Special treatment, and FOSS.IN

OK, so I had it up to here with some of the mails I have been getting, with people asking whether they have to submit talks to FOSS.IN/2007 or whether (implied) they are big and famous enough to get selected directly, or whether they will be given keynotes, etc.

Here is my reply.

FOSS.IN focuses on quality of talks, and value to audiences. We don’t need/want/encourage corporate positional talks (“my company is so great because it does all these things for FOSS”) or demands for “positioning” (i.e. first day, first show) just because the proposed speaker works for a big company.

Here is a sure-shot recipe to get into what *you* think is a “prime slot”:

1. Fire up vi, and start writing code, or cause your organization to start contributing

2. Help build a community (hint – you can’t buy community)

3. Practice your public speaking – just because you are a great coder, you aren’t necessarily a great speaker or know how to communicate.

4. Stop depending on corporate clout to assure yourself a talk slot at FOSS.IN – try getting there on merit.

This year, instead of 200+ talks in the main conference, we have just 60. We can afford to be selective, and BY GOLLY, WE WILL BE!

We have but one $deity we recognise – our audiences. And we want to give them the best value they can get. We want to be better than those freaking $5000-per-head conferences that no one can afford attending, where you end up only hearing marketing talk from people who bought themselves a talk slot.

We are FOSS.IN.

We are better than that.