of service.

Mesh Networks [15] [16] is one among the first companies to demonstrate

reliable connectivity and seamless transfer of requests at highway speeds.

BelAir networks have demonstrated implementation of multiple spectrum bands on a single mesh [14]. Currently with the partial implementation of 3G cellular systems, stationary users are given 2Mbps and 144Mbps for highly mobile users [13] where as Firetide’s MIMO-Based (multiple input multiple output) HotPort 7000 series wireless node delivers 400 Mbps throughput providing a viable alternative to fiber or leased lines [14].

Campus Applications: WMNs fit rightly for any campus applications since they offer high bandwidths and reliability. Any campus (hospitals/colleges/resorts), even the ones, which were built with no computer networks in mind, can be easily and wholly internet-connected all the time just by placing dozens of indoor and outdoor wireless mesh nodes at strategic locations.

In cases where WLANs are already installed, they can be easily extended outdoors by adding wireless mesh nodes across the campus [3].

Distributed Control and Intelligence Systems: In recent years Telecom and carmaking companies are working to build Intelligent Transportation systems powered by street and high-way based WMNs. Traffic and road accidents can be closely monitored with the help of a WMN having surveillance cameras and in-car sensors [13]. The intelligent nodes communicate directly with one another enabling a localized decision making system. By localizing the decision making process, diagnosis of problems and their remedies can be implemented faster. Thus the necessity of passing the packets through a common central point can be eliminated.

Building Automatons: Building Automaton systems are used to control building access, heating, ventilation and security. Such systems involve in controlling and monitoring various electrical devices.

Standard wired networks will be an expensive choice. Though Wi-Fi networks reduce cost, their deployment is still expensive. BACnet (Building Automaton and Control Networks) if deployed with WMNs can give low cost.

V.

Anomalies WMNs for Enterprise Networks, due to heavy distribution of access points and clients, suffer the anomalies like interference [9], RF holes, hidden terminal, and rogue access points. In such cases fixing the cause of ill performance is a real challenge. Quantification of possible causes, Ascription of a root cause to specific problems, Proactive network management to deal with the likelihood faults are among

the other challenges. WMNs for LongDistance networks face challenges like: Physical visits are costly, sometimes remote locations become inaccessible, poor power quality and lack of trained personnel.

VI. Challenges and Research Issues This section outlines challenges and research issues pertaining to the development and deployment of Wireless Mesh Networks.

Physical Layer The focus in the physical layer for wireless communications is to increase the transmission rate, improve error resilience capability, and enhance re-configurability and software controllability [3]. To increase the capacity of a wireless network, impairment due to fading, co-channel interference and delay-spread must be mitigated. It can be partly achieved through multiple antenna systems. Spectrum efficiency must also be maintained as high as possible. Below are given few characteristics which can significantly influence the performance of WMNs. Reliability of the link due to mobility: Since WMNs support mobile users, the physical layer of WMNs should quickly adapt to the shift in frequencies and handle the fading conditions. Since the transmission conditions are expected to be non-ideal, to sustain the reliability of the network, robust error correcting codes should be deployed.

Link Quality Information: The performance of the upper level layers can be significantly improved if the link quality information is made available. The capacity of the wireless networks can be optimized since noticing hand over impendency, routing decisions in upper level layers can be influenced by the link quality information.

Performance of the Transceivers: Since the transceivers receive and forward packets, they should be able to switch quickly between the transmitter and receiver modes. They should also be able to switch seamlessly between the multiple channels since multiple communication channels are available. Long inter frame spacing can significantly affect the performance of the network. Since multiple transceivers transmit packets on multiple channels simultaneously a well designed MAC protocol is necessary to improve the performance of the network.

Enhanced Power Schemes: Interference is one among the main reasons for performance abasements in any wireless network. With the rapid deployment of WMNs the level of interference is also invariably getting on. Thus, it is critical that interference is boiled down by flexibly aligning the power of wireless senders.

CSI COMMUNICATIONS | MARCH 2011

29

New Wideband transmission schemes: Though advances are on their way with orthogonal frequency multiplexing, multiple antenna systems and with new 802.11 flavors such as 802.11n, new wide band schemes must be quested for achieving higher transmission rates and pushing the capacity limits [3].

MAC Layer It is one of the two layers of the data link layer. Addressing and Channel Access Control mechanisms are part of this layer. It employs different protocol sets depending on the communication system whether single-channel system or multi-channel system[6] [14]. Below are some of the research issues for WMN MAC layer.

Scalability: Scalability in view of multi-channel management at MAC layer is an intriguing issue. Since adding more frequency channels to MAC layer to amend the WMN performance will raise the complexity of the system. Design and implementation of communication algorithms is also a challenge in terms of efficiency and cost. The problem is more severe when flexibility in terms of different code lengths and data rates, is offered for multi-channel and multi-transceiver MAC. Network Integration: Since WMNs can contain multiple radios each with its own MAC and physical layer with totally independent communications, advanced bridging functions in the MAC layer are needed for the multiple radios to seamlessly work together [10].

New architecture and new protocols: New architecture and new MAC protocols are needed which can increase wireless bandwidth usage capacity; provide dynamic bandwidth allocation according to the user demands, fully supporting mobility of the users.

Inexpensive Smart Antennas: Designing inexpensive smart antennas (Software steerable antennas) and their MAC is another critical area. Since smart antennas can change their direction, they can switch between neighbors and track mobile users.

They also offer high link budget, reduced transmission power and larger transmission range with reliability [7].

Reconfigurable MAC: Reconfigurable MAC is highly desired since newer developments in MAC layer can be easily deployed. And also it should not contend with the newer deployments in physical and network layers.

Routing Layer: WMNs can make use of the routing protocols of ad-hoc networks. Despite the availability of routing protocols such as Topology Broadcast Based on Reverse Path

Forwarding Dynamic Source Routing, Adhoc on-demand distance vector algorithm based protocols, designing routing protocols for mobile adhoc networks is still an active research area. Below are given some of the challenging issues for routing in WMNs. Scalability: WMNs require routing protocols with less overhead in terms of time, space, resource power consumption so that they can be scaled across many nodes.

Reliability: The routing protocol should be intelligent enough to detect the failure nodes, gateways and broken links. Upon detecting it should be able to quickly reroute the packets to the destination. It requires WMNs supported by multiple gateways and fast reconfiguration of nodes or gateways.

Connectivity of mobile users: Providing seamless connectivity for mobile users is a big challenge for the routing protocol.

Flexibility: Since a WMN contains different topologies, the routing protocol should dynamically support different topologies.

Fairness and QoS: Achieving fairness in forwarding and quality of service are two among the other challenging issues for WMNs. Since each WMN router has to handle its own flows as well as forwarding the packets of other nodes. Even in a simple case where there are two nodes in a sequence in a WMN, one node can deprive the other node by sending all its data [4].

This will in turn affect the QoS issue for multiple classes of services like residential and business.

Differentiating mesh routers and mesh clients: Mesh routers are more powerful than mesh clients in terms of processing capability, energy and capacity. They also experience less mobility than mesh clients.

Thus routing functionality for mesh clients must be light weight than for mesh routers.

The focus of the routing protocol for mesh routers must be on reducing overhead, increasing over all through put, load balancing, security and supporting mesh clients etc.

Multicast Routing: Developing routing protocols suitable for multicast applications is another research area for WMNs; since protocols designed for unicast and broadcast applications will not work effectively for multicast based applications in terms of the usage of network resources.

hop Wireless Networks. Since the chances of transmission delays, packet losses and transmission errors in WMNs are very high in a multi-hop environment, it will perform significantly worse. Below are given some of the research areas for the transport layer of WMNs. Adaptive TCP: Since WMNs will be integrated with the internet and various networks such as IEEE 802.11, 802.16, 802.15, etc, using the same TCP for all the networks will not be effective. So it demands an adaptive TCP for the transport layer of WMNs. Achieving cost effective and satisfactory performance is really challenging issue.

Transport Layer: WMNs demand an efficient transport layer protocol since poor quality in wireless link, user mobility and medium access contention can result in packet losses in WMNs. Most used TCP/IP protocol gives very poor transmission rate even in a single

Security: WMNs also struggle several security issues such as authentication, Privacy and Reliability. Authentication: To prevent unauthorized access every client whether stationary or mobile should be registered to join in the network. Privacy: In WMNs, since

Detecting Unknown link failure: Link failure is a common problem in wireless networks; and it happens very frequently in mobile adhoc networks [11].

Since WMNs avoid single link failure problem by providing alternate paths, it is not critical for WMNs as it is for adhoc mobile networks. But since WMNS support mobile clients, sometimes even mobile gateways, to increase the performance of TCP/IP link failures must be detected which in turn increases the performance of the whole network.

Cross Layer Solution to Network Asymmetry: Lower level layer protocols such as routing protocols, link layer protocols directly affect the performance of TCP/IP [11]. A cross layer solution is needed for routing protocol so that it can consider optimal path both for data and acknowledgement packets. TCP data and ACK packets should be treated differently by MAC layer and error control to reduce network asymmetry.

VII. Other Challenges: Provisioning: For a given WMN topology and bandwidth offered, determining the amount of bandwidth a user can be allocated is a real problem because of multi access point deployments [5] [12]. The association between the number of clients and a gateway also affects the capacity of a WMN [8]. This problem can be dispensed by increasing the number gateways. But in such case, finding out a gateway that maximizes the network capacity can be a challenge. Finding out a location to install gateways or repeaters in a WMN is also a problem.

CSI COMMUNICATIONS | MARCH 2011

30

data flows through multiple hops, to secure privacy an end to end encryption technique is needed. Reliability: It is also very important to protect the control information such as routing information. Otherwise an attacker can disable a WMN. Conclusion: Wireless Mesh Networks have seen rapid growth, and have become industrial strength technology. Many companies are going after this technology to fulfill their needs like broad band internet access, connectivity, reliability and wide coverage etc. The highly flexible nature of the technology opened up doors for complex issues. Most of the challenges are unique to WMNs. Substantial research has yet to be done to spark off the technology in its full potency.

References 1] Sahil Seth, Anil Gankotiya, Amandeep Jindal, “Current State of Art Research Issues and Challenges in Wireless Mesh Networks,” iccea, vol. 1, pp.199203, 2010 Second International Conference on Computer Engineering and Applications, 2010.

2]

Ian F.Akyildiz, “A survey on wireless mesh networks,” in IEEE radio communications, September 2005.

3] Mihail L. Sichitiu, “Wireless Mesh Networks: Opportunities and Challenges,” in Proc. of the Wireless World Congress, (Palo Alto, CA), May 2005.”

4] J. Jun and M. L. Sichitiu, “Fairness and QoS in multihop wireless networks,” in Proc. of the IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC 2003), (Orlando, FL), Oct. 6-9 2003.

5] J. Jun and M. L. Sichitiu, “The nominal capacity of wireless mesh networks,” IEEE Wireless Communications Magazine, Special Issue on: Merging IP and Wireless Networks (to appear), Oct[6] Fabrice Theoleyre, Benoit Darties, Andrzej Duda, “Assignment of Roles and Channels for a Multichannel MAC in Wireless Mesh Networks” in 18th International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks, Issue August 2009, pp. 1-6.

7] Maheshwari, Ritesh; Gupta, Himanshu; Das, Samir R; “Multichannel MAC Protocols for Wireless Networks,” Proc.

SECON 2006, Reston Virginia, Sept 2006.

8]

9]

10]

11]

12] 13] 14] 15]

J. Jun and M. L. Sichitiu, “The nominal capacity of wireless mesh networks,” IEEE Wireless Communications Magazine, Special Issue on: Merging IP and Wireless Networks (to appear), Oct 2003.

K. Jain, J. Padhye, V. Padmanabhan, and L. Qiu, “Impact of interference on multihop wireless network performance,” in Proc. of Mobicom, (San Diego, CA), 2003.

IEEE, “Wireless LAN medium access control (MAC) and physical layer (PHY) specification.” IEEE Std. 802.11, June 1999.

D. Beyer, “Fundamental characteristics and benefits of wireless routing (“mesh”) networks,” in Proc. of the International Technical Symposium of the Wireless Communications Association, (San Jose, CA), Jan. 2002.

“Bel air networks website” http://www. belairnetworks.com.

“How Stuff Works website.” http:// www.howstuffworks.com.

“Tessco website” http://www.tessco. com.

“MeshNetworks website.” http://www. meshnetworks.com.

BOOK REVIEW Title

: DEVELOPING WEB APPLICATIONS

Authors

: Ralph Moseley (Middlesex University, London) M. T. Savaliya (Associate Professor, Govt. Engg. College, Patan , Gujarat, Life Member CSI – 00092442)

Publisher

: Wiley (India), Jan-2011

ISBN13

: 9788126529605

The book provides excellent coverage of modern web technologies for client and server side including HTML, XHTML, XML, JavaScript, PHP, CGI and PERL. It also covers the web design issues to be taken care of for designing effective and useful Web Sites. The book takes the integrated approach such that using theory and practical concepts along with tools, students would be able to develop complete web application with the use of technologies presented. The lucid language and the number of small, independent examples with exercises to review the learning are the attractive features of the book.

It is very useful for the Web technology related course for Computer Science and Information Technology students including Engineering, MCA and M.Sc. IT. - Bipin Mehta, Fellow, CSI

CSI COMMUNICATIONS | MARCH 2011

31

ARTICLE

An Introduction to FiOS TV Sumit Kumar Yadav No52, Sree Ponniamman Complex. 3’rd Floor, Newt Global India Pvt Ltd., Velachery Main Road, Velachery Chennai - 600042, TamilNadu. E-mail: sumit84ky@gmail.com Introduction This article gives a brief idea about the FiOS TV and the technology involved in it. It describes the advantages of FTTP network used in FiOS TV. It explains in details about the FiOS TV architecture, FiOS home network and various other possibilities associated with it like developing widgets by understanding the setup box architecture. It also discusses the future trends and its different flavors.

Introduction to FiOS FiOS is a service offered by Communications that provides high speed Internet, digital TV, and telephone service over a single fiber optic cable. The term “FiOS” stands for “Fiber Optic Service”. a) FiOS uses a passive optical network (PON) to distribute service. Initial FiOS installation used BPON transfer mode where a single fiber optical cable is capable of 155 Mbps upstream, and 622 Mbps downstream. b) All current FiOS deployments use GPON, which provides increased bandwidth limits of 1.2Gbps upstream and 2.4Gbps downstream. In addition to the data bandwidth, the same fiber also carries 870 MHz of bandwidth for RF Video (TV channels). c) FTTP is a network architecture where an optical fiber is terminated at or outside the customer’s premises. The significance of a major FTTP deployment like FiOS is the fact that it replaces an aging copper network that in some cases has been used for over a hundred years. d) Below is an illustration of the path your message takes when you place a call or exchange data on fiber to the premises network.

Fiber¬optic systems have been used in telecom networks for years, but primarily in the long¬haul or inter¬city portions, as well as directly connecting some large¬business customers that have heavy data transfer needs.

What will it do?

Serving primarily residential and small¬to¬medium¬sized business users, FTTP will provide voice service and associated features while offering nearly unlimited bandwidth for an array of data and video applications. It will also accommodate new broadband products and services not possible with today’s network.

FTTP advantages a. Fiber technology provides nearly unlimited bandwidth, as much as 20 times faster than today’s fastest high¬speed data connections. b. FTTP provides more reliable service that is less susceptible to inclement weather and easier to maintain. Can monitor the performance of the network and make repairs prior to customers noticing problems. c. The new technology enables a wide variety of uses, from interactive content and home shopping to telecommuting to telemedicine and audio/video on demand.

What is FiOS TV? FiOS delivers 100% digital TV, bringing fiber¬optics directly to consumers’ homes. This means more broadcast capacity for digital and HD than traditional cable, unparalleled IP bandwidth for on¬demand & niche programming, cutting¬edge interactivity, and unrivaled picture and audio quality—all helping your advertising make a major impression in every home.

FiOS TV Architecture Diagram below 6 X S HU + HDG (QG

9 LG HR +XE 2IILFH

,Q WHUDFWLYH 6 HUYLFHV

6 R IWVZ LWFK

%UR DG FDVW 6 HUYLFHV

3 27 6

9HUL]R Q % UR DG E DQ G ' D WD 1 HWZ R UN

21 7

6(5

Fig: 1.0 : FTTP Architecture.

6 Z LWF K

Fiber to the Premises (FTTP) It refers to new network that will utilize fiber¬optic cables and associated optical electronics instead of copper wire to connect a customer to the network.

' DWD 2/7

* DWHZ D\

9R LFH 1 HWZ R UN

/ R FDO & 2 9 LG HR 6 HUYLQ J 2IILFH

9 LG HR 3 R Z HU

% DWWHU\

Fig: 2.0 : FiOS TV Architecture

CSI COMMUNICATIONS | MARCH 2011

32

FiOS TV: Overview (Service Highlights) a) A broad collection of all-digital programming and compelling consumer choice. b) Channels grouped by genres such as entertainment, sports, news, shopping, movies and family, making it easy for audiences to find their favorite programming. c) An easy-to-use Interactive Media Guide (IMG) that integrates HD programming, On Demand content and the Digital Video Recorder (DVR) along with broadcast television into a seamless user experience.

Interactive Media Guide – Features An innovative interactive media guide (IMG) that gives customers a rich, personalized television experience with content from TV listings, VOD catalogs and the digital video recorder (DVR), as well as personal music and photos from a home network. Among the features of the IMG are: Digital Video Recorder (DVR), Multi Room DVR, Video on Demand, Widgets, mobile Remote and Games FiOS CPE devices The CPE devices used in the FiOS home network are: ONT BHR and Set Top Boxes ONT – Optical Network Terminal a) An ONT is a media converter that is installed by either outside or inside your premises, during FiOS installation. The ONT converts fiber¬optic light signals to copper/electric signals. b) Each ONT is capable of delivering multiple POTS (plain old telephone service) lines and Internet data and Video BHR – Broadband Home Router The BHR provides network connectivity to all the devices at home including computers and Set Top Boxes. The computers are connected by using Ethernet or WIFI. The Set Top Boxes are connected to the network using MoCA (over coaxial cable).

Set Top Boxes The Motorola QIP Set Top Boxes are Hybrid boxes with both traditional RF video, using (QAM) and IP video, and incorporates the multimedia over cable (MoCA) specification for sharing content within the home over existing coaxial cable. The dual QAM-IP capabilities are an important part of FiOS offering, since the company is using RF to deliver basic cable programming and IPTV for its video¬on¬demand and other advanced services.

Set Top Box – Functionalities a) Modern day set-top boxes generally

Fig 3.0 FiOS Home Network

are digital devices that communicate using computer language and processes digital information. b) Set¬top boxes (STB) come in many forms and can have a variety of functions.

1.

Digital Media Adapters, Digital Media Receivers, Windows Media Extender and most video game consoles are also examples of settop boxes.

2. Currently the type of TV set-top box most widely used is one which receives encoded/compressed digital signals from the signal source (perhaps your cable or telco TV provider’s head end) and decodes/decompresses those signals, converting them into analog signals that your analog (SDTV) television can understand.

Software development for the Set Top Box platform

a)

Hardware components 1. Development Set Top Boxes, Hardware debuggers 2. Cables and connectors and Interfacing with development PC

b)

Software components 1. C o m p i l e r s and Software debuggers and Serial Console

c)

Set Top Box – Software Architecture

Future Trends a) It’s the next generation in broadband. b) FiOS (FYE-ose) is the new suite of fiberoptic services over FTTP, an advanced fiber-optic technology that can be used to connect a home or business directly to network. c)

In 2010 the figure expanded to 3.8 million total FiOS Internet subscribers and 3.2 million TV subscribers in US. In India FiOS TV is still to have a noticeable existence.

Interactive Media Guide

UI

Developed and supported by Respective vendors

Middleware

SDK APIs These layers are developed and supported by Motorola

Firmware Operating System Hardware

Fig. 4.0 : Software Architecture of Set Top Box

CSI COMMUNICATIONS | MARCH 2011

33

d)

Flavors of FiOS : 1. FiOS Digital Voice (Telephone service) 2. FiOS Internet Service (Internet service) 3. FiOS TV (Digital Television service)

References: a) Book by One Author: 1) Behrouz A Forouzan, Data Communications And Networking 4th edition, 2007 (Book style) (pp.

173-191), McGraw-Hill b) E-mail: 1) Krishna Kumar (personal communication, December 14, 2010

c)

Internet : 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Verizon_FiOS 2. http://www22.verizon.com/ Residential/FiOSTV (Public Articles)

About the Author Sumit Kumar Yadav has been working in software development life cycle for past 5 years. He is a member of Computer Society of India and an active member on Oracle Technology Networks Group. He is currently working as an Information Specialist in Newt Global. He has previously worked in Oracle Corporation and Wipro Technologies. His expertise area includes Oracle ERP, Oracle ADF and Oracle SOA. He was a member of core ‘Oracle Fusion Projects’ and ‘Oracle Financials’ Product Development in Oracle. He has obtained several accolades from the senior leadership team in Oracle. His areas of interest include SOA, cloud computing, distributed computing and mobile computing.

CALL FOR VOLUNTEERS

Call for volunteers for CSI Academic Committee 2011-12: Applications are invited from creative and dynamic volunteers from academic field / Industry to be a member of the CSI academic committee. The committee is responsible for advising the ExecCom on academic, educational and training related matters of CSI. Member’s responsibilities would include but are not limited to : 1. Recommend courses and training activities, targeted towards professionals, college, polytechnic and school students.

2. Identify and recommend resource persons for the above courses and training activities.

3. Develop curriculum, courseware and train the resource persons for delivery of identified courses and training activities.

4. Identify Industry relevant certifications that could be offered

by CSI and define the curriculum for identified certifications 5. Recommend the policy and procedure for training of candidates, conduct and coordination of the certification examinations of CSI. 6. Identify and select the experts for setting question papers and carry out evaluation of certification examinations.

7. Recommend the policy and measures to implement standards and quality in educational activities of CSI. 8. Recommend and oversee educational activities at various CSI Chapters.

9. Advise CSI on collaboration with Universities and other bodies on educational activities 10. Assist CSI in registering with Industry and Government as a

11.

recognized education partner Advise on sponsorship for members travel to attend prestigious conferences for presenting papers

Volunteer candidates should : • Have at least 3 years of continuous and valid membership in CSI. • Hold vast experience in academic / industry sector with strategic thinking capability.

• Should be ready to commit sufficient time to carry out the tasks as above.

• Be energetic and dynamic leaders preferably not older than 70 years.

Special Note : • CSI is open to financially incentivize academic committee members playing active role in areas as defined above, on pre-agreed terms.

Interested candidates are requested to send a detailed CV and a statement of intent to director.edu@csi-india.org with a copy to president@csi-india.org and vp@csi-india.org on or before 20th March 2011. Selection will be done on merit, based on well defined criteria and academic committee will be formed as per bylaws of CSI. Wg. Cdr. M Murugesan Director-Education

CSI COMMUNICATIONS | MARCH 2011

34

ExecCom Transacts 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

An eventful year 2010-11, Creating New Records: We are approaching completion of the year 2010-12, which has indeed been an eventful year. We acquired new HQ premises at Mumbai, formalized new national/international collaboration, revived many of past best practices and created avenues for new service offerings. Our membership increased from 46,913 (31st March 2010) to 63,493 (31st January 2011) - an increase by 35%, the highest ever membership count and percentage increase in the history of CSI. We have had over 50 programmes (at the state/ regional/national/international level) during the year– i.e. almost one event per week. The 46th CSI Annual Convention attracted huge number of participants, resource persons and event sponsors.

The CONSEG series completed its 20 years in Bangalore, since its launch in the year 1991. As we begin compiling the annual report of 2010-11 and prepare ourselves to plan for the year 2011-12, the chapters and other entities are requested to submit their event reports and action plans. An appeal for this purpose is available on our CSI website at http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/appeal-csichapters Special drive for enrolling PG Scholars as CSI Associate Members: With a view of creating the next-generation membership base of CSI and mentoring young researchers, a special drive for enrolling postgraduate scholars (including research scholars) as CSI Associate Members has been proposed across India. These associate members and new college graduates joining CSI will be assigned mentors from the vast pool of senior members of CSI. These new members will also have an opportunity to work/ interact with the IFIP TC Representatives and Hon. Research Directors nominated by the CSI President as well as join/form CSI Special Interest Groups in emerging technological domains.

These members will also be encouraged to contribute technical papers, articles, case studies and project outcomes in various CSI Publications. There is also a proposal under consideration for PG/ Research Fellowships.

Chapters and Members Development: The CSI Chapters along with Student Branches and Institutional and Individual Members are the real torch bearers of CSI Programmes and Activities across India – striving to cater to the ICT needs of the stakeholders and public at large. The Productivity, Quality and Reach of CSI programmes and service offering entirely depends on the Chapters and members in a given geographical area and user sector. The voluntary services of members and pluralistic spirit of CSI have made it possible to grow from 14 founding members in 1965 to more than 63,000 strong members’ professional society today.

There is a need to further strengthen the chapters as the centers of excellence in ICT profession and the members themselves as distinguished ICT professionals. A call for volunteers is available on CSI website at http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/chaptersmembers-development Joint Programmes with CSI Partners: It is a matter of pride that CSI’s collaboration/ interaction with international/national professional societies and other organizations such as- IFIP, SEARCC, IEEE, PMI, ECI, IE(I), IETE, CDAC, DOEACC, eWIT and Microsoft Corporation - has reached a new zenith. A few more such initiatives are in pipeline. The Chapters, Student Branches and members at large are requested to take this collaboration/ interaction forward through joint programmes and activities at various levels and locations. The specific proposals for joint programmes may be sent to director.edu@csi-india.org with cc to vp@csi-india.org.

Strengthening Divisional, SIG and Collaborative Activities: As per the CSI Constitution and Byelaws, the technical areas and topics of special interests have been grouped into Five Divisions and many

6.

7.

8.

9.

SIGs. It is highly desirable that the CSI Divisions and SIGs draw strength from and associate with the programmes/ activities of IFIP, IEEE, SEARCC and other national/international organizations.

There is an urgent need to strengthen functioning of these entities using voluntary services of CSI members, which are themselves a vital reservoir of knowledge and skills. A call for Volunteers is available at CSI website http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/callfor-volunteers School Student Outreach Programmes: CSI has created a niche for itself among the engineering college students by providing professional development opportunities to students through its student branches. The Society, a founding member of SEARCC, has also been reaching out to the School students in the SouthEast Asian region through the SEARCC International School Software Competitions. In order to reach out to a larger section of students, the 1st CSI National ICT & Science Quiz programme has been concluded successfully after several regional rounds of the programme.

Excellence Awards for Academia and R&D: There have been a few suggestions from senior members and eminent personalities for instituting excellence awards to recognize the significant contribution of members in education and research. At this juncture, an overwhelming majority of the CSI members belong to these sectors. Moreover, it is also essential to enhance the visibility and reach of their contributions – which would surely motivate many other members. In fact, a few of CSI partner societies already have instituted such awards long ago. Further suggestions regarding this may be sent by e-mail to director.edu@csi-india.org with cc to secretary@csi-india.org.

Formation of New Chapters: Based on the interaction among the membership committee members, fellow and senior members across India, an achievable target has been suggested as 100 chapters, 1000 student branches and 1,00,000 members – within next 5 years. In fact, we must aim reaching this target before hosting of our 50th CSI Annual Convention at Hyderabad in 2014.

Many suggestions have also been received for opening New Chapters immediately - in the unrepresented regions and states, thereby reaching the un-reached. The strategically important suggestions are about forming (a) the D (District) level CSI Chapters even with 50 members (of any categories) and up to 75 members (b) the E (Entry/ Exploratory) level CSI Chapters with as little as 15 members and up to 50 members. These suggestions may be worthwhile, considering that about 15 out 35 Indian states and union territories have either insignificant or no presence of CSI programmes and members. Further, there are suggestions towards creating manageable and lean chapters from the existing mega chapters- thus enhancing accessibility of CSI programmes to a much larger segment of the society. Further suggestions and strategies may be sent by e-mail to secretary@csi-india.org for compiling these suggestions and for subsequent discussion in the ExecCom. Regional Meets, Chapter and Institutional Visits: The Office Bearers and Regional Vice Presidents will be planning shortly for the regional meets, chapter and institutional visits for the purpose of stock taking, activities planning, resource allocation and budgetary purposes. Any specific suggestions and proposals from the chapters, student branches and member institutions may be sent by e-mail to president@csi-india.org with cc to secretary@ csi-india.org.

Prof. H R Vishwakarma Hon. Secretary, Computer Society of India

CSI COMMUNICATIONS | MARCH 2011

35

CSI National and International Conferences and Seminars: Transformation and Climate Change Dear Colleagues, I am extremely grateful to the society for giving me the privilege of facilitating CSI conferences and seminars as Conference Chair in the capacity of Vice President during the year 2010-11.

We have seen during last two years, especially during last one year, a four-fold increase in hosting of number of Technical and Academic conferences by our passionate members and associates at different parts of the country. As per counts shared

by Director Education, over 133 Technical Seminars, Symposiums, Workshops and Conferences were arranged by our Divisions/ Chapters/ SIGs during 2009-10; 8 International Conferences including Annual National Conventions 2010 and 2009 and 13 Student National conventions were also organized.

This count may not include Chapter level weekly workshops and other knowledge sharing and promotion activities, which are also serving larger interests of our members and industry.

In the month of Feb. 2011, we had a privilege of hosting 4 International Conferences: Software Engineering at Bangalore, championed by our Bangalore chapter under leadership of Dr. Anirban Basu, another conference with focus on research by our SIG of Software Engineering in Trivandrum under the leadership of Dr Pankaj Jolote, Emerging ICT Applications by our Kolkatta Chapter under the leadership of Dr Debashish Jana and Lean Six sigma

by Hyderabad Chapter under the leadership of Mr. Pawan Kota. I consider this as a game changing opportunity for CSI, where CSI starts taking leadership role in organizing International level events, around 4 events in a single month. Let us maintain this momentum and motivation. Presentations and publications in all these conferences have been world class.

Calls for Papers, which are regular feature of inviting papers, in most of our conferences is also helping research community and academicians for sharing their good work at CSI forums.

There is an exodus of events by our institutional members and colleges.

Our Call for National Seminars and Call for Workshops in CSI communications Newsletter helped to create motivation and impetus for these activities. Facilitation & hard work done at various levels of CSI has helped to create this climate. During last one year, headquarter and education directorate have also strengthened their setup to help our members for facilitating their endeavors for organizing Conferences.

I would like to put on record my sincere thanks to President Prof. Thrimurthy, all execom members, all chapter chairpersons and SIG conveners for their time, help and guidance and for outstanding achievement and performance on this front. I give my heartiest congratulations to the team members for their dedication and commitment.

Conferences are a good means and platform to promote CSI brand. I feel that we shall look for further quality improvements and work for our new strategy, so that CSI brand becomes the most sought-after one in the industry, especially when other professional bodies like IEEE and ACM are increasing their activities in India.

There is a serious requirement of defining of standards, processes and procedures and some helpful tips and guidelines for conference organizers similar to “How to organize an IEEE Conference: Checklist & Timeline”. We shall also try to create an online infrastructure system for submission of papers & a Conference Management System and later make these repositories available on our Knowledge Management portal. This will be a great service to the research community.

I also strongly feel that CSI Conferences shall be differentiating in quality and delivery and shall also address issues of National interests and high priorities. We may consider categorizing our conferences to focus subjects under three heads: Societal, Industry and Academic.

Collaboration strategy with other professional bodies & institutions may help us to raise our bar further.

There is a need to create a Conference corpus at CSI HQ to support and sustain these activities. World wide professional societies consider conferences and seminars as a good source of revenue, and this option shall be used for strengthening CSI’s overall activities and organization. There is a need to work out a sustainable and growthoriented model for our technical programs.

We request our esteem members and colleagues to kindly prepare their agenda for next year’s National and International conferences and share these plans with the head quarter.

I am hopeful that the next committee will further deliberate on these development aspects and create roadmap for CSI’s high quality conferences and technical programs.

Warm regards.

M D Agrawal Conference Chair, Vice President cum President elect

IEEE Conference Record Number 18690

IEEE

WFEO/FMOI

erence Record Number IEEE 18690 Conference Record Number 18690

International Conference on Emerging Trends in Networks and Computer Communications (ETNCC2011) April 22-24, 2011, Udaipur Organized by: The Institution of Engineers (India), Udaipur Local Centre under the aegis of Computer Engineering Division, IE(I) Supported by Computer Society of India, Divsion IV, Udaipur & e-Agriculture-CSI AprilChapter, 22-24, SIG-WNs 2011, Udaipur College of Technology & Engineering, Udaipur, Techno India NJR Institute of Technology, Udaipur Organized by: World The Federation Institution ofofEngineers (India), Udaipur Local Centre under the aegisUdaipur ofby Computer Engineering Technically Co-Sponsored IEEE Delhi Section Organized by:Organization, The Institution of Engineers (India), Local Centre under the aegis of Computer Engineering Division, IE(I)

Engineering Division, IE(I)

Supported by Computer Society ofSupported India, Divsion IV,Udaipur Chapter, & e-Agriculture-CSI for correspondence:

by Address Computer Society of SIG-WNs India, Divsion IV,Udaipur Chapter, SIG-WNs & e-Agriculture-CSI College of Technology & Engineering, Udaipur, Techno India NJR InstituteUdaipur, of Technology,Udaipur College of Technology & Engineering, Techno India NJR Institute of Technology,Udaipur Dr. Dharm Singh, College of Technology & Engineering, MPUAT, Udaipur (Raj.)-313001, +91-9414736473, dharm@mpuat.ac.in World Federation of Engineering OrganizationWorld ,Technically Co-Sponsored

by IEEE Delhi Section Federation of Engineering Organization ,Technically Co-Sponsored by IEEE Delhi Section

CSI COMMUNICATIONS | MARCH 2011

36

ReSYM – 11 Research Symposium on Pervasive Computing and its Underlying Technologies September 15 - 16, 2011, Chennai, India Organized by TIFAC - CORE and Department of Computer Science Velammal Engineering College Supported by Computer Society of India, Div. IV & Chennai Chapter IEEE Computer Society, Madras Chapter Theme: The research symposium would focus on the challenges and issues to design and build the new spectrum of human-computer interfaces prevalent in Mobile, Ubiquitous & Pervasive Computing and its various underlying technologies. The symposium will serve as a forum for the presentation and exchange of ideas among research scholars and practitioners. The main aim of this symposium is to bring experts, research faculty and research scholars together to discuss about the technological advancements. It envisages a diverse audience of influential attendees from academia, government, and industry who are well placed to shape and promote future research in pervasive computing.

Program Day 1: Keynote Address and Paper Presentations along with project demonstrations.

Day 2: Keynote Address, Paper presentations along with project demonstrations and a Panel Discussion.

Topics of Interest: The symposium Program Committee solicits proposals for panel and papers from academicians, practitioners, research scholars and other with interests in the area of pervasive computing and its underlying technologies. The technical sessions of the event will consist of original papers reporting on theoretical and experimental research, development etc., Original contribution are solicited in all pervasive computing & services research and applications. Contributions of original articles and case studies on industrial applications of pervasive computing are also invited. The following list of topics is provided to indicate the range of potential research areas of interest for this symposium: RFID Technologies, Embedded and Applied Computing, Wireless Sensor Networks, VLSI System Design, Algorithms, Testing and Validation and Mobile Computing.

Important Dates Paper submission

May 20, 2011

Notification of acceptance

June 30, 2011

Camera-ready version due

July 15, 2011

The Symposium

September 15 - 16, 2011 Registration Details

Industry Delegates

Rs. 1500/-

Academic Staff/R&D Personnel

Rs. 1000/-

Research Scholars (Full Time)

Rs. 750/-

Please visit http://tifac.velammal.org/REsym_11.html for the detailed brochure and to download registration form.

Participants are requested to send the duly filled registration form along with Demand Draft in favor of ‘Velammal Engineering College’ payable at Chennai to the Dr. A. Balaji Ganesh, Convener – ReSYM-11 at the communication address given below: Address for Communication Dr. A Balaji Ganesh Convenor - ReSYM-11, TIFAC-CORE, Velammal Engineering College, Ambattur-Redhills Road, Chenai-600 066.

Ph: +91-44-26591860, Fax: +91-44-26591771, Mobile:098427 91925 E-Mail: resym11@gmail.com & abganesh@velammal.org

CSI COMMUNICATIONS | MARCH 2011

37

CSI COMMUNICATIONS | MARCH 2011

38

A REPORT

CONSEG - 2011 : International Conference on Software Engineering 17-19 February, 2011 Report Prepared by Anirban Basu, Chairman, Organizing Committee and Chairman, CSI Bangalore Chapter

Due to the enhanced use of software in all areas, the importance of developing high quality software within the committed time is increasing every day, but Software Engineers are still to find answers to a lot of questions. Computer Society of India organized an International Conference on Software Engineering CONSEG 2011 in Bangalore, during Feb 17-19, 2011, with the theme “Software Quality- the Road Ahead� under the aegis of CSI Division II (Software) and Bangalore Chapter.

Computer Society of India launched an International Conference series on Software Engineering (CONSEG) way back in 1991. Since then the conference has been organized periodically.

The committee had Dr Anirban Basu, Chairman, CSI Bangalore Chapter as the Chairman Organizing Committee and Prof H R Viswakarma, Honorary Secretary of CSI as the Chairman, Program Committee.

Members of CSI Bangalore Chapter, members of academia and of IT industry helped in organizing this conference. CONSEG-2011 received excellent response from all segments of IT professionals and in the two days discussed all aspects of software engineering which impacts quality of processes and products.

Mr. Som Mittal, President, NASSCOM, inaugurated the Conference on February 18 and congratulated Computer Society of India for organizing the conference with this theme. He complimented CSI for the excellent work it is doing for the IT professionals. In his inaugural address, he discussed the changing business scenario and need for innovation to cope with the market dynamics. He discussed the global changes that

are taking place, and changes happening in quality standards. He shared some trends that will have a major impact on how we do business: due to demographics, advancement of technology, and outsourcing to SMEs by large IT organizations. According to him, the advent of UID will change the IT fabric of the country.

Dr. Omkar Rai, Director General of Software Technology Parks of India, who was the Guest of Honour in the Inaugural function, gave some important statistics on the employment provided by the IT Industry. The volume of IT export has grown up in the last one year and so has the number of people employed in this sector, which is now close to 2.3 million. He went on to release the Proceedings of the conference containing a compilation of papers accepted for presentation in the CONSEG 2011 and published by Tata McGraw Hill.

Mr. Hari Kumar Jha, Managing Director, KEONICS, who was the Guest of Honour, gave the views of a layman and how he sees the role of IT in bringing about changes in the society.

Mr. M D Agrawal, President Elect of Computer Society of India discussed the role of CSI in spreading IT awareness in the country through the 66 chapters and few hundred student branches. He discussed the plans of CSI doing more for all sections of the society.

Due to the importance of the theme, a number of organizations joined CONSEG 2011 technical cosponsors and partners and the list includes IEEE, PMI, Bangalore SPIN, SPIN Chennai, and ISACA. In his welcome address, Dr Anirban Basu thanked the sponsors and partners for their generous support which included Microsoft, VMware, IBM, and STPI-Bangalore, IT BT dept of GOK, Siemens, Tally Solutions, QAI,

CSI COMMUNICATIONS | MARCH 2011

39

Robert Bosch, CDAC and Thoughtworks. PC Quest was the Media Partner.

The conference had a very good mix of Theory and Practice from academia and industry. The program was designed to help software engineers in transforming theoretical concepts into robust Software Engineering practices and also to give researchers an opportunity to learn about solving issues waiting for solutions.

Plenary Talks were delivered by Technical Leaders from Microsoft India Development Centre, Hyderabad and from VMware, Australia. Neelesh Kamkolkar of Microsoft dipped into his experiences of how they embrace change through the application lifecycle and convert walls between team members into bridges of trust. Lawrence Crowther of VMWare detailed the infrastructure available for cloud application development.

A number of internationally renowned experts shared their expertise that included

Bill Curtis from CAST,

Murray Cantor from IBM,

Ram Chillarege from Chillarege Inc.,

Alain Abran from University of Quebec,

K S Trivedi from Duke University,

Dan Galorath, from Galorath Consulting,

Ramamohanarao Kotagiri, from University of Melbourne Bill Curtis presented the results of the study done on 288 business

applications against a repository of 900+ rules of architectural and code practices that included the measures of security, performance and changeability.

Murray Cantor’s paper on the generic framework for arriving at the ‘economic value of quality’ and outlined how it affects NPN which also helps to arrive at criteria for making investment decisions.

Ram Chillarege gave us a tool in ODC (Orthogonal Defect Classification) that can extract knowledge about the product and the development process using the process data.

An interesting report from Alain Abran detailed with examples on how to establish a measurement framework for the software measures that will be reliable for the industry to use them.

K S Trivedi described a Markov chain based approach for the performance and availability analysis of cloud provided services.

Dan Galorath discussed in his paper a way of estimating ROI (Return On Investment) through the examination of TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) which in turn helps in making viable portfolio decisions and make IT a profit centre.

Ramamohanarao Kotagiri introduced an effective bug localization using program spectra based debugging.

Leading Software Quality experts from Indian organizations like Infosys, Siemens,

KPMG, Robert Bosch, Thoughtworks, KPMG also addressed the conference and best of the contributed papers were presented

by TCS, ABB, DRDL, MindTree, VMware, Geometric, Indian Statistical Institute and by other academic and IT organizations.

Invited talks on framework for services business, software engineering of products with a global perspective, combining the power of Software Engineering and Product Line Management for project excellence, Adjusted Testable Requirements and testing in the 21st Century enthused the participants.

The conference also had a choice of 5 Pre Conference Tutorials on February 17 on topics of great interest and relevance which included:

Requirements Management by Murali Chemuturi,

Parametric Estimation, by Dan Galorath

Quality Attributes by Alain Abran

Software Processes by Bill Cutis

Software Aging and Rejuvenation by Kishor Trivedi.

The Tutorials were very well attended and served as a good forum for interaction.

The participants enjoyed the deliberations of CONSEG 2011 and felt that the proceedings of CONSEG 2011 will help in enhancing the software engineering skills of both IT professionals and academia. ooo

CSI Signs MOU with Microsoft development, latest developments in relational database technologies and Robotics.

Initiated and driven by Dr Swarnalatha Rao, Chair CSI Division V, CSI and Microsoft Corporation (India) signed an MOU on Feb 8th, 2011 at Bangalore. The MOU provides for the following: 1.

Webcasts by Microsoft targeted towards CSI students, academia and professionals on emerging areas like cloud computing, Mobile Applications development, web

2.

Focused Faculty Development programs by Microsoft at identified CSI Chapters and colleges

3.

Joint seminars and conferences between Microsoft and CSI Chapters / Divisions / SIGs

4.

Exploration of Participation opportunities for CSI members in Microsoft Research center activities

Specific calendar is under preparation for items 1&2 above and will be circulated soon. Chapters/Divisions/SIGS are requested to come forward with proposals for joint seminars and workshops as at item 3 above (the events will be jointly organized and participated by Microsoft and CSI and not mere candidates for Microsoft sponsorship). Research opportunities will be enumerated on finalization.

Please contact Wg Cdr M Murugesan, Director-Education at director.edu@csi-india.org for activities under the MOU. Wg Cdr M Murugesan Director-Education

CSI COMMUNICATIONS | MARCH 2011

40

A REPORT

CSI EAIT 2011 18-20 February 2011 : Second International Conference on Emerging Applications of Information Technology Organized and Hosted by Computer Society of India Kolkata Chapter Report prepared by Debasish Jana and Pinakpani Pal, Program Chairs, EAIT 2011 The overwhelming success of the EAIT 2006 and subsequent persistent enquiries from various corners of the world encouraged CSI Kolkata Chapter (CSIKC) to organize the Second International Conference on Emerging Applications of Information Technology (EAIT 2011). The conference was held at Kolkata from February 18 to 20, 2011 and this time the impact of the conference was even greater. EAIT 2011 enjoyed the active collaboration and cooperation of both the academia and industry – it had over 160 delegates in attendance. CSIKC has always aspired to blend theory and practice, research and production, art and science, and experienced enormous joy in having at last achieved its aim. EAIT 2011 received 322 papers from 578 authors from countries like Australia, Bangladesh, France, India, Iran, Japan, Nepal, Russia, Singapore, Sweden, Thailand and USA. Paper submission was online through Microsoft’s Conference Management Tool. The conference papers were meticulously reviewed by more than 130 members of the International Program Committee and additional reviewers from India and abroad. Review process was double-blind. Finally, 86 papers were selected for oral presentations. The conference proceedings were published by IEEE Computer Society Conference Publishing Service and the papers are available in IEEE XploreTM. Pre-Conference Tutorial Session on February 18, 2011 The pre-conference tutorial session was held at BIT Mesra Kolkata Campus (BITMKC). The session was inaugurated by Dr. Srikumar Mukherjee, Civil Defence Minister of West Bengal in presence of Prof. Ajay Chakrabarty, Vice Chancellor of BIT Mesra. In their rousing speeches, Dr. Mukherjee and Prof. Chakraborty expressed deep praise for the conference. Inaugural session was further enriched by the speeches on organizational and technical plan of the tutorial by Mr. Sib Daspal, CSIKC Chairman and OC Chair, Mr. R T Goswami, Director, BITMKC and Tutorial Chair and Prof. Sraboni Mukhopadhyaya, BITMKC. The panel of speakers comprised of learned luminaries like Mr. Vinay Gupta, CTO, Dynamic Digital Technology, Kolkata (Evolution of Cellular Telecommunication Technologies), Prof. Aditya Bagchi, Indian Statistical Institute (ISI),(Data Model and Security in Social Network), Prof. Subhagata Chattopadhyay, NIST, Berhampur (Scopes and Challenges of Knowledge Mining in Mental Health Research), Prof. Santanu Chattopadhyay and Mr. Santanu Kundu, IIT Kharagpur (Networkon-Chip: The Next Generation of Multi-Processor System-on-Chip).

About 50 participants attended the tutorial talks.

Conference Inaugural Session on February 19, 2011 The inauguration program was held at Science City, Kolkata with the welcome address by Mr. S Daspal, OC Chair and current CSIKC Chairman. Mr. Subimal Kundu, Public Relations Chair talked about CSI and its wide ranging activities. Dr. Debasish Jana, Program Chair, explained the program, its objectives and sketched a brief schedule.

Mr. D P Sinha, Advisory Chair and Prof. Phalguni Mukherjee, Finance Chair also spoke on this occasion. The conference was inaugurated

by Minister of IT, West Bengal, Prof. Debesh Das. The proceedings were formally released by Prof. Das. He emphasized the need for advanced research in the Information Technology. Prof. Das felicitated Prof. Mohit Kumar Roy for his pioneering contribution in Computer Science teaching and research over a long period of time.

Mr. R T Goswami, Tutorial Chair thanked all the sponsors, especially technical co-sponsor IEEE Computer Society and appreciated the efforts of the enthusiastic team.

Keynote Speech and Plenary Talk on February 19, 2011 Prof. Bimal K Roy, Director, ISI presented the keynote address on Basics of Visual Cryptography. Prof. Roy delivered a characteristically lucid explanation of the secret sharing techniques with share distribution algorithm in visual cryptographic scenario with broadcasting of secret, and sending secrets to multiple recipients independently. The keynote address was followed by the plenary talk by Prof. Reynaldo Thompson of University of Guanajuato, Mexico on Blurring Boundaries: Creativity in the Intersections of Art and Technology. The talk presented the work of contemporary and international artists dealing with information technology as a way to engage the viewer into the art piece and react to present issues such as pollution, war technology and commitment towards the environment.

Conference Sessions on February 19-20, 2011 86 papers were scheduled and presented in 15 technical sessions split into 3 parallel sessions. The sessions were on Mobile Computing, Computer Vision, VLSI and Embedded Systems, Swarm Intelligence and Genetic Algorithms, Analytics and Business Intelligence, Software Engineering. Artificial Intelligence, Distributed Computing, Image Processing, Soft Computing, Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, Biomedical Applications, Security and Privacy, Pattern Recognition. The session chairs were Profs. Chandan Majumdar, Salil Sanyal, Rana Dattagupta, Sarmistha Neogy, Samiran Chattopadhyay, Mita Nasipuri, Bibhas C Dhara, Atal Chaudhuri, Sanjoy K Saha of Jadavpur University, Mr. Vinay Gupta, CTO, Dynamic Digital Technology, Profs. Bhabotosh Chanda, Aditya Bagchi of ISI, Prof.

Debashis Saha of IIM Calcutta, Prof. Abhik Mukherjee of Bengal Engineering and Science University, Prof. Subho Chaudhuri of BITMKC, Prof. Subhagata Chattopadhyay of NIST, Berhampur and Mr. M D Agrawal, CSI President Elect. Panel Discussion on Vision 2020 for Information Technology was participated by Mr. Subho Samanta, VP, CTS, Mr. Anjan Bose, CIO, Haldia Petrochemicals, Mr. Prabir Das, Director –Technical, Webel and Mr. Sekhar Mukherjee, Managing Consultant, PwC. Cultural Program on February 19, 2011 A cultural evening was dedicated to the sesquicentennial celebrations of the birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore. The cultural program included recitation by Mr. Pradip Ghosh and vocals by Ms. Jayti Chakraborty, Mr. Bhaskar Thakur and Mr. Tamal Banerjee.

Valedictory Session on February 20, 2011 Valedictory session was chaired by Mr. Diptendu Dutta, MD, Aunwesha Knowledge Technologies and Tutorial Co-Chair in presence of Mr. M D Agrawal, President-Elect of CSI. The wonderful arrangements, precise punctuality, rigorous review process, prompt responsiveness, rich content of the Proceedings were praised by Prof. J K Mandal, University of Kalyani, Dr. A Srivastava, Vice-Chair, ACM, USA, Ms. K Kaur, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar. Many participants demanded that EAIT be a yearly affair. The organizers who spoke on the occasion were Mr. D P Sinha, Mr. Sushanta Sinha, Mr. R T Goswami, Dr. S Roy Chowdhury, Mr. A Bose, Mr. A Nag and S Kundu. Mr. M D Agarwal, CSI President-Elect appreciated the efforts of the members of EAIT 2011 Committee for all the arrangements in the conference and at his request, the entire assembly gave the organizers a standing ovation.

CSI COMMUNICATIONS | MARCH 2011

41

A REPORT

International Conference on Computer Architecture, Networking and Applications (IC-CANA 2011) Conducted by NMAM Institute of Technology Nitte, Karkala, Karnataka, jointly with CSI Division V (Education and Research) Report prepared by Swarnalatha Rao, Chairperson, CSI Division V and Niranjan N Chiplunkar, Dean (Academics), Vice Principal & HOD, CSE, NMAMIT

The International Conference on Computer Architecture, Networking and Applications was held at NMAM Institute of Technology, Nitte on 7th and 8th January 2011 in association with Penn State University, Harrisburg, USA, jointly with CSI Division-V (Education and Research) and other industrial, academic and technical co-sponsors. The conference was a grand success, attended by as many as 360 delegates, drawn from all over the country and abroad. Totally 24 high quality selected papers were presented during the conference.

On 7th January, there were three parallel day-long Tutorial Sessions. First one was on “Research Issues in Signal Integrity” delivered by Prof. Aldo Morales, from Penn State University, Harrisburg, USA. Second Tutorial was on “Video Coding Standards and Research Issues”

by Dr. Karunakar K, a post doctoral fellow from Athlone University, Ireland and on “ARM Processors and Data Parallel Programming” by Dr. Deviprasad from Robosoft Technologies. Third Tutorial Session was on “Cloud Computing” by Mr. Arun Ravindran from Infosys Technologies and on “Workload Management”

by Mr. Jaimon Jose, from Novel Bangalore.

Prof. Omid Ansary, Associate Dean and Professor of Electrical Engineering from Penn State Harrisburg, USA, inaugurated the Conference. Prof. Ansary, in his inaugural speech, gave an overview of genesis of digital computers and highlighted the convergence that has taken place in the Computer architecture and networking domain. The goal of the fifth generation computing is to develop devices that respond to natural language input and are capable of learning and self-organization, he added. He also emphasized the importance of “Cloud computing” and “Grid Computing” in the present day scenario. Prof. Swarnalatha Rao, Chairperson, CSIDivision V (Education and Research) was the Guest of Honour. She conveyed the greetings and good wishes of CSI President Prof. Thrimurthy for the success of the Conference, as well as his appreciation of this high quality conference. Prof Rao gave an overview

of CSI and its various activities, with emphasis on Division-V (Education and Research). Prof. Niranjan Chiplunkar gave details about the conference program and the tutorial sessions arranged as part of the conference. He thanked all the academic, technical and industry sponsors of the event . Mr. N.V. Hegde, Chancellor of Nitte University and President of Nitte Education Trust presided over the Inaugural Function.

In his presidential address, he gave details about the proposed twinning program between NMAMIT, Nitte and Penn State University, Harrisburg, USA. He congratulated organizing team for splendid work.

The Conference Proceedings edited by Dr.Niranjan N. Chiplunkar and Dr. Uday Kumar Shenoy and published

by M/s Excell India Publishers, New Delhi, was released during the Inaugural Function.

The Panel Discussion with the theme “Relevance of Industry Institute Interaction in the Global Education Scenario”, which was moderated by Prof Omid Ansary, was a grand “finale” for the conference. The Panelists were, Prof. Aldo Morales and Prof. Sairam from Penn State University, Harrisburg USA , Prof. Swarnalatha Rao, Chairperson, CSI Division V(E&R), Prof.Kumkum Garg, Director of MIT Manipal, Prof.S.Y.Kulkarni, Principal, NMAM Institute of Technology, Nitte, Mr.Naren K, from IPoint Consulting, Mr. Jaimon Jose from Novell. Prof Ansary requested the Panelists to give their views about the theme of the Panel Discussion. The Delegates of the conference interacted with the panelists with good number of questions. Prof.

Ansary summed up the discussion stating that there is a need for the Industries to interact closely with the Institutions in the Research and Product Development activities. He said that every Institute must develop and showcase its strength in some specific area of technology, so that interested Industrial houses can approach the Institutes for any advice in that chosen field. He also gave details about how his University in Harrisburg is interacting with the industries around.

CSI COMMUNICATIONS | MARCH 2011

42

A REPORT

25th National Convention of Computer Engineers and National Seminar on Networked Home Systems and Services (NHSS-2011) Report prepared by Dr. Dharm Singh Hon. Secretary CSI, Udaipur Chapter & Convener SIG-WNs

Inaugural Session: (L to R: Dr. YC Bhatt, Dr. RC Purohit, Dr. M. Chandwani, Mr. SB Sinha, Dr. SS Chahal, Mr. RN Mathur, Dr. SS Rathore, Dr. Dharm Singh)

A three-days Computer Engineers convention and National Seminar on Networked Home Systems and Services (NHSS-2011) was organized by The Institution of Engineers (India) IE(I), Udaipur local centre under the aegis of Computer Engineering Division of The IE(I) in association with The Computer Society of India: Udaipur Chapter and Special Interest Group-Wireless Networks, Department of Computer Science & Engineering of College of Technology and Engineering (CTAE), Udaipur and Techno India NJR institute of Technology, Udaipur during 4-6 Feb, 2011 at CTAE Campus, Udaipur Rajasthan.

Inaugural Session Prof. S.S. Chahal, Hon’ble Vice- Chancellor, Maharana Pratap University of Agriculture and Technology, Udaipur (MPUAT), inaugurated the event.

In his inaugural speech be highlighted the need for focus of information technology in reaching the masses to improve their lively hood. Prof. Chahal requested

the scientist participating in the Seminar to focus on building Computer models and designs based on local requirements, so that the dependence on imported computer models and design can be reduced. Prof.

Chahal also released the Proceeding of Convention in the book form and Souvenir.

Guest of Honour, R.N. Mathur, GMTD, and BSNL Udaipur informed about the efforts being made by the government to provide Giga-bit connectivity to universities and colleges of the country. Chairman, Computer Engineering Division S.B. Sinha congratulated the organizers and highlighted the activities being carried out by Computer Engineering Division Board, The Institution of Engineers (India). Prof. S.S. Rathore chairman, The Institution of Engineers (India), Udaipur Local Centre elaborated the various activities being carried out by Udaipur Local centre.

Dr. Dharm Singh presented the detailed technical program regarding this three-day event. In the inaugural function of the convention eminent computer engineers

CSI COMMUNICATIONS | MARCH 2011

43

of the country Mr. Sanjay Malhotra , Prof. K. R. Choudhary, and Prof.

M. S. Gaur was facilitated followed by young engineers award.

Felicitated via live video conferencing: Mr. Sanjay Malhortra, IAS and Secretary IT Govt of Rajasthan was felicitated via live video conferencing (Video over IP) in the Inaugural function as he was unable to make it to the event due to some urgent meeting called by the Hon‘ble Minister of Govt. of Rajasthan. He delivered the house about the use of IT in different areas. On the request of Dr. S.S. Chahal he addressed the students for their future enlistment. Dr. Y.C. Bhatt, Honorary Secretary, IEI, Udaipur Local centre delivered vote of thanks.

The inaugural function was followed by keynote addresses of eminent experts of computer engineering Dr. K. R. Choudhary, Professor and Head department of Computer Science and Engineering, M.B.M. Engineering, JNVU, Jodhpur and Dr. Pradeep K. Sinha, Head-National PARAM Super Computing facility, CDACPune.

M.S. Ramanujam Memorial Lecture The M.S. Ramanujam memorial lecture was delivered by Dr. Manohar Chandwani, Director, Institute of Engineering and technology Indore. In his lecture he said the Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) have flourished to a large extent in outdoor (of home) services such as business, trade, Governance, industries, academia and many other walks of life. The indoor activities are also under thoughts of the researchers involved in the ICT research. The home is getting modern and advanced owing to the advancements in the network technologies and services. There has been tremendous growth in the concepts and their realizations to make home smart, ubiquitous, intelligent and automated for the betterment of human life that is getting busy in the indoor and outdoor places of home.

IT enabled Home Technologies: IT enabled Home Technologies (ITeH) are the set of technologies that make home networked, smart and ubiquitous. These technologies include LAN/CAN, optical fibers, wired/ wireless protocols, service oriented architecture, bandwidth and noise elimination paradigms.

Dr. Manohar Chandwani addressed the house about the technological aspects of ITeH that are influencing the life inside home. These aspects include the conceptual thinking of how to transform the ancient methods of home living into modern style of life living. The life aspects inside the home that are protocol based need to be transformed into the protocols of technologies so as to make the home appliances information technology driven. A family lives in the home with a number of appliances that provide services in the basic form while intermittent interaction with the appliances.

However, the ICT has caused the man to think the use of various appliances each one of which is IT enabled and active as per the convenience of home user.

P = NP : Polynomial Solvability of 3-SAT Day one of the seminar was concluded with Technical session -1. Various technical papers on challenging issues in home network design were discussed in this session. In technical session 2 various issues in efficient communication protocols and routing protocols were presented and discussed. The highlight of the session was the keynote address by Professor Narandra Singh Chaudhari, Dean (Research and Development) regarding polynomial solvability time of 3SAT problem.

Prof. Narendra S. Chaudhari, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Indore (M.P.) delivered talk that settles the famous millennium problem, P Verses NP. He presented deterministic polynomial algorithm for one of the

NP-Complete problems, namely 3-SAT. Prof. Choudhary said that a few important areas requiring immediate investigations are: (i) Cryptosystems and Security algorithms relying on NP-Completeness, (ii) Clustering of large data sets for Rule extraction, automated Knowledge Discovery, Classification, Pattern analysis, and Machine Intelligence, (iii) Integer linear programming formulations, and other discrete optimization problems arising in decision theory, (iv) Scheduling problems in engineering (e.g., Job-shop scheduling, Flow-shop scheduling, etc.), and, (v) Variety of other interesting NP-Complete problem like problems in Graph theory like Chromatic Number problem, Hamiltonian circuit problem, etc.

Wireless Sensor Networks In technical session-3 resarch papers on microwave communication were presented. Moreover Dr. Harish kumar of UIET, Chandigarh, delivered the keynote speech in this session. He said that the wireless sensor networks (WSN) target a large variety of applications ranging from volcano monitoring, home security to military and deep space applications. In his address some of the main open issues and challenges, focusing on the design and architecture of the wireless sensor networks are highlighted.

In technical Session-4 various challenges and solutions regarding the research in application of home networks in rural management, e-education and e-governance were discussed. Dr. Pragya Jain and Mr. Gopal Krishen IIT, Delhi delivered the keynote speech for the session on Parallel Processing and Grid computing.

Day two concluded with poster presentation of various research works in the Computer Networking domain. The 25th National Convention celebrated its silver jubilee at Techno-India NJR Institute of Technology with a culture extravaganza followed by dinner in the evening of day-2.

Genetic Operators Induced Machine Learning Day 3 witnessed technical session 5 and 6 on network security, quality of service and cluster computing. Chirag S Thaker & S M Shah presented a paper on “Genetic Operators Induced Machine Learning in Board Game Playing” which uses Genetic Algorithm as an optimization method that can be applied on variety of application areas like Board Game Playing, Efficient Network Packet routing algorithms and Network resource optimization. Mr. Thaker stressed that Genetic Operators are very effective tools to optimally tune the evaluation functions which are prime factors to make good moves.

This will make artificial game playing programs more search efficient and faster to reach at ‘good’ solutions.

Recommendations 1. The seminar highlighted the requirement of basic research on the mathematical models of computer engineering to further enhance the computational efficiency of various services, application and programs and for facilitating the same, there is a strong requirement of liberal funding for such mathematical investigations and real time application & investigations.

2. The seminar also highlighted the requirement of greater focus on evolutionary techniques in computer engineering, as the Computer Engineering domain is evaluation sensitive.

3. Greater emphasis of the need for a strong national broadband policy focusing on making India top broadband nations and the polices consistent towards this goal should be made feasible and easily assessable to the research community.

4. The research in the ITeH Technologies is on its way to mature technologically. The presently, the cost of ITeH is not affordable in the present economic and commercial circumstances. The related technologies need to be more advancing at lower cost.

CSI COMMUNICATIONS | MARCH 2011

44

Coimbatorre

Chapter News Please check detailed news at: http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/chapternews-March2011 SPEAKER(S)

TOPIC AND GIST

CHENNAI Prof. Mohan Sundar Rajan

12 February 2011: Quiz competition “CSI: Discover Thinking” First inter-school quiz for young learners (classes 6 to 9) under the CSI Discover Thinking program was organized to nurture young minds with the objective of building strong India. 35 schools participated in the event and prices were given to 6 schools.

For the benefit of young students, a special Science talk by an Eminent Science Writer Prof. Mohan Sundar Rajan was organized. He narrated his experience with Neil Armstrong, when he interviewed him after returning from the Moon. He motivated students to think and become intelligent.

Editor’s Choice : Quizzes provide us with fun, promote our knowledge at the same time, increase our information, making us feel that we don’t spend time for nothing in the contrary it evokes our emotions for more and more of spending valuable time to learn, discover and communicate with others.

Chief guest presenting the first prize after the quiz

COIMBATORE Mr. Satish Babu, Vice-President Elect of CSI

17 February 2011: CSI Regional Student Convention (RSC) for Region VII The focus theme for this year’s convention was “Latest trends in Computer science & Information Technology”.

The convention saw 300 participants from premier universities and colleges all over South India participating in 5 inter-disciplinary events namely Better Solutions, Crack O Hack, Online Programming – Programacion, Paper Presentation and Software Development Contest (SDK).

In his inaugural address, Satish Babu gave an overview of various cutting-edge and disruptive technologies that are going to impact the world of IT and how students could benefit by keeping abreast with these trends by participating in such innovative and challenging events.

CSI Regional Student Convention (RSC) for Region VII

Mr. A. Mohanarangan, GM, Tulip Telecom, Chennai

19 January 2011: Monthly seminar on “MPLS VPN with last mile”

CSI COMMUNICATIONS | MARCH 2011

45

GWALIOR Dr. M.V.S. Suryanarayana, Joint Director,DRDE & Mr. 28 January 2011: “Inter-school Computer Quiz” Dilip Shitoley, Chairman CSI Gwalior Chapter An on-line computer quiz was organized inviting competitors from 20 schools.

Four school teams were chosen for the final round. The competition had 5-rounds and each round had 2 questions per team. The first was a Multiple Choice Question, while the second demanded identification of Abbreviations and Shortcuts. The third round required Html Algocryptics. The fourth round was the Visual round. The final round was a stimulating round with an interesting name ‘Rack Your Brain’.

Technisia-2011 - Inter – School Computer Quiz Competition

HYDERABAD Ashwin Waknis, Vijesh Rangaswami, Anand Sawant and 27 January 2011: Workshop on “Cloud Computing” Kishor Bhalerao In all five sessions were conducted 1.

Cloud Computing by Ashwin Waknis,

2.

Virtualization – Foundation for Cloud Infrastructure by Vijesh Rangaswami,

3.

Infrastructure as a Service: Amazon Cloud by Ashwin Waknis,

4.

Software as a Service: Salesforce by Anand Sawant and

5.

Human Resources: Expectations of the industry from student community

by Kishor Bhalerao.

Section of audience at the “Workshop on Cloud Computing”

SRIJI-ONGOLE Mr. T. SatyaNarayana, Dr. Syama Thrimurthy and Prof. 25 – 31 January 2011: Orientation program on “Tally” Thrimurthy A week-long orientation program on Tally accounting package was organized to train students on using Tally, which is a complete business accounting and inventory management software that provides various facilities like Govt. supported formats, multilingual operations, online functions, and processing for small and medium businesses.

Prof. Thrimurthy speaking at the Tally orientation program

Editor’s Choice : Accounting software is typically composed of various modules, different sections dealing with particular areas of accounting. Among the most common are: Core Modules

Accounts receivable – where the company enters money received

Accounts payable – where the company enters its bills and pays money it owes

General ledger – the company’s “books”

Billing – where the company produces invoices to clients/customers

Stock/Inventory – where the company keeps control of its inventory

Purchase Order – where the company orders inventory

Sales Order – where the company records customer orders for the supply of inventory

Cash Book – where the company records collection and payment

SURAT Prof. Thrimurthy, Mr. Bhagubhai Patel, Mr. Kiritbhai Patel, 11-12 February 2011: National Conference on “Technology Driven Society” Dr. D R Shah, Dr. Manohar Chandwani, Dr. Naren Burade, Dr. N L Kalathia, Dr. Bankim Patel, Mr. Tejas Sura, Mr. Nikunj Patel, Dr Rajendra Sonar and Mr. Sachin Maind

uote

Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.

– George S. Patton CSI COMMUNICATIONS | MARCH 2011

46

The expert talks were given by Mr. Tejas V. Sura, Co-founder of the Mumbai Chapter of Project Management Institute, USA, Mr. Nikunj Patel from Patni Computer Systems Ltd., Dr. Rajendra M. Sonar from IIT, Mumbai and founder of iKen Solutions Pvt. Ltd., Technology Business Incubator and Mr. Sachin Maind from APCC, Bangalore on the topics of Value of Project Management for the New Generation; Software as a Service; Next Gen BI using Knowledge-based Approach; Quality assurance- general and software respectively.

PRYAAS 2011, the IT and Management students meet had participation from more than 20 different Institutes across the state and as many as around 200 participants. The two day event had eleven different IT and Management contests including paper presentations.

National Conference on ‘Technology Driven Society’ in progress

The IT contests included - Relay Race, Code Complete, Ride Begins with Pride, Animation and project Presentations. The Management contests included Biz Quiz, Role plays, Scene and mean, online simulation game of trading “stock 20-20”, advertisement making contest “ADicitive” and Treasure hunt.

TIRUCHIRAPALLI Prof. S Nagasundari, Associate Professor, M.A.M. 24 February 2011: Guest lecture on “Database and Data Mining” College of Engineering Prof. Nagasundari started her lecture by explaining database terminologies such as data, information, knowledge, database, dbms and datawarehouse. She covered following topics in her technical session: The need for data mining, What is Data mining, Datamining architecture, Functionalities, Issues and various Applications of Data Mining.

Student Branches Please check detailed news at: http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/chapternews-March2011 SPEAKER(S)

TOPIC AND GIST

ABES ENGINEERING COLLEGE, GHAZIABAD Mr. Manjeet Singh, DM (Retd) DoT, Government of India 9 February 2011: A Talk on “Mobile Number Portability” Mr. Manjeet Singh highlighted the concepts and methodology adopted by India, scope, past trends across the globe and expected future trend in India.

DEHARADUN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, DEHRADUN Prof. Amit Agarwal, CSE Department, DIT

5 February 2011: Technical lecture on “Ubiquitous Computing”

Dr. Mangal Sain from Dongseo University, South Korea 19-20 February 2011: Technical lecture on “Ethical Hacking” Mr. Sunny Vaghela JAWAHARLAL DARDA INSTITUTE OF ENGINEERING & TECHNOLOGY (JDIET), YAVATMAL Prof. P. M. Jawandhia, JDIET, Yavatmal

15 January 2011: Expert lecture on “Writing Scietific and Technical Research Papers” Prof. Jawandhia explained the idea to the students about how to write an original research paper & provided related guidelines.

You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humor teaches tolerance.

uote

– W. Somerset Maugham CSI COMMUNICATIONS | MARCH 2011

47

JAWAHARLAL NEHRU ENGINEERING COLLEGE, AURANGABAD 1 – 6 February 2011 : CSI Week Two events were conducted in CSI Week: • Stack Overflow – A technical quiz competition A technical quiz competition was conducted based on Data Structures and C programming language. The competition was conducted in two phases: 1. For Freshmen 2. For Seniors •

TECHTENET L to R - Bhupinder Gulati, Parminder Kaur, H H Shinde, Pratap Dhopte, Deepa Deashpande.

Debate Competition : In the Debate Competition, participants were grouped in teams of 4, and the topic was given to the teams 10 minutes before their turn to speak. Two members of a team would speak for the topic, and two against. The event witnessed very stiff competition as over 20 teams debated ferociously to win the Best Team Award.

KONGU ENGINEERING COLLEGE Mr. K Kalidasan, President, Osai Environmental 24 January 2011: Guest lecture on ”Service to Society” Organization Mr. Kalidasan began the lecture citing the current sanitary condition of the city of Coimbatore. He then spoke about the various plant and animal species and the nomenclature of a few. He quoted that Dodo, a terrestrial bird has helped the Editor’s Choice : Biodiversity is the variety and differences existence of certain species of trees. Now that those birds are extinct, growth of among living organisms from all sources, including those trees have also grown less. He also spoke about another extinct species in terrestrial, marine, and other aquatic ecosystems and India, the pink-headed duck. the ecological complexes of which they are a part. This includes genetic diversity within and between species and He mentioned that how Bio-diversity leads to prevention of loss of rare genetic of ecosystems. Thus, in essence, biodiversity represents all species. He provided statistical information on species of plants and birds and life. that India has two out of the 18 Bio-Diversity Hot Spots namely The Himalayas and The Western Ghats.

Mr. Saravananselvan (Sharan) Ascendant Technology, India

Gurunathan,

GM, 28 January 2011: Guest lecture on ”Cloud Computing - Introduction” Mr. Saravananselvan (Sharan) Gurunathan spoke on the importance of cloud computing in the prevailing IT trends. He defined cloud computing in his presentation. He also emphasized that most of the websites including Amazon are based on cloud computing and that it has a great potential for developments too.

He briefed that there is a possibility that the future of the IT sector is based on this genre. He also spoke of the security problems that might arise. He finally spoke about the technicalities such as the characteristics and design considerations of cloud computing.

Mr. Gurunathan speaking on Cloud Computing KLN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING 31 January 2011 : Contests on the occasion of Republic Day Celebrations Various contests such as Essay, Elocution, Multimedia, Debate, Drawing and Art from Waste were conducted on this occasion.

MAR BASELIOS COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY, TRIVANDRUM Final year Computer Science Engineering students

22 January 2011 : Workshop on “Web Designing” One-day workshop covered the basics of web site design using HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

28 January 2011 : Technical Quiz Competition “Bytes” Participation was restricted to a team of two with written prelims to find five finalists. Written prelims were conducted on 15 Jan. in which 32 teams took part.

Cash prizes were given to first two positions.

Technical Quiz Competition - ‘Bytes’

Editor’s Choice : For individuals, employability depends on: their assets in terms of the knowledge, skills and attitudes they possess the way they use and deploy those assets the way they present them to employers crucially, the context (e.g. personal circumstances and labour market environment) within which they seek work.

CSI COMMUNICATIONS | MARCH 2011

48

MEPCO SCHLENK ENGINEERING COLLEGE, SIVAKASI Mr. J. Maruthupandi, Assistant Prof. - IT dept. Ms. Uma 6 February 2011 : Apptitude test on C language “C-Box” Saravanan, Chairperson - CSI - students Branch The event c-box was based on aptitude questions related to C language MET’S INSTITUTE OF ENGINEERING, NASIK Dr. B. M. Naik (Education Advisor), Dr. V.P.Wani 25-27 February 2011 : National Conference on “Innovations and Trends in (Principal, MET’s IOE BKC), Dr. Omprakash Kulkarni Computer and Communication Engineering ITCCE-2011” (Technical Director, Sharada Invention Pvt LTD) and Dr. R. Venkatesh (President, Power Quality Div, EPCOS India Pvt. Ltd. Nashik) Dr. B. M. Naik addressed the importance of innovation. He defined innovation as the key for the institution progress, national progress and the important factor in development. He said “Institutes which are leading in innovation are leading the world; India is embarking on new technologies and institutions are responsible for providing the world with great innovators.” He also said that “TOMORROWS TECHNOLOGY ARE TO BE TAUGHT TODAY. Having huge knowledge is not important but having a small discovery is very important.” He requested the students to not only have big dreams but also to convert those dreams into strong actions.

Dr. Omprakash Kulkarni delivered Keynote Address on “Smart Grid through Renewable Energy for inclusive growth for rural India” and Dr. R. Venkatesh spoke on “Research Methodology and Innovation”.

Inauguration of ITCCE 2011: From Left Prof. R. Rehpade, Dr. V. P. Wani, Dr. Omprakash Kulkarni, Mr. Samir Bhujbal, Mr. B.M.Naik, Mrs. Shefali Bhujbal, Prof. Aruna Deogire.

NATIONAL ENGINEERING COLLEGE, KOVILPATTI Mr. J. Jerart Julus, Lecturer, IT Department

9 February 2011: Expert lecture on “Cloud Computing” Mr. Julus explained about the fundamentals of cloud computing. Also he explained about the importance and future of cloud computing. He motivated the students to develop projects in this emerging area that meets the industrial expectations.

Dr. D. Manimegalai, Head of IT department, Mrs. V. 15 February 2011: Game Development Contest “SCRATCHIT” Vasantha, CSI Student Counsellor More than 20 students (10 teams) enthusiastically participated in the contest.

Best game was selected and rewarded with suitable prize. The software packages used for game development were like Alice, Scratch etc.

Three new student branches were opened as detailed below :

•

JB Institute of Engineering and Technology, Hyderabad Inauguration took place on 19 January 2011, when Mr. Raju Kanchibhotla was present and a guest lecture by Mr. Rajagopal, CEO, Winnou Systems was organized on open source tools.

•

Geethanjali College of Engineering and Technology, Secunderabad Inauguration took place on 3 February 2011 in the presence of Prof. P Thrimurthy, Prof. H R Vishwakarma and Prof. Ashutosh Mishra.

•

Institute of Engineering and Technology, Indore Inauguration took place on 7 February 2011 in the presence of Prof. P Thrimurthy, Mr. K L Raju, and Mr. I V L Narsimha Rao.

Obituary CSI regrets to inform all the members about the sad demise of Prof. Krishnankutty, Professor and Head, Department of Information Technology, Government Engineering College, Barton Hill, Trivandrum and Kerala Student Coordinator on 04.03.2011 morning. He was aged 42 years and is survived by wife and two daughters.

He was the chapter chair of CSI Trivandrum during 2003- 05 and a very active member. CSI gratefully remembers his active contribution for NSC 2010 inspite of his ill health. He was President of College of Engineering Alumni Association.

CSI Wishes that lord almighty gives strength to his family to bear this irrecoverable loss and may his soul rest in peace.

— CSI Trivandrum Chapter & Honorary Chief Editor

Licenced to Post Without Prepayment MR/TECH/WPP MR/T / ECH//WPP 241/ 241/WEST/09-11 /WEST/0 / 9 11

Registered with Registrar of News Papers for India - RNI 31668/78 Regd. No. MH/MR/WEST-76-2009-11 MH//MR/W / EST 76 2009 11

If undelivered return to : CSI, 122, TV Indl. Estate, Mumbai - 400 030

New Editorial Board for CSI Communications

Dr. Rajendra M Sonar

Dr. Achuthsankar S. Nair

New editorial board will take charge of CSI Communications from April 2011 onwards. Following dignitaries are selected as members of the Editorial Board Dr. Rajendra M. Sonar, IIT, Mumbai

Dr. Achuthsankar S. Nair, University of Kerala, Trivandrum and

Dr. Debasish Jana, Dynamic Digital Technology Pvt Ltd, Kolkata Dr. Rajendra M Sonar will be the Chief Editor for CSI Communications.

Dr. T V Gopal, former Chief Editor of CSI Communications and Mr. H R Mohan, member of Publications Committee will act as Advisors to the Editorial Board.

Mrs. Jayshree A. Dhere will be the Resident Editor for CSI Communications.

Here is a brief introduction of the newly selected members of the Editorial Board –

Dr. Rajendra M. Sonar Rajendra M Sonar has been with Shailesh J Mehta School of Management, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. He is an Associate Professor of Information Systems/ Technology, and holds a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Pune University.

Knowledge based systems and hybrid intelligent systems have been his areas of research since one and half decades. He is well versed with various software technologies and has published extensively in international and national journals and in conference proceedings. His book titled ‘Next Generation Business Intelligence: a knowledge based approach’ is in print. Before joining IIT Bombay, he worked with National Institute of Bank Management (NIBM), Pune as an Assistant Professor in IT area group. He is also Founder of iKen Solutions, a company incubated at IIT Bombay’s Business Incubator under SINE specializing in developing business solutions backed by hybrid artificial intelligence; using hybrid AI to build integrated, operational and real-time analytics. iKen Solutions is research spin-off of IIT Bombay based on his work.

Dr. Achuthsankar S. Nair Dr. Achuthsankar S. Nair is the Director of the State InterUniversity Centre of Excellence in Bioinformatics, University of Kerala, at Thiruvananthapuram. He is an electrical engineer, who earned his degrees from University of Kerala, IIT-Bombay and University of Cambridge, UK. He has taught in various engineering colleges and Universities, both in India and abroad since 1987. He

Dr. Debasish Jana

has served as Director of C-DIT, Govt. of Kerala (2001-2004) and also as Visiting Professor in University of Korea, Seoul (2007).

He has more than 12 popular science books to his credit and has guided 12 PhD candidates successfully. He has interdisciplinary interests in music and history and is currently a part-time student in Music at University of Kerala for his second Ph.D. He has been associated with CSI since late 1980s.

Dr. Debasish Jana Dr. Debasish Jana, Ph.D. (Computer Science, Jadavpur University), is currently working as Director-Mobile Applications Group with Dynamic Digital Technology, Kolkata. He obtained his Masters in Computer Science degree from the University of Waterloo, Canada, Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Science from Jadavpur University, and MBA (Finance) from IGNOU, New Delhi.

He has extensive professional experience of more than twentythree years in IT industry including PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Anshin Software, Techna, Millenium, and BFL Software. He has been serving as Visiting Faculty for more than fourteen years at premiere institutions including Jadavpur University and BIT Mesra Kolkata Campus. A Fellow Member of IETE and IE(I), Senior Member of IEEE, ACM, CSI, Dr. Jana has authored two popular books on C++ and Java, published by PHI Learning. He has coauthored a book with Prof D P Mukherjee on Graphics, published

by PHI Learning. He has authored many papers in national and international conferences and journals. He has been involved in CSI Kolkata Chapter for many years as Treasurer and MC member at different times, and will be the Vice Chairman of CSI Kolkata Chapter for 2011-12. He has been involved in CSI Kolkata Chapter activities in several national and international conferences including EAIT 2006, CSI-2006, CSI-RDHS 2008, EAIT 2011 as spearheading role in Program Committee. His work and research interests include object-oriented programming, cloud computing, grid computing, mobile computing and mobile application development.

Mr. Suchit Gogwekar Executive Secretary Computer Society of India.

This is subject to approval by the CSI ExecCom. Published by Suchit Gogwekar for Computer Society of India at 122, TV Indl. Estate, S K Ahire Marg, Worli, Mumbai-400 030 • Tel.: 022-2493 4776 and Website : www.csi-india.org • Email : hq@csi-india.org and printed by him at GP Offset Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai 400 059.