Irfan’s Corner on the Web On Mac, Linux, Grid, Virtualization and Software Technology

Its an unfair World!!!

Imagine how would you feel if you work very hard on a project, as if your life depended on it for more than a year, and then when you think its up to a stage where you can show it to the world take it to a competition. And whats the result?? A project which has 10% functionality of your own project wins the first price, and you don't even make it in the top 3! That hurts!

The competition in question is NASCON 2007, held in Islamabad. The competition was sponsored by EnterpriseDB, a respected open source consulting company around PostgreSQL. I have no clue who selected the judges for the competition, but of the 6 evaluations which were carried out, only 2, I repeat only 2 actually took demos, and both of them appreciated the complexity of the project. Whereas the 4 others they just listened to the theory and moved to the next stall!

The project which won in my category was done by Misbah Mubarak, a class fellow of mine, who had developed a mobility framework for Java application only. My project, being an operating system, provided mobility for all application regardless of implementation language, and hence theirs was a subset of mine, however the judges selected hers to awarded the top prize! Everyone from the judges, spectators and the Vice-president of EnterpriseDB appreciated our project and recommended that we should start a consultancy around this project.

But I take heart from the fact, that research projects generally do not win software competitions. An alumni from my lab, who had worked on a Grid middleware framework caleld JClarens, failed to win any competition here in Pakistan, primarily because, as in my case probably, they did not comprehend the project. However due to his project he ended up going to CERN, Geneva, Caltech, USA and finally Stanford university for higher studies.

So my advice to everyone involved in research projects in Pakistan is not to lose heart if they fail to make their mark in any local competition, they must remember Pakistan is backwards in terms of technology and the judges in these competitions may be equally backwards and narrow -minded.