Can anyone pass links to reports/blogs/pictures from FOSSMeet @NITC ? I had requested the organizers, but am yet to receive any response from them.
Yes We Did !
A manifesto is defined as a public declaration of principles and intentions, often political in nature. The word itself has a genesis in the word manifestus meaning clear, evident.
For those who haven’t been following it, the FOSS Manifesto which was published recently, provides the clearest articulation of the will and motivation of the followers and practitioners of FOSS as both a technology and a philosophy. It breaks new ground from two aspects:
- by demonstrating that there is a need for the political parties within the system to grow up and embrace the newer issues that are relevant in addition to the existing (and, somewhat age-old) issues that are raised during the time of elections and,
- by providing ample proof that a completely inclusive process of asking for and receiving inputs in the effort to shape and mould public policy works
There would be some objections on the second point in terms of reach out to the masses, but the very fact that the world of FOSS isn’t limited to the elitist groups of folks who are interested in FOSS for the mere sake of FOSS philosophy is something noteworthy. Having FOSS (where the last S isn’t just software) plonked bang in the middle of a political consciousness is an effort worth applauding. This is thought of to be the elections where the youth of the country are expected to exercise their will, their comprehension and their ability to shape the nation’s destiny. The youth now have an agenda which they can feel comfortable rallying around and strive towards making a change. To borrow a phrase from an electoral process that was filled with hope, optimism and choice – Yes We Can !
For all those who worked tirelessly to make this manifesto happen and, get it accepted into the mainstream political spectrum – here’s a round of applause.
Read more here.
Getting off the grid…
I will be getting off the grid from tomorrow till the first week of April. And, I expect to be significantly telco-challenged. So, if you :
- have been promised some swag, I’ll try and make sure that I have put them in the courier or, have someone accountable for it. (Note: since this was a week of holidays, I’d suggest that you wait for a response from me on this before talking over various channels about the lack of a response)
- have been requested to submit the expenses for an event for which there has been a previous ACK, please do send over the bills to my address (check the Pune office one). However, re-imbursements would have to wait till I get back to office
- want to discuss an event for which you are requesting some funds from The Fedora Project, make sure you put Susmit in cc: of the mail and, we can get a discussion going
- want to get in touch with me, please send me an SMS (if you have the contact #) or, send a mail to my Gmail ID (which you should have) and, I’ll try to respond if GPRS permits. I’ll be using a mobile device, so please don’t put in attachments or, expect me to traverse hyperlinks. A short mail that states the meat of the story should work out nicely.
Meanwhile, have fun. Don’t forget to use Rawhide. It is awesome.
That lazy,hazy,crazy bug of summer
There was this niggling blog entry which pointed to a bug. And, what a bug it was. A problem that is somewhat well entrenched when it comes to Bengali (India) bits is that of pluralism. There are far too many stakeholders and, a larger number of dispersed data points that need to be lined up before a conclusion can be arrived at. Especially so, because over the years there has been enough discussion about divergence of views on the data points rather than covergence of opinion leading to closing of tasks.
So, Runa poked and prodded a few folks. And, got things done. That’s awesome and that’s what makes her a rockstar.
Some more on education
Taking up from where I left it last time around, one aspect that should work out is producing a distribution that is packaged with applications relevant to education. The catch phrase over here is “relevant to education”. And, it means thinking about something what the Fedora Electronic Labs does.
The Fedora Education SIG seems to have a slightly different approach and, a different objective. Especially the part:
The Fedora Education Spin is the number one goal right now and includes software to use it as a terminal server client. In parallel some SIG members work in integrating K12LTSP into Fedora. Once that work is finished it remains to be seen if we integrate that work into the Fedora Education Spin.
It would be good to try and see if a Fedora based release can be done which gets installed out-of-the-box and, somewhat along the lines of this blog entry, wrap meta-data around the applications so that it becomes relevant to the target consumer. There are a couple of hops to go before LTSP and such can be packaged into a complete ‘solution’ that comes preloaded with relevant content. Getting the bits out there for playing would also allow a lot of volunteer driven innovation to land up and enhance the process.
I guess I am talking more about the modular breakdown of competencies that allow a larger group of people to start contributing in whatever way they can. Having such a bit would help in FiE and OCiE as well. Ideally, this could be something that is possible to be explored by any upstream project irrespective of whether it is a distribution. So, let’s say a GNOME-Edu compose set that let’s one package a lot of educational applications using GNOME bits to make it available as a functional-out-of-the-box installation.
lazyweb …
Dear Lazyweb,
I have forgotten the password on the GNOME Damned Lies. Is there a way I can get it to mail me a password or, send me a reset password link ?
~sankarshan
Update: Claude Paroz helped reset the password and make it available. You r0ck Claude !!
Take-away: If someone is interested, looks like a “reset forgotten password” functionality requires some love. Should be a small project.
Getting started with the XO Camp and OLPC-Pune
The OLPC-Pune folks are a highly enthusiastic group. Together with Digital Bridge Foundation, they organized a “Getting Started with the XO” camp on 01-March-2009 at SICSR. A fair number of folks had signed up and, in the end, we ended up having a nice round of discussion about what to do to move forward. Amit would be posting the formal minutes to the mailing list, however, a quick summary of the work moving forward can be listed as:
- Technology related : task break down for a potential deployment, assessing a couple of more candidate sites and rolling out a deployment at a single one, reviewing the mr_IN translations available
- Learning related : Assessing the content available at HBCSE in terms of packaging and distribution via the XO
- Marketing : getting more folks in, creating a messaging that can be handed over to anyone, investigate areas and methods to raise funds for the group.
It was a fun day and well-spent. In fact, for me it was doubly interesting because I got to learn about a team of people from a group called “Make A Difference” (MAD). They are based across Pune, Chennai, Cochin among other places. What is of specific importance is that it is a student volunteer group involved in imparting English communication skills so as to enable a better chance in the employment market. In Pune they are currently 180 strong and, their ‘credit’ system whereby a volunteer earns credits for classes taken (or, loses credits for assignments missed) is something working looking into.
Updates: Pictures are put up here and, the URL for MAD passed on by Runa.
Jottings on education…
There are 3 trends I notice when we talk about Education and FOSS in the same sentence. Especially when it comes to conferences and workshops in India. These are:
- FOSS in Education (FiE) – in all probability this can be the one aspect that is quickly done. There exists a curricula and content, and, the aim in this workflow is to ensure that the needs of the curricula are met via FOSS tools and technologies. A pretty much on-topic example could be consumption of Fedora Electronics Lab (FEL) towards teaching the content. Or, using parts of the GNU ToolChain when teaching programming and development.
- FOSS for Education (FfE) – reworking the focus and direction of the curricula and courses towards giving it either a neutral shape (thus allowing easier FiE) or, going full-throttle and making change happen. Since curricula creation has a lot of traditional (and, sometimes unusual) stakeholders, FfE is a game of constant flux, push-n-pull. For obvious reasons, it is also the place where a large amount of community involvement is required. Changes need catalysts. Community participation and direction provide that bit of spark which starts getting_things_done.
- Open Content in Education (OCiE) – have heard a lot of discussions around this but, am yet to see any University or College take this up seriously. Making the entire course content (syllabus, reading, references – the works) open and available for re-distribution or, re-use is something that Universities need to consider seriously. The era of classical education being driven through ‘red-brick’, ‘government funded’ institutions is close to being over. There are multiple ways to reach out to the potential learners as opposed to just waiting for the students to come in and enroll themselves. Re-thinking about content and breaking out from the mould of ‘elitism’ is something most educational institutions are not accustomed to doing. And, it requires careful handholding. Both in terms of the ‘coming out’ as well as the legal aspects of putting out the content. I would be interested in knowing about institutions in India that have managed to put this as part of a practice.
Fedora Activity Day(s) @GNUnify09
GNUnify09, organized jointly by SICSR and PLUG was held on the 13th and 14th of February 2009 at the SICSR Campus. The schedule had 2 half days of Fedora Activity Day(s) and, this is intended to be the report.
Day01
Reached the venue early, primarily to catch up with Susmit on the current plans and conspire a bit about the activities to be planned in the coming year (the financial year for Fedora starts from March onwards). Susmit was looking fresh as usual and over breakfast was a quick run-down of issues, events and plans. Thereon, the group (myself, Runa, Rakesh and Susmit) proceeded to the Speaker’s Lounge, where Rakesh promptly dozed off. The introductions got going and soon we were meeting folks from the Twincling Technology Foundation (Saifi and Namita) along with a couple of students from the institute who on and off do Fedora stuff. Susmit took a couple of moments to survey the room to check for infrastructure, coaxed the organizers to put up a few banners and posters on the boards and, laid out a bit of swag. I goaded the @fedoraindia twitter to come to life with a few tweets while waiting for the usual buzz to die down a bit as the event swung into action. Multiple halls across multiple floors started off with the talks and a couple of them looked promising enough to attend. Ramakrishna and Rahul text message about coming post-lunch and things were looking good. The regular photographer (aka paparazzi) at the event, Vijay swings by the speaker’s lounge to try and take a few candid shots of Vivek Khurana making faces at his laptop.
Since the FAD was not starting before 1430, a couple of us went into various talks particularly one on OSM which had a small but curious group of students talking about GPS devices and thinking up usage models of the OSM data. At around this point the OLPC India BoF notice was also put up (unfortunately clashing with the FAD schedule for the next day). Meet Pradeepto and Ajay Kumar (Sahana).
Post lunch with the arrival of the speakers, the FAD started off. The crowd started trickling in. Primarily because a round of the round-the-clock Fedora install fest that was happening in the next room got over. Rahul kicked off the FAD with his “User -> Contributor in 15 minutes” talk. Themed around the join.fedoraproject.org page, Rahul talked about the ways and means to collaborate in a project, the simple acts of filing bug reports. Questions start popping out and, the FAD is truly underway. Taking cue from a few of the questions, he pitches Art, Documentation and FEL. Joy. The Q+A session becomes collaborative with all the Fedora India folks chipping in to answer queries. Pradeepto goes to his KDE Talk and meanwhile talks with Rahul about the KDE LiveCD in F10 and whether it would solve some of the issues that he had faced while using KDE on F9. He promises to download, install and provide feedback.
Rakesh Pandit takes over from there with his ‘getting your favorite application into Fedora’ talk. Essentially about Packaging, the aim was to demonstrate the simplicity involved in the process and Rakesh took time to run the audience through the processes, necessary reading all the time using examples and on-screen explorations. Nicely packaged talk that took in questions during the talk and, had ample examples of real-life thanks to Rakesh being an avid packager himself.
More folks troop in and up goes Ramakrishna with his series of 4 lightning talks on “Things to know when you want to do FOSS”. A basic run down of list items that one needs to know, he tossed out cheat-sheets by the boatload. As he began, “Life is bad, Times are hard …” with the state of placements of students as they are, the theme sure struck a chord amongst the students. Meanwhile, we start distributing media and, around a 100 odd units fly off the table. More work done by Runa and Susmit in putting the media into jacket sleeves. More media put out, they fly off as well.
Susmit takes on the hard task of pulling together the last talk of the day “mirror-in-a-box”. Relates well to the crowd with his problems and solutions slide deck and the quick demo. More questions and answers and doh !! half day of FAD is over. A tentative schedule for Day02 is announced, the crowd thanked for attending, the mailing lists and IRC channels are repeated again. And, we troop off to the ‘poolside dinner’ organized at SIMS.
More talk and idle gossip at the dinner while waiting for the finger-food to land up at the massively ‘merged’ table that Pradeepto and Ajay created. Karunakar rummages through Ramakrishna’s bag to fish out the camera and starts clicking away. As is the norm, the recent [OT] stuff from various mailing lists come up along with the by-now-familiar lament about the increase in the ‘i want 2 do project’ mails. Having Shakthi around makes for good fun as he shares some of the gossip and chats.
Pradeepto comes back home with me and Runa and, we chat away till wee hours about randomly mundane stuff. Friday the 13th rolls over into Saturday the 14th.
Day02
Slight panic. Turns out that the ‘Genome’ talk by Saurabh Bathe might not happen. Saurabh is busy attending to his day job since he went on-call. Thankfully, we have a surprise speaker up and he is more than willing to make up for the speaker lost. More on that later.
We reach the venue early, hand over the media for the Academics Track to Manjusha, take a peep into the install fest. The immediately visible aspect is that the crowd is considerably lesser than Day01, whether 14th of February was the root cause remains to be found out. More plans with Susmit about the Fedora Ambassadors in India and, their roles and responsibilities. Some good points come up about mentoring the new Ambassadors and making them slip into their roles comfortable. ToDo items around IRC classrooms come up. More media packaged, around 100 more fly out. Stickers are being passed around. The Mozilla Camp during the first half sucks in a large part of the student crowd eager to see the “Bespin” demo and other stuff.
Post lunch the FAD begins in sync with the end of an install-fest round. Rahul begins with his “Spin” talk and demonstrates how to create a LXDE spin along with taking in requests from the crowd to show about creating other spins as well. Kashyap Chamarthy takes it up to talk about PKI. Speaking to a nearly full house he runs the audience down through the background of PKI, relates it to the curriculum, talks about theory and practice, provides real life examples and deployments and in general makes it a well rounded talk that is worth repeating at a couple of colleges and technical workshops. Wonderful work from him to show up and chip in when we realize that Genome isn’t happening. We do the wrap-up session with the usual pointers to the Fedora India community, talk a little bit about projects/internships and, there we are. FAD is over.
Somewhere in between I sneak into the OLPC BoF being organized by Amit Gogna. Good ideas are flowing and there is a nascent OLPC Pune group already being formed and a get-together camp organized on March01.
Little bits of talking with the organizers, we troop back to our house for what is now-called the ‘Konqueror Party’. The K-man said that pizza was his food of choice and so, pizza it was that we ordered and gorged on while talking about the usual banal stuff that comes up when friends meet.
Important lesson from the FAD(s) –
- if we are facing a student crowd, it is always better to have handouts prepared for specific projects that they can take back. As of right now, I am not too confident about the hand-written notes that they jotted down.
- putting out the URL for rpmfusion on the board during the install fest is a good idea
- taking time during the install fest to point folks to IRC #fedora-india is a really nice idea
- looking at GNUnify as an user generating event and tweaking the focus would reap us more benefits
- following up GNUnify with a Fedora centric workshop would perhaps be nice
Photographs to be uploaded as soon as I get a decent connection. Some of them are here.
From the Book of Practical Suggestions
It is always a good idea to stop assuming malice until there are sufficient proofs to begin such assumptions