On 28th May, I attended Ilug-Bengaluru meeting. Deependra had called for the meetup and he had asked if FSMK office could be used as the venue. Since there was no other event planned in the office at the time, we were glad to provide the venue. Since the event clashed with the samudaya campaign event, only me and Prabodh sir from FSMK could attend the meetup. We were joined by Hobbes, Deependra and Harish from the ilug-Bengaluru. From FSMK’s side, we informed about the different events that we were conducting in the colleges, especially the success we had in St. Joseph with a course on free software technology.
Later, the discussion turned towards the importance of having a noname.conf again this year considering the success it had last year. Last year, the conference had got around 50 attendees and it had diverse topics for discussions ranging from startups to localization to discussion about various distributions. It also featured the screening of the Blender movie, Sintel.
Clearly, for a city like Bengaluru, which has been hosting almost all the major conferences in FOSS domain, like, National conference on Free software by FSMK, Pycon in MSRIT, FOSS.IN in Nimhans Convention Centre, GNOME Asia in Dayanand College, KDE conf in RVCE, Ubuntu Developer Day by Canonical, there is a need to organize regular meetups to keep the people connected apart from just during the events.
Hobbes proposed to conduct second noname.conf on August 27th, which is considered as the anniversary week for Linux. The plan is to target around 150-200 participants during the noname.conf. Like last year, noname.conf will be open to anybody and everybody to come and discuss anything associated with FOSS technology.
The noname.conf will then be followed by a major FOSS conference in Novemeber which will target audience and speakers from all over India.
For such a plan to get implemented, it is necessary that before noname.conf, FOSS evangelists regularly meet. Hobbes gave the example of meetups in 2003 which managed to get around 50 participants every meetup. Clearly if in past when there was little awareness of GNU/Linux amongst people, if the meetups managed to get an attendance of 50 people every single time, managing the same at present time shouldnt be a difficult task. The only bottleneck we identified was the current split in the community in Bangalore. The split makes sense as each group have their own way of seeing FOSS technology and its impact. However we also need to make sure that the split does not inhibit new comers to join. Currently there is a lack for a local platform for new comers to come and learn the technology. Even though the groups are individually trying to make such platforms, if we get together, the impact will much more profound.
Hence we call upon members of all the groups which share the idea of spreading and using FOSS at all levels to join us during our meetups. The meetup is planned to be conducted on every last weekend of the month. The venue and the exact date and time will be broadcasted in all mailing lists as soon as they are fixed. We hope to see active participation from all FOSS enthusiasts and veterans.
