foss.in – Random thoughts and serendipity

Singularity

sankarshan — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 10:49:23 +0000

The Law of Singularity states that the most important aspect of a brand is its single-mindedness. What is a brand? A singular idea or concept that you own inside the mind of the prospect. It’s as simple or as difficult as that.

The wonderful folks at FOSS.IN have a promotional video out. And, as Shreyas puts it – this year it is about doing ‘big’ things. This year, and, possibly for the coming years, it is about developers and development and doing things that are used by an ever growing section of folks.

If you still haven’t registered for the event, you haven’t really taken a look at the schedule.

Fedora, Friends and FUDCon

sankarshan — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 07:09:19 +0000

The news is out and it is official. There is going to be a FUDCon at FOSS.IN and it is on the 28th of November, 2008. If you needed a reason to be there, this is that single reason. Just be there, jam with friends and while you are at it have loads of fun.

A big round of applause to 3 folks who have been working in the background to make this happen. I present – Kushal Das, Rahul Sundaram and Susmit. Together they stitched together the agenda, prodded the speakers, coordinated with the organizers, worked on the swag and of course, made everything look so easy.

The FUDCon will provide ample opportunities to meet up with friends, talk about or hack on a few features, soak in the freedom of a world-class operating system and be a leader. We expect good things out of the event, but we can’t do that without you. Fedora has always been about the community and our awesome trio are putting in place many surprises for the participants of the Fedora community who attend FUDCon.

There will be more blogs, I hope to see some of the speakers blogging about their sessions. And there will be pictures. But all that is when the FUDCon is on. So, go ahead and mark that date on your calendar. And remember to drop in to #fedora-india on irc.freenode.net

Cobbling some thoughts together

sankarshan — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 01:30:43 +0000

My last blog post has had a surge of comments. Good to know. It hasn’t done what I was expecting it to do. And, frankly, I don’t think there would be GNOME-y stuff happening at FOSS.IN this year. I would have loved to see some Performance Testing stuff and bits of GNOME Mobile. So, either those folks are talking off-list and submitting proposals or, they don’t intend to turn up. So much for a few mails that I received gushing about ‘doing GNOME‘ at the event. Stop gushing and start doing is something I should make into a signature.
I started using duplicity to back up stuff. Wonderful piece of software and a nifty utility. Thanks to Rahul/mether for pointing that out to me. Being the GUI weenie that I am, it would be wonderful to have a GUI wrapped around it.
FOSS.IN this year would perhaps be less of a ‘conference’ and more of a ‘summit’+’WorkOut’. In case, you are presenting or intending to talk about stuff at the event, please take care to give your slides some love. Presenting doesn’t really mean that you would [i] be reading huge chunks of text off the slides or, [ii] be deviating from the slide content into something orthogonal. I saw both of that happening. The presentation/talk is a story and it would be good to spend some time during the run-up to the event to practise narrating without the slides. Lots of things can happen and thus, preparing an interesting narration isn’t a bad idea.
Interesting proposals for WorkOuts and Project of The Day being discussed on various project mailing lists and IRC channels. To be part of them, hop on to the nearest friendly IRC channel (#fedora-india, for example) and start participating.
Wrapped up reading An Indian Odyssey – quick read and a good one too.
This article (from the Online WSJ) kind of sums up the situation around ICICI for a quick read. The television media coverage related to ICICI has been all-over-the-park. Half baked statements, grapevine gossip being palmed off as ‘breaking news’ and a steady attempt to sensationalize the facts without an underlying comprehension. Senior media personnel haven’t been performing up to the mark. The global meltdown and the unheard-of-before statements from various world leaders would eventually walk their way to India. However, it isn’t an excuse for the private media channels to go all out and start adding rumors to the dismay of already shaky indices.
To all those who have contributed to the page on Subprime mortgage crisis – a round of thanks for keeping the English simple and easily understood.
If you have missed it earlier, don’t forget to take a look at the EKG Reports.

Where have all the GNOME fans gone ?

sankarshan — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 03:46:34 +0000

Barring some initial discussions, there hasn’t been much progress with regards to GNOME at the event. The CfP has been out for a while and there hasn’t been any forward movement on the GNOME Mobile stuff as well.

Where have all the GNOME fans gone ?

And here it comes…

sankarshan — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 13:05:56 +0000

Atul posted the mail as a prelude to the much awaited CfP. And, I’d say that it is going to become a much forwarded and much discussed mail. It is meant to be that. Discussion is good. Results are much better.

It is somewhat difficult for an event to re-invent itself and yet keep the focus on the underlying theme – “Talk is Cheap, Show Me the Code“. It takes introspection, it takes ambition and it takes faith. So, this time around the focus is clear enough – no content that is aimed at newbies (which was there last time around as well) and a strong focus on getting things done. To that extent, I’d hazard a guess that the selection of submissions would go through a fine tooth comb to see if they are actually about approaches to solving a defined problem. It is not going to be a “look at me and my project and ain’t I cool” talk again. And, to augment the need to sit down and “work” there are Project of the Day and FOSS Workouts.

Effective this year, FOSS.IN will focus on developers, and results. It
will highlight credible efforts by people in India contributing to FOSS,
and will bring together developers at peer level, to allow them to
interact, discuss, develop and deliver.

“Delivery” does not mean mere bug fixing. Delivery will be new features to
existing applications, completely new subsystems (e.g. file systems,
device drivers, etc.), (re)design of systems and applications, etc.

But of course this doesn’t rule out why folks come to events – to meet other people, get familiar, discuss a niggling issue and have loads of debugging sessions and debates.

FOSS.IN is supposed to be a meeting ground for existing and potential FOSS
contributors, so that they can put faces to IRC nicks, discuss, interact,
collaborate, plan, debug, etc. all through the event.

We want people to come to FOSS.IN with definite goals in mind, and fulfil
them at the event. Whether it is improving an existing project, launching
a new one, brainstorming with your peers, with international participants,
etc. We want to see high-intensity FOSS contribution happening, or being
seeded, in the 750 seater hall, the corridors, the BOF tents, the lawns,
the lobbies, etc.

It is going to be a different event. It is going to make you think. It is aimed at making you do things. It is thought out to be a new experience.

Don’t say you weren’t forewarned.

Gnome Mobile at foss.in ?

sankarshan — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 00:37:04 +0000

The event is near and the CfP is nearly out. From a GNOME perspective there seems to be a resurgence of interest in a talk+hack_session on performance improvement for GNOME and Gnome Mobile. Is anyone out there interested in picking these up and proposing sessions ? More ideas are certainly welcome on the mailing list.