Q. What percentage of the program will be used to spread awareness about IBM’s products? Is that a key point on the agenda as well?

HG: The main objective of the program is to spread awareness on emerging technologies (such as analytics, cloud computing) and IBM Software and open technologies that IBM supports.

In the engineering institutes, while we do talk about IBM developerWorks in our briefings, it is more as a resource for the topics being discussed, since there is a large amount of information available on IBM developerWorks for free. There is barely any reference to any IBM software product, and any reference is largely incidental.

The briefings at the developerWorks Live events on the other hand, I must admit, do have some amount of focus on IBM software products, along with emerging technologies. This typically varies depending on the topic of the event, and the agenda is decided based on feedback from prior events.

Q. The developerWorks community today boasts of 8 million developers across 195 countries. What is the level of participation in this community from Indian developers?

HG: Research estimates peg India’s developer population as the second largest in the world. We see this trend reflected even in the participation on My developerWorks, with India contributing the second largest number of profiles on My developerWorks. Clearly, Indian developers see IBM developerWorks as an essential resource.

Q. Describe the current relationship between IBM and the current Indian developer community.

HG: It is a symbiotic relationship. We are finding an increasing interest in IBM software among the developer community, and a very good response to our events - our recent developerWorks Live event at Goa, which was part of the Develothon, was met with great turnout and the participation was very promising.

In fact the feedback from our events is taken very seriously, and given towards how we structure and plan our future events. In short, the developers help us understand what they want better so that we can in turn give them better value.

Q. How do you view IBM’s role in the overall Indian developer ecosystem?

HG: One rather interesting aspect of developerWorks is that along with IBM Software products, it also serves as an extensive resource for open technologies such as Java, Eclipse and Linux.

In developerWorks and My developerWorks, we hope to have a platform where developers can engage, learn, contribute and collaborate on emerging technologies, open technologies and IBM software of their interest.

Q . From your perspective, what topics are the developerWorks audience most interested in lately?

HG: Based on the latest page views, we know the Indian developer population is most interested in learning about Java, Open Source, Linux, SOA and Web services. So we make a strong effort to provide numerous resources in those areas.