DebConf2005

This is a un-official report I have created to just write down what I have seen/discussed/learned during the first ever Debian Conference(DebConf - 2005) in Bangalore. This is a kind of blogged entry...

o I am living in Bangalore since last 2 years, but first time I have dared to go Electronics City,Phase-1 to attend the DebConf hosted by students from the Indian Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore (IIITB). As everyone know, this school is governed by big IT guys.

o I had asked few securities guys and students to direct me to Registration counter for DebConf.Well, volunteers had prepared the list of persons those who have registered online. But they were not able to find my name ...because names were not alphabetically sorted :-). Anyways, I was able to find my name at the 3rd page. There were approximately 138 online registered participants.

o I entered the conf. hall at around 2:25 PM (Actually timing for conf was 2:30 PM to 6:30 PM). Conf. hall was cool having 6 projectors and good audio arrangements. Alok (seems to be from HP) started the video of the presentation given by Jaldhar Vyas, somewhere in US on Debian.

o I had enjoyed that presentation from 2:30 to 3:00 and then finally IIITB prof. S. Sadagopan started his speech ...He had ignited the fire within the students to not just talk about that we are using Open Source and GNU/Linux, but to really open...the...source and contribute :-). He encouraged weekend hacking and use of Internet effectively to promote and increase the contribution in OSS
community.

o On a funny side, in India we have _only_ 2 registered Debian developers from south.
o Ramki (from TI) and o Ganesan (Don't know, may be from cisco/novell ).

o Ramki and Ganesan explained how they started using Debian from its early releases and the problems they have faced while waiting in NM (New Maintainer) queue for Debian. They explained Social Contract and how Debian is filtering the packages for inclusion in the release with its cycle. Few points were stressed upon increasing the contribution on Debian-Indian project (Maintained by Jaldhar Vyas) and various projects forked by it for Indic Languages. In short, it was very helpful for participants to see how Debian works.

o Then Chirag Kanthuria (Juniper Networks) started his short presentation on how he started using Debian and work he did on "netterm" and oops analysis tool across the network.

o Ramakrishan (IndLinux Project) came with Apple i-book for the presentation, and had difficulties in setting up slides (properitery stuff bugged him :-)). We were not able to view it properly. He had explained the project status and various features.

o After this few participants shared the difficulties faced by them in using Debian and Ramki and Ganeshan promised to mentor them for the new projects and set the goal for having 20 registered debian devlopers in one year from India (Next Debconf will be on 19th August, 2006).

o Only 2 women attended the conference (very less).

o There was some discussion on Embedded-Debian and I have cheerfully registered my name to mentor students on Embedded Linux project.