Reached Calicut on Saturday morning after an uneventful train-journey. Amazingly, I had GPRS connectivity almost throughout the journey, so was able to web-browse and do email till late into the night. Technology rocks!

On reaching Calicut, was collected at the station and taken to the NIT guest house to freshen up. Met up there with Shanu, who had arrived a few hours earlier by bus (and had some exciting stories to tell .

The NIT guest house is *amazingly* comfortable. Great rooms, nice airconditioning, great food – and WiFi! Man, I’ll come here anytime they call!

Afternoon session started off with a bang – literally. The projector went out to lunch and didn’t come back. A new projector was procured, and Shanu took to the stage, and proceeded to tell people why they should be using BSD instead of Linux. It was nice to see how comfortable he is on stage now, and was able to address many points clearly and convincingly. What a change from the shy, skinny lad who came to Bangalore in November 1999.

After Shanu, I took to the stage and proceeded to trample all over people’s (mis)conceptions about Free and Open Source software. I started with an introduction of FOSS, and ended with an overview of FOSS in India. Hopefully, I will have made things clear enough to people to get them excited and (more importantly) involved. Lots of questions after the talk, so I am hopeful that the talk was useful to the 100+ people in the audience. Slides are here.

Today, Shanu and I are in our respective rooms, relaxing like we are on a holiday, lazing around, browsing online, and listening to music. We leave back for Bnagalore this evening.