IBM Develothon 2010 concludes in Mumbai

MUMBAI, INDIA: After covering a distance of over 4598 km across 12 Indian cities and communicating with around 5000 people related to software developers community, the IBM Software Group's unique developer skill marathon — Develothon 2010, finally ended its journey in Mumbai on Friday.

According to Himanshu Goyal, IBM India’s country manager for Academic Initiatives, Software Group, the Develothon2010 which started on 22 March in Mumbai, passed through various stages across tier II and III cities along with the metros, and was successful in bringing the software developer's community together and sharing the knowledge about new technologies and applications.

“It has given us a huge feedback and encouragement. We found the people to be well aware about IBM DeveloperWorks and using it for past 10 years or more. We also found people's level of knowledge and expertise on software to be enormous and were well-aware,” Goyal said.

About 250 people participated in the Develothon at Hyderabad.

Goyal added that the people participation in Delhi was huge with good level of awareness and software expertise. They were very eager to explore more about the DeveloperWorks and showed great enthusiasm to learn new things in the field of software development. 

IBM India has created DeveloperWorks page on Facebook and MyDeveloper's blog  where people can share their experiences and understanding about IBM software applications. They interact and communicate with like minded people, that allows to build-up their skills, knowledge and a developer's community around IBM software.

On a larger scale, this initiative would have a positive impact on the careers of software developers — including students, software professionals and experts as they will have better avenues and scope of serving and working with clients and customers using IBM software applications and programs.

About some of Develothon 2010's interesting moments, Goyal talked about the Bangalore event, where he came across an amateur developer, who explained about algorithmic methods by comparing it with ants' home building methods.

“While in Delhi, a government official, Dr. P K Goel, chief administrative officer for Information Systems, spoke on the computerization of the Indian reservation and ticketing system and later went on to win the Unconference event based on huge response and appreciation from the audience,” Goyal added.

Goyal reiterated that it was people's response that made the event a great success. The event would continue next year too and will try to cover more cities so more people could participate and gain the knowledge about IBM DeveloperWorks and new technologies.