There are 3 aspects to the professional me: My work as a freelancer, as a member of SDRC and a Developer at ThoughtWorks, India.

• Life @ SDRC: I got a significant idea of working professionally (understanding the case for creating a system, being responsible for one's deliverables, delighting stakeholders and many other learnings) at Software Development and Research Centre, SICSR. SDRC is a student activity at SICSR where students develop software for the college primarily using FOSS, and in exchange get a hands-on experience, opportunity for R&D, and priceless learnings (sadly, nothing else, I mean nothing material :)). God blessed me with this experience at SDRC; interacting with our guide and mentor Prof. Ashish Shah, working in a team (we boasted of our agile style of work; more because of our lesser documentation or lack of it, than anything else :)) and satisfying the needs of the staff members (our irrational customer), helped me become a better application designer, developer and [mini] business analyst in a big way.
• I had been a freelancer for more than 3 years before I got selected by ThoughtWorks, India through our campus placements (on Tuesday, 26^th August, 2008). It has been one of the most defining day in my life till date. What a recruitment procedure; a mix of suspense, thrill, ups and downs, test of patience and persistence. But it was a great experience, I enjoyed every second of it! ThoughtWorks, my dream job, my wish was granted. Thank God! I have been selected as Application Developer at ThoughtWorks and raring to be a part of ThoughtWorks University (TW's signature induction program for graduates) which starts 8^th January, 2008. I'll be able to share more about my play (I mean, my work)** and life at ThoughtWorks subsequently.

As for my interest areas pertaining to my field of work:

• Ruby Programming
• Xtreme Programming
• Supply Chain Management
• Retail Business Automation
• Business Process Management and Re-engineering
• CRM
• BI/DW
• Banking and Financial Markets are topics I dig more often. 

Technical Skill Set:

• Programming Languages known: Ruby, JavaScript, Java, a little VB.net
• For web applications: Drupal, Wordpress, Javascript, XHTML, CSS, XML
• Databases worked with: MySQL, Oracle, MSSQL, PostgreSQL
• Others: IBM Rational Suite, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Flash, Soundforge Sound Editor, Adobe Premier Video Editor.

 

** Afterthought: To understand why I use the words "play" and "work" interchangeably, you ought to give a reading to Chapter II of Adventures of Tom Sawyer -by Mark Twain.

 

My Portfolio

Using one or more of all that I have mentioned in my technical skill set, these are my creative expressions (I've also rated them on a scale of 1-low to 5-highest, to signify the amount of learning and fun I got from doing that work.)

Application Software:

SN Business Intelligence ****: I designed & developed a 3-tier Application for Himalaya Traders to act as a complete document handling and Management Information System. This system is being used extensively for everyday work and its users are more than happy to be liberated from inefficient and redundant business activities in the sales and accounts process. This is a project that drilled into my head the significance of understanding user requirements and why agile works.

At Software Development and Research Centre, SICSR:

Online Admission System ***: As a part of SDRC in SICSR, I was largely involved in the end-to-end design and development of this system. SICSR accepts the applications for admission using this LAMP system for its post-graduate (MBA-IT and MSC-CA) and under-graduate (BCA and BBA-IT) programmes. We were a group of 4 who worked on it (Vinay, Alok, Samar and Deepak). Our group at SDRC is also recognized for delivering many other tools that are in use at our college.

Admin Module for the Online Admission System *****: I am not creating a new bullet for this application just for increasing the count, but to show that this system is very significant. Its size is almost 6 times the size of the Online Admission System and it serves the purpose of automating many of the activities involved in admission that were earlier done using only spreadsheets. It also caters to all the reporting requirements of the Symbiosis International University. Many components of this system are similar to gaming applications and involved lots of business rules and logic. Which is why I enjoyed working on it. I also got a chance to use AJAX and complete table-less design once again on this project.

 

MasterBroker **: This is Java Servlet based web application, that simulates the interactions (registration, transaction business logic, portfolio maintenance) between a share broker and his customers. Something similar to maintaining a portfolio on www.moneycontrol.com. (Though I dedicatedly worked on it and it is complete; but because its not in use, I don't consider it a great accomplishment. It was only my graduation project. :)

Websites:

 

www.himalayatraders.in ****: is an interactive site developed using flash. Its purpose is to showcase the products that Himalaya Traders (my uncle's business) deals in. This site won the DesignFirms, excellence in web design award, in 2005-06 (1 out of 10 winners).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

www.mahantswami.com ***: is the site about my Guru: Pujya Mahant Swami developed in plain HTML (those were my budding days). The better part of the site was developed by my friend Vijay. I only assisted him through it and continue to maintain its content. This site won the Spirit Search Gloria award for spiritual content and (whoa! another one...:) ) Lotus Light web excellence award for site design.

 

 

 

 

www.akshararts.com ***: is the last site I worked on. It showcases the products of Akshar Arts and Yogi Process. These firms specialize in identification supplies for educational institutes and wanted to be placed on the web. This is when I started doing table-less design.

Jhalak - a multimedia presentation: ****

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At our Annual Spiritual Gathering in Surat in the year 2001, I made this multimedia presentation. This, a biography of my Guru: Pujya Mahant Swami of about 90 minutes, was to be screened in front of about 450 people. I used video, audio and photo-editing tools, and mashed it all up in a power point presentation (I still wonder-how I could do it using power point? :) ). I got great assistance from my uncle, Ravi Patel, for video selection and editing, else I would have been lost doing it alone. By God's grace, it was a massive hit! I'm a dumbo at doing artwork on paper. But these works polished me as an artist, gave me sense of color usage, sense of word art, and UI design. 

Artwork **:

 These are the catalog or magazine advertisements or flex displays that I worked on:

Industrial Product Finder - Advertisement 1:

Industrial Product Finder - Advertisement 2:

Industrial Product Finder - Advertisement 3:

These are some of the posters I designed for our Annual Spiritual Gathering:

Nature at its best - a 40 feet long banner:

A welcome message poster in Gujarati: