When I posted to the FOSS.IN mailing list, telling people that delegate registrations were now open, I got a flood of private mail, most of which were to the tune of “where have you been?”.
Ah well, I have been busy, but mostly, I have been sick.
FOSS.IN/2006 Talks – First Shortlist
Today, we released the first shortlist of FOSS.IN/2006 talks, selected from more than 200 submissions. You can see the list here.
Pay close attention to the text before the list – it explains why this list is not yet complete, and why some talks are still missing. Also, note that this is a list of talks, not workshops and tutorials, or BoFs.
And this is probably a good time for me to rant about a number of things that are really chewing my brain:
FOSS.IN/2006 Talks Submission closing!
For all those of you who have either forgotten about it, or are hoping that the date will extended:
The talks submission for FOSS.IN/2006 closes tomorrow (Sunday, October 8th) at 23:59 GMT+0530.
And no, the date won’t be extended, and no, we won’t take into account that you are in a different timezone, and no, we won’t take into consideration that you are God’s gift to FOSS – if you talk isn’t in, it isn’t in, and that’s that.
While we are talking about it, let me point you at Rusty Russel’s recent blog post about talk selection for linux.conf.au, and quote the most important parts here:
[1] This covers “expert” talks like licencing talks, etc.
[2] “X.org development” vs “libmeanwhile development”
[3] “A new typechecking tool” vs “Haskall type experiments”
[4] “Build your own satellite” vs “My First Gnome Applet”
I am posting this because the number of people who think that FOSS.IN is looking for talks about how cool FOSS is, or who have submitted introductory talks, or who have submitted “BFOO” (Blinding Flashes of the Obvious) talks, is really frightening. None of these talks will be selected – they are boring, and if you haven’t taken the trouble to read and understand the Call for Participation and understood it, then chances of you doing any sort of research for your talk are remote.
Also – if you have submitted a “Computer Science, featuring Linux as an example” talk, or if you think you can do a joint talk with someone else – several of you are going to find out just how much we enjoy sending such talks to /dev/null.
Another thing that completely fries my brain is the subservient attitude some of the actual FOSS developers in India are showing by *not* submitting talks:
These people won’t submit talks because “XYZ is speaking at the event – he is the Guru of all things related to project ABC – how can someone like *me* speak about ABC when he is?”
I can only remind people of this poem
Little drops of water
Little grains of sand
Make the mighty ocean
And the pleasant land
In the FOSS world, every contribution counts and is notable. For example, if you are involved in a FOSS project and have solved a problem in that area that helped the project improve its performance, then you are perfectly qualified to speak about this – no matter how small you may think that contribution has been. The reason is because it was *you*, not your “God” who made that contribution.
Get out of that colonial mindset – stop believing that your contribution was too small to talk about, stop believing that your “overlords” in the headoffice in the USA are the only ones who can think.
FOSS.IN is about highlighting Indian contributors – how do you think we can do that if you think your contribution is meaningless?
You have 24 hours to submit your talk, or to change what you have already submitted if it falls into the scope of talks that we are clearly going to reject.
Don’t you think you should be doing something important right now…?
Back in India, jampacked schedule
My last few days in Germany were packed with excitement, and I will write about those in another entry.
After successfully avoiding a 180 euros excess baggage penalty (by offloading clothes in favour of bitter chocolate and salami), I returned to Bangalore on Tuesday night (well, actually Wednesday morning).
Once here, I immediately got thrown into FOSS.IN/2006 related stuff. The talks are piling up as people are responding to the Call for Participation and are registering as speakers and submitting talk/workshop/tutorial proposals (note – last date is October 8th). I am also happy to note that our FOSS.IN ambassadors outside India have been successfully recruiting well known FOSS developers, hackers and contributors for the event. We are going to have fun! 
Thursday, I was at InfoVision 2006, where I had the honour of being invited to share the stage with Jimmy “Jimbo” Wales, the man behind Wikipedia, as co-panelist in a discussion about “New Cyber Genres: Wikis, Blogs, Collaborative Tools and Models”. I doubt that the organisers knew what to expect when you let two “Information wants to be free” evangelists loose on a corporate audience, but we had a tremendous response, and we were quite thrilled with ourselves.
Friday, Jimbo had called for a wikipedians meet at Coconut Grove on Church Street. I didn’t quite know what to expect, but it was a riot, and we had a ball. Jimbo was very involving, focussing on Indian Language wikipedias, and brainstorming on how we could extend these. Recognising that awareness is half the problem, I invited the Indian Wikipedia community to participate at FOSS.IN/2006, and have offered them free expo space, with connectivity, computers, etc. that they may require to highlight their work. I have also invited them to submit talks on the subject.
After the meet, I had a birthday party to attend for two very good friends – one of whom is gorgeous (the other one is also gorgeous – well, at least my dogs think so .
It turns out that I was the host of the party – which suited me fine, given that it’s been a while since the last one at my place. Jimbo came along as well, and a good time was had by all. It’s amazing what a judicious mix of friends, good food, ample spirit(s), good music and bandwidth can achieve.
BTW – Wikipedians in Mumbai: Jimbo is in Mumbai this evening and a small get-together with him is being arranged. If you are an active Wikipedia editor living in Mumbai, get in touch with Dr.Nagarjuna pronto. Didn’t happen – Jimbo was forced to go through immigration here in Bangalore, and wasn’t allowed to leave the Mumbai airport. That so sucks!
There have been more happenings at home, but I am afraid that calls for another entry as well. Stay tuned!
New kid on the block: MunduRadio! :)
When I joined Geodesic back in June, lots of people asked me “So what does Geodesic do?”
Time to answer that question.
Geodesic is in the communication and collaboration space, but not on the PC (at least not primarily), but on mobile platforms. And we aren’t absent from the PC platform either – if you have ever used IndiaTimes messenger, then you have used our product.
And the first project that I got involved with is one that very nicely showcases what the company can do, and why I joined it:
Say hello to MunduRadio!
This is a little application for your Internet-enabled PalmOS, Symbian or PocketPC devices (PDAs and phones) that lets you play unlimited internet radio stations. The site lets you maintain your playlist (so that you don’t have to painfully do it on your mobile device), and you push a button on your device, sync the playlist, and choose which station you wish to listen to.
Simple, and *very* effective.
You can listen to it on Wifi, GPRS, CDMA – i.e. anything that lets you get at the Internet. The default set of stations is optimised for low bandwidth usage on GPRS, but if you have faster connectivity (WiFi or CDMA), you can happily sync in high-bandwidth stations as well.
And of course, the default set includes everyone’s favourite Internet radio station – RadioVeRVe! Yep, our little amateur radio station, dedicated to playing only independent music from India, has hit the big time, and we are already beginning to see the impact as connections have started coming in from all over the world.
There are many more applications like these in the works, but I am not allowed to talk about them yet. So stay tuned!
And if you have any comments about MunduRadio, do let me know. I’ll pass them on to the team, who are already working on the next version, as well as on other mobile apps.
Recap of Wizards of OS 4
So I had at the time of my life at Wizards of OS 4, just as expected.
Great panel discussions, great conversations, old friends, new friends… this event had it all. I am really glad that I made it here.
The thing that amazes me the most is the fantastic team that puts this event together. It’s an inspiration to me to see these guys at work!
Made a lot of new friends, met a lot of old friends (including Rishab Ghosh, whom I had not met in ages!), and had tons of people asking me about FOSS.IN, and how they look forward to being there. Hey! More people out here seem to know about our little event than people in India do!
The total joker in the pack, however, was this little thingy I carried around with me.
You know how the best way to attract peoples attention park is to carry a small baby or a puppy around? Well, at Wizards of OS, you pull a Simputer out of your pocket and put it on the table – instant crowd! No geek can resist that! TV crews falling over themselves to film it, people battling to play Golgolli on it, experts oohing and aahing over the interface… I loved it!
On the final day, I was part of a panel discussion moderated by Jon Corbet, and along with the irrepressable Fernanda Weiden (who fought a nasty cold and complete loss of voice to make it to the panel and held her own there!) and Federico Heinz (the president of FSF Latin America, and whom I had met back in 2004 at WOS3 as well), we discussed the Future of Free Software. Maybe I imagined it, but the audience was a lot bigger and more interactive at this panel. And it certainly helped having Christoph Hellwig in the audience!
But it was all over much too soon. Saturday evening, I trudged home,making it across one of the largest cities in the world in about 20 minutes (!), with many happy memories.
Thank you, Volker Grassmuck and your team, for creating Wizards of OS!
FOSS.IN/2006 Website and CfP online!
The FOSS.IN/2006 website is now up and the Call for Participation is online as well.
So if you want to participate in this year’s event, get there, read the CfP, and get your abstracts ready – speaker registration starts in a day or two.
In Berlin
I made it safely to Berlin, after reaching Chennai on Monday night, grabbing my passport from my travel agent’s guy there, and sprinting to the international airport to catch my flight to Frankfurt.
I checked in, and knowing how hassled the counter staff is usually with people giving them insufficient documents, badly arranged, etc, had made sure that all my papers were together, all forms duly filled, and handed over in the correct sequence. Only one checked in suitcase, and one small rucksack containing Vader and his gear.
Checkin took just 30 seconds. The lady behind the counter was obviously pleased.
“Here are your papers and your boarding pass for your onward journey from Frankfurt to Berlin, and here is your boarding pass for the Chennai-Frankfurt flight…”
Excellent, couldn’t be better.
“…complete with complimentary upgrade to business class.”
Whoa!
Going Home…
In a rather rapid and surprising turn of events, I find myself frantically packing my bags, as I prepare to leave for Berlin, Germany – tonight.
I will be speaking at Wizards of OS and elsewhere, and following up on a number of work related things as well. I expect to be out for a couple of weeks.
Read on for more stuff, including about FOSS.IN/2006.
BlogCamp 2006, Chennai
I am currently in Chennai, at BlogCamp – India’s first ever conference on blogging.
After almost *not* making it (Air Deccan sms’s me at 10pm, saying that my flight at 8am today would only leave after 11am), I landed up just a few minutes late, to see a huge crowd of people in a big hall, talking about blogging and bloggers.
I love this. The last time I saw such a well arrange and interactive event, it was at BarCamp Chennai. Hardly surprising, then, that BlogCamp has been organised by the same people that organised BarCamp Chennai – led by Kiruba Shankar. If I had 10% of this guy’s drive, I had freed the world of death and taxes a long time ago!
Unfortunately, I am not here for both the days, which means that I am going to miss a whole lot of fun stuff (including a party at a Beach House!). Depending on something likely to happen at 3pm on Monday, I may find myself seriously displaced a few hours later, so I need to prepare for that this evening and on Sunday.
Anyway, I had the honour of kicking off the first session here, and I talked about my various phases of blogging (I don’t blog – I write a diary), Phase 1 (blogging in th e90s – anyone who has ever read my articles in the early 1990s will recognise that I was basically using PC Quest as a very early form of blog), the “burn out” in the later part of the 90s, my getting re-triggered after reading Wil Wheaton‘s early blog efforts in late 2001, my conscious decision not to enable comments in my diary (I love the 1:1 personal interaction via email, and I get several hundred responses each month), the good thing about modern blogging (there are so many people doing it) and the bad thing about modern blogging (there are so many people doing it , and a dozen other things.
I decided not to use my prepared slides (this was not the kind of forum that needed the support of slides on the screen, not that I *ever* need support of slides when I talk! , and spoke from the heart. Hell, you could say I “VerBlogged”
I am going to try and update this entry over the day, let’s hope that happens.
Update: Live chat going on here.
Update:Post lunch update. Had serveral sessions in the morning, the most active one was by Jace – not that he got to say as much as he should have, but because everyone else had comments and grabbed the mic!
Lunch was decent – well arranged, no crowding, food was good. Typical south Indian grub – the best sort. Good conversations all around. An embarrassing number of people coming to me telling me that they used to read my articles in PCQ and liked them. Thanks guys – you know how to make a writer feel good.
Afternoon session has started on community blogging, but I won’t see the end of it – have to leave back to Bangalore, so have to leave from here by 3pm. Damn, I wish I could have spent both days here. 
Discussion on now on how the tsunami tragedy triggered off the Indian blogging world, and I tend to agree. Sad that it took a tragedy to do this.