tuxmaniac’s blog

After 2 really long weeks of uncertainties, confusion, disappointments, chaos it was finally decided that I will head to FOSS Meet @ NIT Calicut. It was pretty late when this decision was made and hence no bus tickets (3 day weekend in BLR means its “evacuation time” ), no direct flights nor trains (only 2 trains per week) to Calicut. Also figured out that kart_ also was stranded and when I was again re- thinking my decision to head to Calicut, a thought struck me. May be we should take a taxi and head out! And so we did. kart_ and myself started the drive to Calicut around Friday night 10 PM. Drive was pretty long and tiring, after which we reached the place by 6 AM just to crash land on the bed. Later in the day we headed to the lab where FOSS in Schools workshop was being conducted by Pramode. I guess, this was the biggest success of this year’s meet. Lots of enthusiasm and energy from school kids.

After a bit of emails, builds and blog readings, headed for lunch. Met Kiruba, Praveen, Anivar, Hiran and other folks. Pradeepto joined us late afternoon and headed straight to his talk on “Join the VISION - Kde”. Nice one it was. My talk on “FOSS for electronic enthusiasts” went very well with about 30-40 people attending. Then we (Pradeepto, Kart_ and myself) decided to head out to Malabar Palace for some Appam fest! Returned back to the guest house, discussed various things under the planet including Alternative Education, KDE, Packaging, Marriage, Life and what not.

We had a “Contribution to FOSS” talk the next day for which we had absolutely no preparation. Well when 3 guys are gonna present, I suppose we need some kind of a understanding. But guess what, the talk went extremely smooth and IMO message conveyed. We showed them Wiki, subversion, Bugzilla and also mentioned about IRC and mailing lists. The flow was impeccable for the amount of (almost nil) preparation which we did. Goes to show the understanding among the three of us??

It was time to head back to BLR. On the way back we made quick stops at Wayanad Pookat lake, lunch, Mysore Palace (JIT for the Sunday Evening lighting) and Kamat (dinner). Back and fresh again today to write this long post!

All in all a very relaxing trip. Taking into account the amount of hardships these NITC folks have faced over the last month with loads of speakers dropping off in the last minute, these guys have managed to finish of yet another good FOSSMeet @ NITC. Three Cheers!

Flickr Sets: Mysore Palace, FOSSMeet@NITC, Wayanad