Tag: foss.in

FOSS.IN -the epilogue

We returned from FOSS.IN/2006 yesterday night and the moment I alighted from the craft and switched on my cell phone, i got a call from the local newspaper, The Hitavada. They wanted to interview Tarique because they discovered him thanks to the IANS Feed from Fred Noronha. They covered it in today’s paper

The event itself was a huge success, interacting with friends always has an exhilarating affect on me – despite the extremely painful foot, I enjoyed to the hilt. The only regret is managing all the paper left me without attending a single talk – but then, I will be able to see the slides and hopefully the videos too. Photographs are scattered all over the net, one just has to search and so are reports in journals, blogs and press. The FOSS mugs were cool, Kalyan’s calenders (The official FOSS.IN Calender) got very good response and I am told people want more of them, I am happy.

And in another news – the X-ray report says my foot bone ain’t broken -so i should be up and kicking dancing in a couple of days time 🙂

FOSS.IN 2006

The stage is set, people slowly filling up the 750 seater hall at the J N Tata auditorium, IISC, Bangalore. The clock shows 10.30.

Registration q’s are getting longer and longer, people cant wait to get their badges and get inside. Volunteers can be seen all over working, helping delegates, speakers and guests.

Asia’s one of the biggest open source event, FOSS.IN is about to commence. I see people around me hooked to the net, perhaps a lot of them are recording the happenings of this moment in their journals in the true open source spirit. People with camera’s are clicking away, foreign speakers dressed in ethnic Indian clothes -in fact Harald Welte is looking very dashing dressed in his trademark black but this time a Pathan suit he is wearing today.

Atul is standing next to the stage, speaking with someone, just about to get on the stage and start the ceremony.

On stage now – Atul ” HALLO” testing for the echo still getting an echo -the mike the mike!! cool it works now.

Here are some excerpts from Atul’s Inaugural speech

“Good morning everyone, my name is Atul Chitnis and I am here to do a five year ramble to welcome you to foss.in 2006, the largest event in India and I am told in Asia and we pride ourselves in being extremely focused -this is not a commercial event, this is OUR event. ”

“30% of people attending this event are from outside and a lot of people are from outside India which is very exciting.”

OK, it seems I am missing a lot of what Atul is talking right now -to witness him speak, you got to be here yourself 🙂

Lamp lighting ceremony is about to begin and the people from community are going to be called on stage to light the inaugural lamp.

Kushal from Durgapur
from Goa
Atul from Delhi
Swati from Nagpur – oops i got to be on stage
From Mumbai
Tejas from Bangalore

Back from lighting the lamp

The event now is officially open.

The first speaker is in the hall. The second speaker is on his way – just landed someone got a text message and Kishore is getting him here straight from the airport.

Atul is now speaking about the delegate kits – the bags are given are cotton eco-friendly bags – reusable (claps from the audience)

There are going to be mugs given to delegates -specially made coffee mugs with FOSS.IN written on them.

Three are lot of people who made this even happen -people and specially sponsors.

One of the very few rules and regulations -don’t run cell phone running inside the hall – Atul will kill anyone having a cellphone running. There is no signal inside the hall so attendees being requested to keep cellphones off.

One major ground rule -have fun . You got to have fun -Atul declares – its is not a formal conference, it is so informal that people meet, discuss and sit and discussions on open source take place -there are specially made tents for these BOFs. Atul finishes his speech and introduces the first key note speaker Suparna Bhattacharya – India’s own contribution to the open source world.

Suparna Bhattarcharya the first keynote speaker is coming on stage amidst claps and she is about the start the keynote address. I turn back and see, the 750 seater hall is completely occupied!!

Foss.in/2005

Returned from Foss.in yesterday night thanks to the Indian Airlines flight that was delayed for more than an hour. Besides crappy food, I find the IA services deteriorating. Air hostess walk on the aisle, banging into a sleeping passengers and do not even apologise -that sucks!! I ultimately resolved not to fly the national carrier as far as possible.

Foss.in is our yearly sabbatical and I was very glad I spoke to Aasim’s teacher and he could accompany us to the event. Aasim found some talks he wanted to attend and he did attend them too. He loves the way Atul presents, so he attended and perhaps understood some bits from Atul’s talk ”The impact of FOSS on Everything “. He also attended the ”Quake3 Fun and More” talk and bugged Shree Kumar for the rest of the conference to know/see more of Quake. This year Aasim was 95% of the time on his own, managed to eat properly (so what if it was just pizza and coke) and have fun. He is keen to attend foss.in/2006.

Meeting friends is always on agenda at foss.in and this year that was mostly *the* agenda. It was very nice meeting *the linuxchix* Sulamita. She is doing an important job in the FOSS world which I always thought would never be needed – but to my surprise after talking with many (typical) men I realise that it is indeed needed. OF the BOFs I attended, I must mention the ”FOSS for School Kids“ BOF -got some very good pointers which I intend to implement at Aasim’s school – I have been trying his school to adopt FOSS at least for some of the tasks.

I wish I could spend more time with people I meet once a year. Hope to see you all in the next event and have more fun.

The day end entertainment on second day, Laya Taranga was exhilarating

Phenom and Phriends was great as I knew it would be. This year Aasim was headbanging (which was not really a surprise, the boy is developing a distinct taste for hard rock). If anyone has pictures of Aasim head banging to Phenom, I would like to see them. I am not a hard core hard rock fan, but since I enjoy music of any kind, I enjoy hard rock just as well. I however wish the concert was in open, outside the hall so that people could multitask – a lot of people were going the same evening or the next morning and saying goodbyes is just as important

What came as a very pleasant surprise was finding out that Kishore and Jyoti Bhargava are also keen bird watchers. So after the event, Saturday morning we managed to be up at 7 and went bird watching and despite a slight drizzle, we managed to spot a lot of birds (42 of them to be precise) at Hebbal Lake, Bangalore in just under 2 hours.

Here’s the Bird list