my experience with bug triage

I have been always wanting to contribute to Ubuntu since the day I joined Ubuntu India Team. But, other things happening around me always kept me from converting this wish into action. It was this new year that I finally took a resolution to start some solid contribution to the Ubuntu project. The most viable options was to Ubuntu Bugs at Launchpad, which in better terms is the bug tracking system for Ubuntu.

The formal way to help with bugs (not formal as it literally means) is to join the bug squad, the team of ubunteros whose sole motive is to check bugs filed by the users, help the users provide as much information about their problem as possible, assign bugs to related packages, find earlier reports which is very similar or sometimes the same (duplicate bugs), assign status and importance for bugs and finally make it all ready for developers to work on them. This process also filters out reported bugs which are not bugs but user end mistakes, which are rather feature requests (wishlist) or merely misunderstood normal behaviors. In addition, we can also file patches for the bugs if we know how to fix them, which actually reduces a lot of developer time (which is precious).

So, where did I get started? Actually two places, one is Launchpad Bugs for Ubuntu and second is the bug squad team channel #ubuntu-bugs at irc.freenode.net. When I joined the team, the irc channel was both a place to discuss about bugs as well as where the bug announce bot was running, announcing the channel whenever a new bug was filed. Later, the bug announce was moved to #ubuuntu-bugs-announce channel, while #ubuntu-bugs became a complete discussion channel for the bug squad. Then I started reading the docs in the wiki, especially the following,

1. How to Triage
2. Debugging Procedures
3. Standard Responses
4. Bug Importance
5. Bug Status

Apart from reading docs, I started observing how triagers respond to bugs. When I got an idea of the basics, I started triage with some newly filed bugs, easy ones which I could make sense of from the description. All I did was find bugs where I can ask for more information from the reporter. This is the easiest way to start as most filed bugs lack in one information or another, and it’s the primary task of the triager to get as much information from the reporters as possible.

Most people miss out the Ubuntu version they are reporting the bug against, the related package for which the bug is filed and it’s version. These are minimal information required in the bug report. The next important thing is how complete and meaningful is the bug description itself. It is not uncommon for people to be in a tensed mood when they file bugs and their description is quite unclear about their problem. Minimal requirements of a good description are what is their problem and how to reproduce this problem. Some reporters also specify things they tried to fix the problem, and surprisingly sometimes this ends to be round about solution for the problem. Some people take more responsibility of getting into the problem, finding a fix and submitting a patch to the bug as well (which is amazing btw). Now bug triage doesn’t seem to be simple all together, but it offers various levels of participation fitting with one’s level of interest and skills. I know of a few in bug squad who are specialist in dealing with duplicates, which is nothing but a reporter filing a bug which already someone (or even many others) have filed already.

Filing a same bug doesn’t help much, rather what would be welcome is looking at existing bug and adding additional information to it if possible. Similarly, one can also check existing bugs and if the problem can be reproduced at our end we can indeed confirm the bug reported by someone else.A bug also gets confirmed when the triager feels that the bug report enough information for the developer to deal with it. There is no hard and fast rule, but some guidelines on what makes a report complete (which you can find in link 1 above) and is often acquired as a trait by experience.

There is not much for the basic level of bug triage. As I got involved doing these basic things, I started learning more. Sometimes I have done little mistakes, but as I always refer to people in #ubuntu-bugs for doubt, my mistakes got immediately corrected. Am still in the lower levels of bug triage, but learning a lot. One wonderful endeavour regarding bug triage is 5-a-day project started by Daniel Holbach. It is nothing but a team of bug triagers who make sure they at least triage 5 bugs a day. This has really been working and if you would like to see some stats check this one out.  One handy link for every new triager is the Checklist.

So, when can you join us? Anytime anyday and if you are looking for special time to join then Hug Day and Global Bug Jam could be a nice opportunity

Usability by Celeste

I made it yesterday though it was late into the midnight, attending Kubuntu Tutorials Day at #kubuntu-devel. The session I was interested to catch up was the second one by Celeste Lyn Paul aka seele on Usability. I have heard about her, her work, KDE-HIG and openusability.org a few months ago after I attended the HCI workshop at IIT Bombay. The following are the brief notes from my scratch pad on what seele said during her session. Official logs from the Kubuntu Tutorials Day should be available soon (or am not yet aware of the link yet..) and will update when I get it.

( Questions from seele are in italics, with related links I managed to get by Googling and my own comments. A little bit of editing to make it look a bit “blog formal” and readable. Comments are welcome, especially if you find something wrong )

In 20 words or less, what do you guys think usability is? (and no cheating on wikipedia)

If we take this from an ISO standard, usability means that a product must be,
1.learnable
2. efficient
3. memorable
4. prevent errors, and
5. be satisfactory to users

Learnable
This is the one no one usually picks when i ask the “what is usability” question. A product (in our case software) doesn’t have to be so easy that you don’t have to learn it. For a simple task, then you expect it to be simple but for a complex task, it is OK to expect learning.

Efficiency
This probably shouldn’t be #2 even though it is listed in the ISO spec this way, because it is related to learnability and memorability. But it is exactly what the word means, an appropriate use of time and resources in relation to the complexity of the system. Even if you made a simple printing function an easy to use 10 step wizard, it isn’t very efficient if you need to do that every time you print. Clicking one button will get the same amount of work done than stepping the user through all the options and clicking 10.

Memorability
This is what I think should be #2 because it is closely related to learnability.

Have you guys ever heard of the term Information Scent? It is an Information Science Theory

Information scent is a search behavior theory. Information scientists believe we search using the “gathering” skills of our “hunter-gatherer” basic instincts. What it turns in to from a UI perspective is how easy it is to find information (functionality or options) from it’s surface presentation. So, what options you expect to be under menu X before you open menu X? By having good information scent (good labels, structure, etc.), you can use the UI more efficiently because you can stack layers of information.

Basically you are leaving hints to the user to find the information on their own, they don’t need to Remember where options are, but only follow a logical path. This saves the user’s cognitive resources to go on and solve more complex problems instead of using them on the UI. Remember that a UI is a tool to solve a problem, the UI shouldn’t be the problem.

Error Prevention
Have any of you guys heard of Jef Raskin?

He was a famous designer who worked at apple (i think he was employee #12 or something close). He was a true user advocate in the sense that he believed no matter what the circumstance, the computer should do no harm. Also, many of you are probably familiar with the practice of confirming actions, particularly destructive ones, yes? Error prevention is more than just confirming a destructive action. It is preventing the user from having to make that decision to start with.

We dont see this too much in the desktop environment because we model a lot of our work-flows off of existing software, but i see this a lot in other expert systems. “Are you really sure you want to do that? It will cripple the system and you will lose all of your data” (Well then, the user should have never been able to choose that option from the top level of a UI). Even so, there are a lot of confirmations we do in the desktop environment which could be prevented if we shaped the work-flow differently; the user should never have to select Cancel.

Satisfaction (keeping it consistent
Satisfaction is the quality many people tend to identify with usability. But it is also the last dimension in the spec (and i believe the least important of all we’ve talk about). Satisfaction is important. If a user finds a system pretty or cool, they will want to use it more than the other system that is not. Users will sacrifice ALL of the other parts of usability (learnability, efficiency, memorability, error prevention) for satisfaction. our goal is to help them not make sacrifices.

I’ve seen users in usability tests take 3, 4, 10 times longer to complete a task in a terrible UI that looked pretty, and complete the same task in a different not-as-pretty UI much much faster and they still like the pretty UI.This is an advantage and disadvantage: it gives us room to experiment because users will be forgiving if we give them options they want or other cool toys; but at the same time, we should use eye candy as a crutch to solve problems. We should solve problems and make our solutions beautiful.

Have you guys ever heard of a one-time learning event?
Often when you are reviewing a new UI or work-flow, one of the questions you may ask yourself is “will the user figure this out”; and the first time around, sometime the user doesn’t. they can’t find the options, they don’t know the label, they can’t figure it out. But,if they have someone show them how to do it, they find the solution on a webpage, or painfully figure it out, it makes sense to them and they remember it for next time. We call this type of experience a one time learning event

They won’t figure it out the first time, but if they can do it once, they will remember how to do it. This is something that is often forgotten in UI design. You can break users out in to different dimensions - one of them being problem solving skills and related motivation, some users are not afraid to try something and fail, other users will not try new things in fear of failing and the users who do not explore are at risk of never exploring options hidden behind a single-learning event.

That’s why doing user research on your product and understanding who your users are, their motivations, environment, and their skill (it’s not JUST about their skills) is important. This leads me in to a discussion about universal usability.

Has anyone heard this term “Universal Usability” before?

Universal Usability is the belief that any user, no matter their skill, background, motivation, experience, etc. should be able to pick up and use a product. In cases where products must serve the general public (such as e-voting machines), this could be a valid argument, but there are very few products that focus on EVERYONE. Even so, the concept of universal usability would be extremely difficult to achieve, especially in expert systems or systems which knowledge workers use

The ipod, why does everyone use that as an example of universal usability? The ipod is an excellent example of very sexy tech that people forgive its shortcomings for. It doesn’t do everything everyone wants, and not everyone can use it or figure it out, but because it is so damn beautiful, most people don’t care.

Universal usability forces designers to lower the bar of the average user to accommodate more people. This is why it hurts expert systems. If there is a pocket of experience or information that a certain group of users may not have or be able to attain, it must be removed.

[ To a question about apple and the point mentioned above...]
Yes, but apple traditionally does not follow a user-centered design approach. they believe that designers know better. It’s only been recently that they’ve done usability testing.. everything before was market research (which is very different).

[ We seemed to digress a bit, so I tried bringing it back on track with question :P]
There are three domains of usability i work in: User Research, Design, and User Testing. Together, these are part of the user-centered design process (UCD). It is a design philosophy which keeps users in mind while creating a system for them.

User Research is often linked to the Requirements stage of software development. So when you developers are thinking of new features to integrate in to a software, or a new software to develop from scratch. Here are some things you should be thinking of in addition to your functionality spec and other things,

Who are your users?
Try to come up with some example users who you are building the software for. Even if you are a user, try to keep yourself out of the list, it makes it too easy to do what you want instead of what they need.

What will you users be doing too many times?
Not all of the functionality is documented or fully planned. A single function might be discussed and mapped, but the other functions of a system aren’t thought of until afterwards. What happens is you don’t have a complete picture of how your users are using the system, and if the functions are integrated properly mapping out screen flows before you begin coding will help document your functionality (so you aren’t trying to squeeze or force options in later) and give you a reference for when you code.

What problem are you trying to solve?
This is the big one, your Vision Statement. Having an idea of your goals before you start will help development. It is related to the “What are my users doing?” question. If you don’t know what problem you are trying to solve with your software, you can’t know what to provide users or what they will expect? Plus, in larger projects, it is a good idea that all the developers are on the same page. It prevents a lot of road map issues later on

Being able to answer those three questions will give you a head start. On KDE Techbase there are user research templates to help guide you.

I guess we will get in to Open Source Usability 101 now,

First step: Contact the project you want to work with and express interest in working with them.
You dont want to surprise developers by dropping a usability report in their inbox. It will just make them angry, even if the work was good.

Second step: Start small. Open source is a community based on commitment and trust (after the getting work done thing).
Start with a small activity such as interviewing users, conducting a survey, or doing a small UI review. This will help developers get used to your methods, get used to you, and know what to expect from your work.

Third step: Maintain your relationship with the project.
Design is an iterative process, just as open source is iterative development. Developers are wary of seagull designers: designers who fly in, poop on their software, then fly away. Developers are in for the long hull, they are committed to their project and want to see it succeed. They don’t want to work with a designer who will ask them to change a bunch of things, then disappear and not be able to comment on the results.

Obviously I don’t want to see any unhealthy marriages, but keep in mind that you will make a bigger difference in one project than doing a bunch of little activities for a bunch of projects. Design is a VERY iterative process; it is important for both you the designer and the developer you work with to understand this.

[ To my question whether we have something similar like KDE-HIG in Ubuntu/Kubuntu to which we can contribute.. ]
For Ubuntu designers, you will want to look at the GNOME HIG. It might be a little out of date, but one way to get started with contributing would be updating it!

For Kubuntu designers, you will want to look at the KDE4 HIG and the KDE3 User Interface Guidelines.

These are under active development, and so if you have any questions it would be best to ask me or Ellen Reitmayr who sometimes lurks in #openusability.

Other Resources:
Look at other interfaces that do similar things, not just in your own environment but in windows, KDE/GNOME, Mac OSX. You’ll find similar and very different solutions. You will want to look closely at the context of the solutions and make sure it is a good fit before you use it as a mode. Copying a solution will not solve a problem, the goal of reviewing other software is to get inspiration when you have no other better ideas.

[ The End - Applauds!! ]

miss it this time

Due to unforeseen circumstances, personal reasons, financial crunch and “leave” reasons, am not going to join the party at FOSS.NITC this time. It was fun last year with pradeepto, kushal, aanjhan, vivek, jace, kiruba, atul, shreyas, tejas, praveen and lot of known faces joining for a promising FOSS meet. This year, a majority of the tribe will go missing. I fear this was mainly due to the postponing of the schedule a couple of times, from feb end to march end and again to april first weekend.

For me with little penny left in my pocket, mother to be taken back home and morally can’t take successive weekends off from work, I mailed them that am dropping off. They felt so bad, am sorry, so did I. Hope you still rock on this year and we all can join you next year. Good luck!

fossconf chennai 2008

Chennai chapter of Indian Linux User Group had geared up for their new avatar as conference organizers. Their long standing stint of not conducting a conference of their own was going to end. The discussions were happening for months, new logos getting designed, new conference management system getting developed. NRCFOSS joined hands with ILUGC and finally Madras Institute of Technology, the premier and historical institution which created leading professionals and world famous technologists like Dr. Abdul Kalam, was selected as the venue.

The conference was focussed on being a platform for first time speakers to come out of their shell and get an experience of speaking in a FOSS conference. Their audience will be a blend of experienced FOSS community members, students and academicians. In addition to just talks, there was also demo stalls as usual. This time, in addition to usual demo stalls on various topics, we had student present their final year projects. This was an opportunity for them to interact people who were doing similar things in their professional life, thereby they could get the valued feedbacks from the community and improve their projects.

The lectures happened in the Lecture hall, while the demo was in Hanger I (where Carte Blanche used to happen every time). Various colleges who have been interacting with ILUGC and NRCFOSS had sent their students as volunteers, participants and delegates. The core volunteer team was formed by the enthusiastic MIT Computer Club students, the one who conduct Carte Blanche every year (supported by ILUGC).

We had around 109 talks spread over 3 days (actually 2 days) and 863 registered delegates, while the registration desk reports the total attendance was above 1500. The attendees were mostly students from colleges and a few from nearby schools, academic community from the participating colleges, a few from the industry and representatives of the community. There were around 10 physical volunteers from ILUGC and another half a dozen from NRCFOSS co-ordinating the entire conference.

The conference formally began at 1.00 PM on 1st February, 2008 and was formally closed with Brian’s talk at 2.00 PM on 3rd February. Though there were few talks without enough audience, the beginner level talks were running houseful. May be the speakers should consider the focussed audience group before selecting what they are going to speak on. Or, may be we had too many of new entrants getting enlightened about FOSS that they choose to stick with beginner talks. We will be careful next time when we accept talks.

Though there were initial glitches and confusions during the first session on Day 1, with a speaker going missing while the alloted room was filled with audience, we managed to straighten up things as soon as possible. We had lots to learn from this experience of conducting a FOSS conference, when the major audience was students pretty new to the topic. There was also some logistic issues due to miscommunication or lack of proper communication channels. But on a whole we managed to walk across the rope, from one end to another without falling down and bruising ourselves.

We had people from few other LUGs attending the conference and they were really surprised to know that the entire show was run and supported by the students, with the LUG just standing behind and giving them a shoulder when needed. They also appreciated the idea of displaying the student projects which were actually nothing but final year projects for their B.E. degree.

What I wish to do now is to join hands with some of my friends (if they like this idea), with the students themselves and help them have a hosting space where they can properly host their projects. This means they will have a version control system, a issue tracker and project management tool and a weblog for them to blog as they proceed with their development. A few, with whom I talked about this, were really interested with this idea and said they will help in this. Hope, I get a few more helping hearts from those who read this post

The fossconf chennai has ended and we are contented of performing to our best, and accept the mistakes we made, taking them as a good learning experience to improve ourselves next time. Thanks for those who supported us, who participated and those who have a shoulder and hand in making this happen

Bangalorians from ILUGChennai

Following lawgon’s mail to the Chennai LUG mailing list a few days back, stating that there is no single point of contact for FOSS patrol in Bangalore, especially those belonging to ILUGC, have started a new Google Group named “Bangalorians from ILUGChennai“. Though this group is mainly for Chennai LUGies who have now settled down in Bangalore, it is also open to Bangalorians and Non-Bangalorians who would like to participate along with us.

live from foss.in

Day 2, 5th December 2007,

Here am, from one of India’s premier FOSS event’s 2nd day. Yesterday was awesome and the Debian/Ubuntu Project Day happening fine. Today am watchdog’ing KDE Project Day along with other volunteers who are helping it to run smooth. I actually see a lot of foss.in volunteers around, making me feel a lot of us are indeed Ks

Being a part of volunteer team had been interesting, with some running around, heavy lifting and more importantly sitting in the registration desk all along half of yesterday. Again, I got the opportunity to meet a lot of guys who I usually see in #linux-india, as well make some new acquaintances. So far it has been really interesting though I have been missing some of the talks on being a volunteer. As the main conference starts tomorrow, we expect more delegates, more talks and more work to do

At last I found some power socket to comfortably keep my system running and as every ubunteros does, have started dist-upgrade With only a few things to fetch, it should be done in another few minutes. Pradeepto is talking about creating the setup for KDE4 development. I tried to svn fetch the source and build kde4 over my system, but some freaking dependency (the required version is not available stopped be in my endeavor. tazz told me that he has found a work around, additionally promising me to write it down somewhere and make it available for others to follow.

Day 3, Main Conference Day 1, 06.12.2007,

Had an amazing day with Main Conference kicking started. Spent my first few hours in the registration desk as usual. As it had rained today and was much colder than previous days, the delegates arrived a bit late. Then catched up with jace and Zope guys on a RDBMS with Zope talk (was really useful as we are trying to do similar thing at work). Went around and helped guys with random stuff here and there. A bit of my butt got burned as no one was manning the Debian stall and some foo guy has taken the place to setup some electronic things all over. Missed baiju’s talk as I got caught in some random stuffs. Now sitting with sankarshan and ramki, with sankarshan making me update the blog

I have two important things from last 2 days to tell about. First is the mess-up at the last talk of Debian/Ubuntu Project day. When we were in the process of finalizing the list of talks, Kart me and few others wanted the “Java Packaging in Ubuntu” talk to be not there as it doesn’t seem to 100% ok for the project day concept of encouraging new contributors to Debian|Ubuntu. But there were a few others who said we need to have the talk as they themselves are Java programmers. So we finally ended accepting the talk (and also we did not have another talk alternative).

What happened in the last few days was the original speaker wasn’t able to attend foss.in and hence he had sent a replacement which we thought was ok. But when I was helping the speaker to get his laptop setup for the talk, I noticed it was running vista. Though I wondered how one can deliver a java packaging on Ubuntu talk over a vista laptop, I did not want to interfere so I silently left the place (so did a lot of Ubuntu-In guys). Later I came to know that the talk was nothing to do with the intended topic was and there was a lot of complaints about it. I heard Kartik has written an apology kinda post, but I think its not just him who is responsible. Though its *us* who had to be responsible for accepting the talk at the first place, but still a Java packaging on Ubuntu talk is not a way to OT or way out of the conference’s purpose. But this turned out to be a good lesson for us to be doubly careful next time when we are with such an opportunity to select something to represent the team in such a premier conference. We are sorry guys, if it had disappointed you, its has hurt you in any way, we are sorry for choosing a wrong talk for such an occasion

Second thing is about the surprise “K”onqueror party thrown in by Ramki, Sankarshan and co. last night at R-R, Church street. Actually this became a complementary party to the Mozilla party attended by a lot of other guys and the foss.in team. We had a lot of K guys attending the Konq party and as it started to rain, the hot south indian thaali happened to be the right kinda dinner Thanks to Ramki for the idea and for adding me in into it (We guys managed to put ourselves in a single car and go there ) (Hope Sankarshan is now satisfied with me blogging about two things he had asked me to )

Will try to keep this post updated along the 5 days, so keep checking for updates

printing tees

Its only a couple of week more before foss.in 2007 begins. Every team participating in Project Day are preparing something or other for the event, mostly are T-shirts and stickers for their project. Though ubuntu-in team had been discussing this for some time, we hadn’t actually put anything in to action. When we and tuxmaniac met this weekend in barcampbangalore, we decided to start some action.

We were pretty impressed with the stickers distributed during the barcamp. Instead of giving tags and coupons, they had print different kinds of stickers which can be stuck on to the shirts. There was sticker to write names, there was “this is my [nth] barcamp” sticker, there was “i am barcamped” sticker and there was a barcamp laptop sticker as well. We felt this idea was cool and we can also make use of it for the project day. We made some enquiries and found out it was well within our financial capacities. So we decided to print the stickers and sought Niyam’s help in designing one for us, as he had been desgining logos for foss conf chennai of late.

We might also be printing some Ubuntu posters to put up in the stall and around the venue. We had come out with a handout pamplet during Carte Blanche which we might use for this occasion as well. All we need is someone who can take a laser printout of the handout and make nice xerox copies of out, some 500-1000 nos will be enough.

We also were thinking about printing some 20 T-shirts to be distributed to the speakers and enthusiastic contributors. Initially there was Yahoo! interested in sponsoring us for the T-shirts. But there were lot of fluster as Y! is not a sponsor for this year’s foss.in and giving a T-shirt sponsored by them might be not welcomed, even might drag us into some unwanted problems. So, we have decided to make a pool of as much as we can and print some T-shirts for the speakers of Debian/Ubuntu Project Day. We are also enquiring whether it is monetarily feasible to print some mugs as well, may be replace t-shirts with mugs as every other team is printing tees.

To print T-shirts, we are looking for people to contribute to the money pool. As the Loco Team has to take care of itself and its needs this time, we are looking for contributions from the team members, from enthusiastic Ubuntu users as well as people from the community to help us in creating a pool so that we can print some nice t-shirts for those people who are speaking for us during the Project Day. We may also use the extra tees to reward people for their contributions and volunteering for various ubuntu-in activities (we do not promise this, but we will try to ).

Looking for your helping hands…

Python BoF at foss.in

I was enquiring Baiju about the Python Collective at the Bar Camp Bangalore 5, which is scheduled for this weekend, as I hadn’t seen any discussion about it in the BangPypers list. This is when Baiju asked me about having a BoF during foss.in, which I readily seconded and as per his advice, start the discussion in BangPypers list for the same. And thats why this post comes out.

We plan to have a “Python BoF” during foss.in 2007, organized by BangPypers (the Bangalore Python User Group). The discussions will happen in the BangPypers Mailing List to decide the day and time, after which I will update the tentative date and time here, as well announce it in both BangPypers and foss.in mailing lists. Hope to see a lot of Pythonians at the BoF and interesting discussions happen

Missed Freed

Actually I was planning to be a volunteer for freed.in, but at the end couldn’t even be a delegate. When all my buddies had a great time together at this great event, I was sitting at my home doing household. Thanks to my current financial status, I couldn’t spend on the travel. Hope to meet all those people (at least most of them) during foss.in this December. Still freed is freed, it is  unique. Wish I would be able to volunteer for freed.in 2008 at least.

Talked with Matthew Barker of Ubuntu yesterday and our hopes of having Jono Bacon has increased, as he will also be trying from his end. And there might be a surprise for all Ubunteros too, with our leader making his presence for the event. Though not very much sure of this, we will try our best luck. Also, Ubuntu is interested to be one amongst the sponsors for foss.in 2007 and if it happens, might get a booth for us to display Ubuntu 7.10. Also, we might get some Ubuntu goodies for the team.

We have started preparations for the Debian/Ubuntu Project Day as only 2 more months are left. We need to decide on a schedule between the two teams (Debian-In and Ubuntu-In) and having commoners like Kartik is of great help in this. We need to conclude on a list of speakers and then they need to apply through CFP. Lot of things to get done and we need the other members to pitch in their efforts too (Wake up from your hibernation dudes, its high time!) Go, Ubuntu Go!

Contempt, not Content

When they say the name PSG, everybody evaluates it to a technical institute as good as IIT or at least the next berth. I too had a similar opinion as some of my relatives were from this institute and they have achieved great heights in their careers and attribute their success to the basement this institute had imparted in them. With this image, we made our trip to this prestigious institute, participating in a fortnight long Staff Training Program organized by the CSE department.

We were representing the NRCFOSS team, which is a mixture of NRCFOSS employees and the Chennai LUG members. It was the least day of the program and I was accompanied by Aanjhan and  Bharathi from ILUGC. Our original plan was Bharathi will handle Qt, followed by me handling Glade, followed by Aanjhan’s VLSI talk, then my Collaborative development talk and finally the day ends with a Panel discussion about FOSS and GNU/Linux in general.

We are expecting mainly staff and a moderate amount of students. Bharathi was there a day before us and evaluated the situation. We got a feedback that the interest amongst the audience was very minimal and they were still blank about the basics. So, we stopped our full fledged preparation and decided to manage with our current level of preparation.

I landed there yesterday morning, with a gentle drizzle making the climate seem awesome.  The hostel room where we stayed was ok, though a bit of cleaning up would have impressed us. We had our breakfast, in a steel tray and this made us remember central jail. Bharathi felt that taking both Qt and Glade would be way too much for the uninterested audience and hence we changed our plan to Qt, followed by VLSI and finally my Collaborative development. We finished the day by 3.30 pm and had a small chat with the organizer of the event. We were literally wondering why the basics haven’t gone into their brains with almost a week of interaction and talks preceding ours.

We then spent the next few hours talking random stuff, mainly dominated by Bharathi’s experience in IITM. In between, Aanjhan’s Deccan airways flight got postponed two times and finally his 6.45 pm flight was scheduled at 8.45 pm. We left the hostel by 7.40 pm and had a confusion of where to go first, drop me at the bus stop or drop Aanjhan at the airport. With high drama surrounding the next half an hour, we first enquired in a Conti travels depot whether I can board my bus there, then left Aanjhan in the airport, dropped in back to the same depot and rang the main depot to inform them of my change in boarding point. Bharathi then left to the railway station and I had to wait till 9.30 pm in gentle rain to get my bus back to Chennai.

Our expectations and preconceptions about PSG Tech got entirely negated during this trip. We rather started feeling that the private engineering colleges we usually visited are far better in many aspects (other than drawing monetary benefits from engineering education). Thus, this trip leaves us with a contempt of an otherwise highly thought institution and not a content of another good workshop.

After a small break

Its going to be 10 days since I posted last and it seems to be long. I have been literally doing nothing and hence nothing much to post (though I have been reading a lot).

Tomorrow am leaving for a day’s trip to Coimbatore, participating in a workshop at PSG Tech. on FOSS. I will be joined by Aanjhan and Bharathi. I plan to talk on “GUI Development with Glade3″ (as Bharathi wants to talk on Qt Designer) and Collaborative development tools. Then we also plan to have a Panel discussion to end the week long things, organized by NRCFOSS. The audience are limited to 15 staff members from CSE|IT|EEE|ECE branches and 15-20 ME students.

This time am not blessed with luxury of traveling in train, as I was a bit lethargic in booking the tickets due to personal uncertainties and hence have ended up with traveling in the bus on both ways. The ticket cost, am afraid, is more than what would have been in an A/C chaircar (A/C Sleeper Volvo to CBE is 530 INR). This is going to trouble my back, even though I have booked only in A/C Sleeper Volvo bus. God save this poor soul

Flied to the west

It was a fun filled weekend at Pune, the Ubuntu Indian team meeting informally for getting together. 8 of us met - Aanjhan, Anurag, Barkha, Baishampayan Ghose, Gaurav aka tazz, Onkar Shinde, Sneha and me. We had nothing but fun, did not freak out much other than an afternoon at a mall.

I left to Pune by Indian Airlines on Friday evening and laned at Mumbai around 19.30 hours. Anurag, baks and tazz were there to welcome me and 4 of us rushed to Dadar to fetch a bus to Pune. After standing for 2.5 hours at the ticket counter, we managed to get into an A/C Volvo bus and started our journey towards Pune. We reached there around 2.30 a.m., having got down at a wrong place and waited till Onkar came up and guided us home. Tuxmaniac aka aanjhan arrived around 7.30 a.m. in the morning.

We started the day with a quick breakfast of dosas and watching few series of ‘The IT Crowd’. We then proceeded to a mall called E-Square. We got tickets for ‘Bheja Fry’ and had a nice dinner. It was an awesome movie which made us all laugh during the entire 1.5 hour duration (though tazz had a nice sleep and was waken up when the entire theater was in laughter). We returned back to be joined at home by G0SUB and June.

We went for dinner at “Horn OK Please”, after trying to fix with a restaurant for an hour. We returned back around 00.30 a.m. and crashed. We left for Mumbai the next day morning and me got a chance to spend a day at my brother’s place before returning back today morning by IC-0972. The route back to Mumbai was fantastic, as we missed it all during our way to Pune as it was pitch dark night.

Traveling by air has really made it possible for me to have a weekend in Western India, 100s of kilometers from my home, but still return back without feeling much tired of travel. I still wonder how I would have felt if the journey was by train instead. Next time, gotta make sure I stay at BOM at least for a couple of days, pre-inform my brother well before and see Mumbai more than a brief bike ride on my way to airport. Also, plan to trip to Lonavala

VLBJCET Workshop - Experimentation Success

Every time we conduct a workshop in some college, we try to improve our method of delivering. We started years ago by taking our  own computers and trying to show things with them. With time it improved to they providing us some computers and we try to show with them. Things further changed that we have laptops and they just need to provide power supply, projector and other logistics, and indeed audience. With improving facilities we tried to improve the method, making it more interactive from what was once running through boring slides. Still we need to have a minimal presentation with slide for the basic introduction. What all can be shown interactively do not have slides.

When we were invited to conduct a workshop on GNU/Linux and FOSS by VLB Janakiammal College of Engg and Technology, we decided to introspect on our methods a bit and likewise prepare. We learnt from earlier experiences that doing is better than viewing. Second, having general topics first and deciding on specific topics during time of delivery depending upon the situation will also be better. Our last workshop wasn’t very much satisfactory as we were provided with a small projector while the hall was longer and had around 250 students packed, most of them would have been just sleeping all the day.

When we landed there we were told that we will be having only students from MCA and hence a very limited audience. Its better to talk to MCAs than BEs because [1] they already have completed 3 years of college education and hence are more molded, [2] they do not have the mind set that they are BEs and know things more than others do, and [3] MCAs know they have to do something extra to keep them competitive with their BE counterparts. We were also surprised that most of them had knowledge of Unix and their labs were running FC4 in dual-OS mode.

Hence we decided to try a new method, though it might reduce the total time available. We were more interested in making them understand and enjoy what we were to show them for the 2 days than the volume of knowledge we were to deliver. What we did was, after every topic we covered we called one or two volunteers from the audience and asked them to have an hands on experience. Thus, students actually tried out installing, using the desktop, networking, using Glade and QT Designer, database with PostgreSQL and some perl and python scripting as well. Though the first volunteer was hard to get, once he was able to do things the other were looking for an opportunity to try their hands as well. We got a very good feedback from the students as well as the faculty. They are actually looking back to do more things like workshops on specific topics, covering more depth in each one as well as even a faculty training program for all interested faculties.

We have decided to follow the same in our future workshops as we have found this experimentation to be really successful. In addition we will try to find where we might have done better and correct it out in our next endeavor. At last, landed on an occasion to feel contented for all the efforts we have been taking for the past couple of years. Got to carry the same spirit forward and enlighten more minds

Photos are already in my Flickr, do not forget to check them

FOSS, Food and Fun

I was eagerly looking forward for 24th of March to arrive and this time, it wasn’t me who was going somewhere and meeting people, but people were coming and I had a chance to meet people at my own place. We had a FOSS Meet hosted by NRCFOSS for which around 30 people from Indian FOSS arena were invited. The invitees list included many people whom I know through #linux-india and hence I was very eager to meet the known faces once again.

Unfortunately I got some loads of work to do the same time, so I couldn’t spend much time with my friends other than a 4 hours on 24th night. We had Gora, Gopal (t3rmin4t0r), Anurag (devmodem), Friji Karthikeyan (cray3), Kiran jace, jtd, Indranil (IDG), Sunil Abraham, Tarique Sani, Atul Chitnis, Mohan, Raman, Barathi, SRS, Raja Subramaniam and Abhas with us, along with Kenneth, Prof Srinivasan and Prof CN Krishnan.

Although I wasn’t there during the day long meeting and therefore have nothing to add on what happened at the meeting, I joined them for the night. When we all join where do we end with ? Food and chat Adding to that a lot of our cameras flicked. I have uploaded my pics in my flickr album and waiting for jace and t3 to upload theirs

FOSS.NITC Field Report

I am back from a weekend at Kozhikkode. It was a nice trip, nice experience and nice learning too. Let me drop my quick field report about FOSS Meet @ NIT Calicut, which we call as foss.nitc.

• The organizers, students belonging to various branches in NITC, did a very nice job. This is their 3rd year of conducting the FOSS meet and they did show signs of maturity.
• Though there were initial hiccups in speaker registration and their web site, they managed to have a nice band of speakers.
• We were accommodated in a nice guest house. Though I was lucky to get a room with A/C and TV, other rooms without those were no less than mine in comfort. But there were few not-so-lucky guys who stayed in the International hostel
• The food was good on all the 3 days, but eating North Indian food for 3 days made me run with problems.
• The days were long, starting from 9 a.m. and ending at 10 p.m. Think they can make this something like 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and having open sessions then.
• We all felt and suggested the need to have some open sessions and more BoFs.
• There were few troubles with the scheduling such that a few speakers were left with very meager listeners.
• My talk on Decorators in Python went very well, with a dozen people to listen. We got chairs and sat around. The session went for 1.5 hours.
• My second talk messed up as I did not really prepare and practice for it. Also, I was in a blank mood after listening to 3 hours of the previous talk And, whenever I looked the audience, they showed sign of disinterest so I felt like will end with a few topics than what I had planned for.
• Learnt more info on photography and after seeing Jace with his cam, am more serious about buying a pro cam
• The past one year had been a great time for me, attending 3 conferences (foss.in, Linux Asia and FOSS.NITC). And, I became a speaker in the last one.
• We have got an invitation from a college near Alleppy for a similar FOSS event sometime in mid August.
• Wipro had a talk about ‘TV in Mobile’, and they used a Windows system. We took a few snaps of it. But at the end, we were surprisingly called to present the mementos for the Wipro Guys :0
•  I have decided to really start preparing for talks in future, *I do not want to mess up again!*
• It was nice meeting some of my #linux-india buddies, though not many could make it.
• There were more talks and unconferences on Blogging. The first one by Kiruba was all fun, while Jace’s was more informative as well.
• NIT Calicut has really good facilities, at least for our eyes, comparing to the numerous colleges dotting around Chennai. If am not wrong, it has better facilities than what I have seen in MIT. May be am wrong!?
• Though I missed being at Carte Blanche this year, especially when we had Ubuntu-India stall there, but I feel content about being at FOSS.NITC and very much looking to be there next year too
• My train journey was tiresome, against my hope that second class sleeper will be at least comfortable. I got a slight fever and spent the whole of today sleeping.

I have posted the photos from FOSS.NITC and will try to add more, as well as a lot of my buddies have. Please check flickr.com under the tag foss.nitc if you are interested. There are really cool pictures, believe me