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

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

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!

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

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