Day 3 : LINUXASIA2k6... Oh ! man it's over

[Rohan Dighe]

Hey,

I have to say today is like 11th of FEB, when i woke up in the
morning i found that i did not have to catch a rickshaw to go to India
Habitat Centre. Really all the 3 day fun has finally come to an end
but with a note that they would be back next year, with a lot more
people and lot more to say.....
So i guess i will continue with my work.....
read onn.......

DAY 3
I woke up sharp & i was at the occassion before time coz i did not
want to miss the talk by DaviD AxmarK (Co-founder MySQL) which in turn
started very late and messed up the whole day's schedule.
The reason for the late schedule was the day before there was the
penguin party and then everyone got late and things happened...
So,
The talk basically....
He was talking about Mysql 5.0 and what advancements it has in it's
latest versions and stuff like that.
Then the addition of procedures and triggers and indexes and all cool
stuff. As i want to learn Mysql soon i asked him a lot of questions in
regard to that. I also got a chance to take a picture with him which
was indeed very very cool for me !!!
Some of the questions that i asked was...
How would someone go about in learning MySQL ??
What about documentation and stuff ?
How many people use it currently ?

I was like surprised to hear it is powering so many of the best
websites and enterprises in the industry.Really much motivated by the
talk

Then came the IBM people (Mary Ann Fisher) she was talking of what IBM
does in opensource. IBM basically supports REDHAT & SUSE and then how
they used the OS's to get their work done.
Then she talked about patents and stuff and then how IBM is the
highest patent holders in this world and they certainly donate some of
the patents for open source...
But the talk was gr8 !!!
Next was the tea break which was like really refreshing for me coz i
came early that day !!

Then i decided to attend one of the workshops by IBM which were
related to DB2,WebSphere. They provided with the dvd's and a 2kg
manual which i did not take but it was really cool, they were showing
and it was also a hands-on, on how to go about installing db2 and
websphere on linux redhat enterprise and also suse... Some of the
people were also learning how to install LINUX ES which was really
good work done by them. The room was quite big and accompanied quite a
few people.

Then again the next talk was one of my favourites guess who ???
...yeah KLAUS KNOPPER he talked on secrets of a LIVE DISTRO which i
found very interesting coz he really got into technical very fast and
then showing us which script does what and how do you modify and
really shed light on the x server concept and what parameters and
alterations they had to do to get the server running. Again he showed
us various scripts and then it was really a very good talk....!!!

You know by now i am really a very big FAN of KLAUS he is such a
helpful person..you go to him with a question he always has a right
answer for that, he has a very sensible talk and you don't find any
compulsion with him as you would do with the IBM guys or someone
else...
I guess this is because he himself has come up with the OS and then he
is very happy about it and ready to help anyone in his way.
To tell you some fact i would have talked to KLAUS abt 2 hrs in this
whole 3 days ! Just imagine someone from IBM giving you so much time
to talk abt the problems or solutions you have.

Then came the Naukri.com guys they were really talking abt their
servers and how they had to scale as the work began and how many
read's and write's that had and stuff.. Well, not interesting for
someone who is not into this stuff so many people left.

Next were the Codito people, this guy was looking really
knowledgeable and he was saying many hardcore things abt
optimatizations and vectorization. Since i studied compilers a little
bit i was getting some things but to other people i think the talk was
a little bit tangent !
Then tere was the most beautiful lunch ! I have to say the India
Habitat Centre food is really really gr8 ! I used to like wait for the
next break always !!

Really after a very nice lunch was the most sort after talk abt Women
in Open Source which was really good to hear and talk to people.
Danese Cooper was there and she really took the talk nicely along with
everyone. They basically focused on the Open Source work environment
and how it was fruitful for women and things !

Then was a keynote from V. Ponraj someone from President's Office and
was really talking abt how technology is getting penetrated in INDIA
and future plans and grids that they are setting up and some of the
plans have a 100$ PC to every school kid and things...
Then came the Apache Guru Brian Behlendorf, again he showed us some
great things and how he gets inspirations and stuff and how 2 guys
came together and built MySQL !!!

Finally, there was an ending keynote from Danese Cooper, which really
opened my eyes ! She was talking about what she has learnt from bieng
@ linuxasia for the 3rd time ! then what her total experience in IT
says ? Where is Opensource heading nxt ? Really i should have recorded
this talk but i guess she is very inspirational whenever you talk to
her !

Anyways,
It was nice talking to you people thru mail ! I hope you got some of
the messages straight outright !

OK, someone asked me about stalls of YODA and stuff. The problem with
them was they got a stall in the corner and then i guess they were
short of laptops and stuff but they managed to get a few talks and it
was i guess a really good learning experience for them too !!! I guess
someone from the group should write about his experience @ the stall..

ok
i am out of here.....it's been a very big email.
Thank You for reading
Bye
Rohan (LDOM)






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[Sriram N]

Post by Rohan Dighe
Hey,
I have to say today is like 11th of FEB, when i woke up in the
morning i found that i did not have to catch a rickshaw to go to India
Habitat Centre. Really all the 3 day fun has finally come to an end
but with a note that they would be back next year, with a lot more
people and lot more to say.....
So i guess i will continue with my work.....
read onn.......

<snip/>

Post by Rohan Dighe
Anyways,
It was nice talking to you people thru mail ! I hope you got some of
the messages straight outright !

Thanks for the updates, Rohan. We've felt we were there and must've enjoyed it
about 1% of what you did by actually being there :)

Post by Rohan Dighe
OK, someone asked me about stalls of YODA and stuff. The problem with
them was they got a stall in the corner and then i guess they were
short of laptops and stuff but they managed to get a few talks and it
was i guess a really good learning experience for them too !!! I guess

That was me. Ack on the laptop shortage. I hope the YODA folks post in about
their experiences. This should prove useful for the next time any of us wants
to participate in a public event.

Post by Rohan Dighe
ok
i am out of here.....it's been a very big email.
Thank You for reading

And once again, Thank you for writing in and keeping us posted :)

Post by Rohan Dighe
Bye
Rohan (LDOM)

-- Sriram

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[Archis Gore]

<snip/>

Post by Rohan Dighe
OK, someone asked me about stalls of YODA and stuff.
The problem with
them was they got a stall in the corner and then i
guess they were
short of laptops and stuff but they managed to get a
few talks and it
was i guess a really good learning experience for
them too !!! I guess
someone from the group should write about his

Well, I fell really sick on the third day and we'd
already gotten to know everyone out there on the first
two days so we could not really attend to our stall
there. The EXPO was a failure in terms of the word
"expo" as in a bunch of localites coming there to see
general stuff. It was a success in the context of a
B2B Event and a Conference. I've got lots of
de-briefing sessions with a bunch of people the coming
48 hours so I'll write a report after that. Expect
some stuff on my homepage as always:
http://www.geocities.com/archisgore/

This saved us a lot of speaking trouble and we could
focus on interested parties more. We got the attention
of the fedora people, the C-DAC noida people and lots
of others. I'm a bit dizzy due to a high fever (drank
too much coke in the bitter cold of the penguin party)
so I'll write later.

So far as the delegates were concerned, we managed to
grab some attention to the CSLinux initiative and
stuff in the education forum which we attended then
shifted on to other things of interest.

I don't think I'll post my experiences here since they
were too targetted and personal to be on a general
LUG. I promoted more of YODA and myself and placements
for my college and the general happenings in pune
apart from Linux. And I rarely attended any talks the
first two days since I was more keen on grabbing a
delegate and discussing an issue intensively with
him/her. I'll be writing about each of these
discussions on my homepage.

We weren't displaying YODA's runtime since we observed
that hardly had any of the other stalls any live demos
of their stuff. It was mostly posters, presentations,
reports and explanations.

The fun part of this trip was that I went there
expecting to talk a lot of kernels and drivers, and
ended up discussing the social issues, philosophical
issues, educational issues, community issues, and some
practical issues. So all in all, a much-needed
conference in FOSS, that focussed more on the problems
of adoption or problems in the mindset of the target
audience (for FOSS not LinuxAsia) rather than heated
discussions on which X Server is the better of the
two.

And naturally, as with CMDA, we did have our share of
funny incidents also. But I'll reserve them for my
homepage so I can get more hits. ;-)

It wasn't a lets-go-and-see-for-fun type of event. I
met many people who'd come just to check out "linux
and stuff" and they were bored because they couldn't
really relate completely to any of the streams that
were going on daily. I kept getting mixed reviews -
some totally excited after a talk and others
completely discoordinated when they came out.

But the social outcomes are most important,
discussions on behaviour of FOSS people, discussions
on how newbies should react to them and so on.

One thing I can definately ask you all to do is tell
any newbies not to be afraid to join the mailing lists
and post questions. No question is stupid, but an
answer may be. There are and will be people who are
dying to respond to an ill-formed question or
misrepresented query to point out other's mistakes.
But for each such person, the community has a hundred
people who will be tolerant, sensitive and kind enough
to set you on the right track politely and
encouragingly. As per Danese Cooper's ending talk,
nobody owns open source. And everybody owns it. Right
from the person who designs the logo to the
kernel-hacker, everyone has an equal right to open
source - no greater and no less.

Programming ability is not a prerequisite for being in
open source. The FSF India stall was worth visiting
for this and although I couldn't read it completely,
I'm happy for Sriram's previous mail on Gnowledge.
Open Source is about freedom - to speak, act and use
software. Just because you can't figure out what's in
the /etc directory, dont be disheartened. And you dont
have to know either. If you're good at composing
music, compose some nice tunes for us to listen to and
distribute them freely (and allow others to do the
same). If you're good at explaining stuff, write good
documentation or captivating articles to gather more
people towards FOSS. Anyone and everyone is a part of
this community. Even if you're good at cooking, why
not give away a great recipe for free so that hackers
can learn to do something else once in a while? Of
course, everyone has the freedom to not eat what we
may cook so dont be frightened of that either :-)) But
never, under no circumstances, and under no amount of
flames consider yourself not to be a part of this
community. Nobody has the right to throw you "out" of
a place they don't own. As Nagarjuna says, even the
chef who's exploring various recipes at night and
trying to create new tastes and aromas is a hacker.

It's a pity that so many groups compose so many songs
for the upcoming Verve and they're not a part of open
source giving away their recordings in ogg vorbis to
the world. Some of their music is amazing. It just
shows what we have in front of us when (if) after a
few years Linux becomes mainstream and open source is
everywhere. The next challenge is making knowledge
open - and not by preventing them the right to patent
it, but rather by showing everyone how it is a part of
them and how open source was always inside all of us
and having nobody approach the patents office at all.

That was the central message of the entire event.

There's a lot that I had typed then deleted because I
want to organise it in a format for my homepage after
giving it some thought. Bye all.

One thing that I have to write before I end the mail
is the picture of India vs Pakistan on one of Danese
Cooper's slides. And I had to totally agree with her
perception of how the community is. Many times someone
will spend more time and energy flaming on how a
question was wrong instead of spending a fraction of
the time correcting the question.

--Archis

Post by Rohan Dighe
ok
i am out of here.....it's been a very big email.
Thank You for reading
Bye
Rohan (LDOM)

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