tuxmaniac’s blog

Here I am back in Bangalore with fond memories of FOSS.NITC 2007 which got concluded yesterday. I landed up in Calicut at around 05 30 hrs on Saturday 3rd March 2007. Basil (a student organiser) picked me up and was given accomodation at the International Hostel. After catching up with some sleep, I got ready for having my breakfast and then proceed to the event. At breakfast I met Pramode (A person on whose hit list I have found a place Reason: I ditched Insignia organisers), Anivar, Praveen, Hiran, Kushal. I proceeded to the hall in which my talk was supposed to be held. Shakthi a.k.a mbuf was taking a session on Alliance VLSI CAD Tools. I gave a talk on Icarus Verilog and Free EDA Tools followed by a short presentation on OpenMoko.

We had nice yummy lunch. The Fruit salad and ice cream were mmmm.. Then it was time for some photography, networking, mentoring and ofcourse a lot of fun. In the evening, Pramode and myself conducted a BoF on “Students Contribution to FLOSS”. The organisers were so co-operative that they shifted me to the Guest House upon my request so that I could be with the gang. After dinner,Parthan and me proceeded to the Software Systems lab to catch up on mails. Meet Mr. Empty Mind sitting and trying to setup a laptop for his talk the next day. Around 0100 Hrs on Sunday, I decided to head back to the guest house only to find Mr. Empty Mind still missing. I carried my cot (in pradeepto’s terms mattresses) to Pradeepto’s and Parthan’s room and decided to crash there.

Next day began with me attending Pradeepto’s one and a half hour talk. (Err wait did I say something??? He forgot to stop and continued for 3 full hours) Side- effect of that was Parthan became bran dead for his talk that was supposed to have followed pradeepto’s. Man, Jace’s blog Camp was really uber c00l. I loved it. We proceeded to the valley after a informal “Prize Distribution” function . We had a nice time in the valley and headed for Dinner at Malabar Palace. The Appams and Stew were tasty to its limits. After dinner, it was time to board the bus back to Bangy. Reached Bangy at around 0630 hrs on Monday morning. It still amazes me “How in such a short span of time these NITC Folks have managed to make FOSS.NITC a nationwide Community event”. Keep it up guys.
Accomplishment of my missions will be known in the coming days For more pics click here.

So the dates are fast approaching for the next LDD (yes, its called GNU/Linux Demo Day) Its on August 19,20th 2006 at Jaya Engineering College, Chennai. After a damn successful Demo Day at Arunai Engineering College, Thiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu early this year with over 4000 (Oooooo Isnt that figure beating a lot of bigwig events ) visitors in and around interior parts of Tamil Nadu, we are expecting around 2K visitors from various schools, college (Arts/Science/Medical and paramedical/Engg). The model is simple and neat. People who would like to do something similar in your locality here it is an Free and Open Model

1. 2 to 3 weekends prior to the Demo Day the Chennai LUG volunteers go and train the student volunteers of the respective host college on various topics ranging from Installation to Networking to Programming tools available to Educational software to …. (list goes on)

2. The Linux Demo Day is generally a two day event with the first day being general intro lecture sessions and some hands on. The second day will be a “Full Student show” with the trained student volunteers handling queries from the visitors. Ofcourse if they are unable to clarify or are not clear we “The LUG Volunteers” are always around to help them out. In this way we make learning interesting for those volunteers and also inspires the non-volunteers to be a part of the FOSS world.

Here are some(infact very few) photos from the previous LDDs conducted at MIT, Chennai and Arunai.

But this time its gonna be two days of Demos by, for and of the students of JEC, Chennai. All the very best to make this a grand event and add one more feather in the cap of Indian Linux Users Group- Chennai and ofcourse (more specifically) “YOU” guys.