Thursday, December 10, 2009

My foss.in Experiences

I had been to the foss.in 2009, Bangalore.
I got a lot of experience there which i would like to share here..


I registered as a volunteer.
There was a volunteer meet on 30th november. I attended the meet, shilpa sequiera gave the instructions how to volunteer.
First i thought it was a tough job..!


Then the next day i was at the registration area. It was nice talkin with tejas, dafne, etc..
Then came my friend, Ramnish from Nellai, it was really nice talking with him, he was a Fedora user. I was hanging around in the venue with him for 4 days, he too taught me a lot regarding the command line and much more..!
I had a list of people whom i should meet within the 5 days regarding the project which i'm doing..


I met Ajuonline, i saw his GSOC t-shirt(!) went near him and asked about how to participate in GSOC. And the most interesting thing was, i used to hang around in irc channels where i used to see ajuonline, but couldnt recognize that it was him when i was talking to him.
He explained me how all i could enter into gsoc, he also told me to fix some bugs in the areas i'm interested. At the end i asked him for his mail id, only then i knew it was ajuonline(his id card showed Speaker: "Ajay Kumar")..! I was really surprised because i usually thought i couldnt meet him..!




The next person who impressed me was the cool guy 'Jon Philips', he gave a talk on identi.ca. I was a hall marshall of there. (Hall marshalling: volunteers are required to help ensure the smooth running of talks in each of the halls. They will be required to introduce speakers, take care of the hall equipment, and generally ensure that everything happens according to schedule).


Meanwhile i talked to Kishore Bhargava that i need to meet some web people regarding my project. He gave me a great idea- "Write on your id - 'Interests- web development'"! He told he could point out somebody.


Then the next person i met was Tarique Sani of SANIsoft. He gave me some ideas regarding my project. 
Two more web people i met were Avinash & Gopal, who both gave me some great ideas  for my project... Avinash was really cool..!


Third day, My laptop didnt boot, i left it in the hibernate mode, aft which i couldnt reboot it. It showed "Booting Error:Invalid environment variable", I couldnt fix it! Again ran for help- Kishore and Allen fixed it..! So nice of them:)

I was terrified when i thought "i dont know anything".


That day i planned to attend the KDE Project of the day.
The session started, i really enjoyed Pradeepto's talk, then the bug fixes, etc.
At the end of the session got a t-shirt too..!
Sujith fixed a bug in the 'bouncing ball' application. Akarsh Simha and Vinesh fixed a bug in Kstars.
The bug fixes were really awesome..! Inspired even me to fix a bug..!


I was amazed to see real foss people like this...!! The KDE Team inspired me a lot..


The last day, before leaving the venue, I met Sujith H of the KDE team.
I had a nice time talking to him..
After talking to him, i understood how friendly the KDE community is..!
I also talked to him about my inferiority complex that i felt that 'i dont know anything, all are from IIT, and prestigious colleges..'. Then sujith adviced me not to think like that..!
Here is one of my pic at KDE session http://www.flickr.com/photos/sujith-h/4156418936/in/set-72157622796211453/, i'm on the first row with my friend Ramnish.


I also had a very nice time with the other volunteers like aslam, ramesh, etc..


With this, the next day i returned to Chennai, having a thought in my mind 'i should too do something before next year, and be one among the speakers..'


Waiting for the next foss.in..!