Looks like TechKriti ’08 at IIT Kanpur was a blast and – Arun the dude who had a big hand in making it happen has blogged about it here.
And here is to the new r0ckstar – our very own Ankita Garg – who spoke for 6 hours during her workshop on “Basics of the Linux Kernel”. The other session was about LinuxChix India and we are all waiting for her to return and fill us in with the details. 🙂
To the guy who is getting married today…..Pradeepto
p.s…hope the “goodies” reach on time (fingers crossed)
I had always heard/read about foss.in. This time I saw it for myself. Its huge. I had put in a talk for the Gnome Project day and it got accepted. Besides that, I had suggested for a small BoF session on the LinuxChix India mailing list as I expected most of the ladies on the list to be around for the event.
LinuxChix India Chapter was started about 2-3 years back by Archana and a mailing list set up. During that time a lot of mails were exchanged regarding the goals for the group, mailing etiquette and other tid-bits. Then, Sulamita Garcia dropped by at Foss.in (with the really pretty LC.BR tees) and people outside the mailing list sat up and took notice of the ladies within the growing FOSS community in India. Things slowed down a bit for a while and this year we got ourselves an irc channel (#indichix on irc.linuxchix.org) and a wiki (linuxchix.org.in). Then came the proposal for the aforementioned small BoF session. One of us checked with Atul about the possibility of having the session during the event and after a nod from him, we decided to tom-tom our party with some posters and banners. With one thing leading to another, we suddenly found ourselves with a PowerBof, some cool stickers sponsored by Team Foss.in, a stall at the FOSS Expo (which by the way was a really cool place to hang out hats) and huge support.
On the day of the session, most of us gathered at the stall. Thanks to irc, Vidya, Barkha, Aneesha, Ankita and I have been talking a lot the past few months and it did not take any ice-breaking moments for us to quickly gather around on the carpetted floor. Sitting cross-legged we discussed quickly about the BoF session that was to happen in another 1 hour 30 minutes. As with BoF sessions, the discussions swayed a lot and instead of describing it all over again, I’d rather point to the wonderful reports by Vid and Bubulle.
On a serious note, the session notes are now up on the LinuxChix India site and lots of folks are joining up the mailing list. Welcome!
This is just the start (albeit a wonderful one) and every sticker I handed out reminded me of the hard work that we need to put in to ensure that our ideas and dreams of gathering around a self-reliant community of women involved with Open Source software becomes a reality.
7th December
Its the penultimate day of FOSS.in 2007 today. The energy around is mindblowing. I have been meeting nearly everyone I know (or have seen) on IRC. Right now I am at the LinuxChix stall (ok, walked into the GSoC BOF thats ending soon to make way for the Indic BoF), thats right outside the JNTata hall. The stall has turned into a multi project booth for a lot of projects that do not have a stall…like Gnome and Fedora. We have a small box at the counter thats giving away lots of stickers – Gnome, KDE, Fedora, OpenOffice, Debian, IndLinux etc. besides the really cool looking LinuxChix India stickers. The BoF went pretty well yesterday and we had a full house. A long post coming on that right after we get all the notes collated. Meanwhile, please go ahead and subscribe to the existing mailing list
8th December:
Its the final day today. I am waiting for the bus to arrive to take us to the venue. It was such a nice surprise to see Gaurav play with the Raghu Dixit Project at the Saarc Bands Rock Concert, on television this morning. Good to know that they have released an album, I’ll surely get my hands on one.
Meanwhile, we are planning for a small get-introduced-to-each-other meet at the LinuxChix stall today post-lunch (around 2 PM) for all the ladies around.
Pradeepto (Hi back to you 🙂 ) has started a revolution of sorts with his post about how the FOSS world could do with contributions of the monetary form as well, particularly for the goodies that are handed out during events. Sometimes these are sponsored by the particular project’s marketing team (a longish process at times) and often by folks who just want to spread the word around. Vidya had blogged about how we had reached a deadlock of sorts with the sticker printing. Thanks to Atul , who came to our rescue. Thanks again. Thanks to all the other nice people who had come forward offering help. It gives us so much encouragement.
Through Myopic Eyes 
