ySchool - An academics perspective

Some times, we the people in the industry have scant respect for academics perspectives. We try to equate them for being people who are stuck with theories. We at times do not even believe that there is a mutually beneficial association which can be formed with them. If you observe carefully, a larger part of Sri Lankan industry doesn't actively engage the academics in the process of product development or strategies. Yesterday was a good lesson which I learnt, on how narrow minded we the industry practitioners are.

You would know by now that at Yarl IT Hub, we started ySchool an open source project. Day before yesterday I was having a call with Uthaya, who is currently reading for his Phd in US. The conversation was around ySchool and all of a sudden out of no where, he said - "aren't you guys building data mining tool on top of this"? I was like, "What kind of data mining can you do on this". Then I got this beautiful lecture on describing how data mining can be used on a school management system and how that could be used to help in giving a better education to the students. He himself wanted to take this part of the project under him and help/mentor to build the data mining model.

I do not want to spoil the research topics by putting it out here, but I would say, for the people who are going to work on this - it would be once in a life time opportunity and a possible publication opportunity. I feel that some super exciting times are ahead on ySchool!

Now this is the very reason why industry should work with academics, they can bring to table perspectives we miss due to the narrow mindedness which had crept in to our systems by being in the industry for years!

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