Yarl IT Hub

During my last visit to Jaffna, on the invitation of Ms Gowri Ananthan, one of the founder members of Yarl IT Hub of Jaffna, I had the pleasure of attending the Yarl IT Hub’s January 2013 meeting with my friend Wasantha Wijewardhana. The event was held on Saturday, January 26, 2013 at IIS (Institute of Informatics Studies) City Campus.

Gowri is trying to make a prototype under the name of Himalaya Creations, so that there would be a proof of success and it could give courage for others to come back and form an industry in Jaffna, Gowri believes.

She further says that the Silicon Valley / an Industry will not form by itself, and someone should work on it. As per the vision states, Yarl IT Hub is formed to make Jaffna the next Silicon Valley.

There were around 50 youth at the meeting, mostly from ICT institutes in Jaffna. The organization’s vision is “To make Jaffna the next Silicon Valley.” There is nothing wrong in dreaming big.

This is the agenda of the meeting.

Introduction to mobile computing

Presenter: Bala

Team Lead

Student answers to 4 questions with respect to future of mobile computing – Gowthami from IIS

Introduction to Android Programming

Presenter: Vanjikumaran

Senior Software Engineer

Augmented Reality

Presenter: Vimal

Senior Software Engineer

Demo: Sujeewan (Demonstrated his final year under graduate project)

Arimaa team update – on the progress of the implementation of their concept)

Presenter: Jayakrishnan Rajagopalasarma (Leader of the team which won Yarl Geek Challenge – Season 1)

Yarl IT Hub Update

Presenter: Sarveswaran

Lecturer

We listened to the first 4 presentations and out of them only the first two sessions were in English. I wished the rest of the programs also would be in English. But if the youth are more comfortable with Tamil, presenting in Tamil can be justified. I found the participants’ English was good enough though.

The presenters were very energetic and knew their subject areas well and the attendees also were very enthusiastic and actively participated in the sessions.

Their blog is quite resourceful and you can download past presentation slides and articles as well. I think they should also upload the presentations of the January event also as quickly as possible.

It is high time that Refresh Colombo people invited members of Yarl IT Hub for their presentations and vise versa. We can achieve a lot together.

Please find the photo album of the meet up at https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=oa.423090191104567&type=1. In case you cannot access it, please join the group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/264218806991707/ so that you can access it.