Virtual Scientist

Jan 2017 would mark 8 years of me out of college and about 7 years of following the dream full-time - wanting to connect every institution in the world back to their alumni! That's Awesome!! can be the first reaction. But wait! Is it really? People these days are building startups, raising funding and going places within 2-3 years! “What the hell are you doing?” my best friend taunted me. The question put me in deep thought. As I discovered the connecting dots, I thought it would be good to share them: The journey has been tough, some ups and many downs, but I enjoyed all along the way! When I started, I knew it's not gonna be easy and I was prepared for a long haul. Though I had ideas, I did not have a plan. After spending close to 8 months exploring various thoughts, I decided to work full-time on the idea of Vaave. We started Coherendz in the extra passage space at the guest house of BHUMI (an NGO we volunteered for). The trade off was to manage it for being allowed t

My friend Arpita asked me to do a one day workshop on Web Development at B.V. Raju Institute of Technology, I obliged. But then came the challenge, I had to teach building websites in a day! Everything I learnt in last 10 years is to be taught in 5 hours! It was tougher than building an awesome website. I realized that being an expert at something also calls for being able to explain it to a newbie in a concise & succinct manner. I took up the challenge and started listing down the skills required to build websites. Technical know-how was definitely required. But for someone who is just starting, the most important skill she needs to know is a different one - The Ability to Copy Code! Copying is a Skill! This realization was very profound! It was how I learnt building websites. In my early undergrad days, I was amused with Javascript, I used to go to Internet Cafe, download source files of various demos from dynamicdrive.com and used to play around with them for hours! Fro