foss.in roundup
Line in front of foss.in venue on the 1st day
FOSS.IN has been an amazing success this time. The new style show payed off and there was lot more interaction between speakers and participants and among the participants themselves. Wifi worked, so I could sit and do all my work while I was attending all the boring talks. My Wildlife talk never happened, but I think I managed to pull off the security talk quite well (considering the Security BOF after the talk was fully packed).
Watch out for more updates at Planet FOSS
whats a BOF? Tried searching for it but couldnt get anything in the context.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BOF
okie. ‘Twas one of the hits that I got on google. Should have looked up wikipedia in the first place.
also, was that a pic from your cam in widescreen res? or did you crop the full pic? just curious.
Horizontally its full frame at 18mm. Did a vertical crop
Next time, they should have a online payment gateway and people who register can print there own coupons. Like how Airlines issue tickets these days do.
Its just PITA looking at those long queue’s.
You mean they had to actually stand in the line with the delegate codes and get a ticket issued? Total PITA. If you go to the extent of generating delegate codes then you might as well have a online coupon print out.
They are standing in line with delegate code, to register by paying 500rs, and collect food coupons for the whole of event.
We are a community event, not a company or anything that merits merchant status. We don’t have insurance, we don’t have money if something goes wrong, and we don’t want any lawyers involved.
It’s easy to say “online payment” until you actually deal with the issues involved.
Point. Its not so easy to have online payment. I totally forgot about the payment. Wouldn’t it be possible to have ticket outlets at sponsor showrooms and the like?
I don’t know if you already do this, maybe collect the money and issue coupons for a week or so before the actual event during evenings or something like that?
BTW, great job with getting some kick ass sponsors this time. It’s getting better all the time….
no apostrophe in queues.
they didn’t have to. they could have gone to the registration desk later when there was no line – like I did.
and s/there/their.
yes sir, I’m in kallu’s journal, spelling mistakes happen. :p
But after so many years of success, one of the issues remaining to be solved is the long queues on the day one of the conferance. If you people can come up with a better plan to avoid them, then nothing like it.(Unless, you intentionally don’t want to ;/ )
Even though I couldn’t attend this year, reading from the Planet foss, it seems like a tremendous success. Good luck for future and great job.
Damn – where were you when we were looking for suggestions like that??? 🙁
Scribbled this one down for next year.
Actually, while we did get good sponsors, it certainly isn’t getting easier for us. You may want to read this:
http://atulchitnis.net/diary/showentry/348
The worst part was being let down totally by the so called “Open source” companies, and the so called “champions of open source”, who aren’t interested in sponsoring us because we are a community event, and don’t cater to corporate eyeball audiences.
The queues are a pain in the ass, and really get in the way. No, we don’t like them and don’t want them, but they happen nevertheless. We don’t want people standing there waiting t be let in – we want them in and sitting in the halls.
Our problem lies in the fact that being a community event, and not a hard-nosed commercial outfit (as some misguided souls seem to believe). We don’t enjoy the facilities that a commercial outfit would have, and that includes things like being able to accept credit/debit card payments, which would have made things much easier.
IAC, this event is done, and if you have ideas on how to help reduce the queues, please join the mailing list and make suggestions. Planning for the next event should start soon.
And thanks for the compliments. I’ll pass them on to the people who really deserve them – the FOSS.IN/2005 team. 🙂
This was my first year. It was really informative. But one important thing. On the first day since all talks started late.. there after there was no co-ordination between different stalls. As the event as a whole started 45 mins later a board was put up saying ‘All talks off by 45 mins’. Then according to it every talk should start 45 mins later and the relative time difference betwn different talks should remain same. This simple logic should be followed no matter what happens. For eg if one talk which was supposed to end at 12.30 ends at 12 itself, the next talk should start at 12.30 only, not 12!
But the collective and relative timings of different stalls were so apazardous(excuse spelling) it created huge confusion amongst people who had planned to switch stalls on a single day. Some stalls were 1 hr beyond the original schedule but some were running 1 hr earlier!. Did the organizers expect all delegates to stick on to one particular stall on one particular day?. That makes doesnt make sense.
It should be seen next time no mater what happens ‘its not enough if just the talks happen well, but are in sync with each other so that delegates go by thier personal schedule without a loss’. This in sync should be followed in all times weather the whole event gets late or otherwise.
For eg.. i went to ‘Web 2.0’ talk that started 1 hr off scedule. Finishing it i went to ‘CSS attacks’ thinking that its in sync with ‘web 2.0′(being 1 hr later). But to my suprise i see its getting over!. Reason, ‘CSS attacks’ started on time but totally off sync with other talks since the talk before it was cancelled!
The delay on the first day was a nightmare for us, and I apologize to the people who got tripped up because of it.
What happened to you should *not* have happened – but in the confusion over the delays, and the complexity of the schedule, things went haywire.
Worse still was the printed schedule that was handed out to delegates. The printer picked up a *cached* copy of the schedule, and the schedule had changed on Sunday evening after some speaker dropouts. We tried to fix this by getting a huge schedule printed and put up at the venue, but the printer screwed up there as well, and it came only on day 3, and then too near illegible. 🙁
For me, this confusion was the single biggest publicly visible failure, and I am really sorry that it happened.
but I think I managed to pull off the security talk quite well (considering the Security BOF after the talk was fully packed).
…
yup talk was really good .How do u manage to give such lively talk – nice communication skills, all my freinds were talking abt it 🙂
I came to that BOF counter at 4.40 but there was not BOF seesion ,may be I missed it..
My Wildlife talk never happened
…
we were waiting to attend this talk …well better luck next time 🙂
I think every year a large number of students attend the event from the nearby engineering colleges, if possible, it will be great to ask student volunteer’s to register the student delegates in their respective colleges by holding registartion camps prior to the event. Same can be done with big IT companies, which usually send a large pool of participants every year.
The IT companies actually did that – quite a few of them had their employees register online, sent us the list of delegate codes with the cheque, and we sent them their passes, so they could just walk in.
Colleges – the issue is one of someone taking responsibility for this. There is real money involved, so this is important. For several years now we have offered the colleges to do the student registration for us, and have even offered substantial discounts – to no avail.
Colleges- I agree, no college wants to open up responsibility for an event which they are not conducting. Sadly, they don’t see it as a community event but they think its too much of a hassle. What they don’t realise is that these colleges play a big role in nurturing the FOSS community.Sadly, I don’t see this changing untill there is a new generation of teachers in these colleges, who grew up during the FOSS revolution.
Instead you can send some of your student volunteer to open up camps in their respective colleges to register delegates. You can announce a discount for students who register at their respective college itself, instead of registering online. Hopefully, this should reduce the queue length a bit.
I know there will always be 1000 people who give 1000 suggestions, but none come forward when it actually comes to implementation. I have conducted my college FOSS event in Hyderabad and I know how hard it is to convince people. So, I’m giving this suggestion as not just yet another suggestion but based on experience which worked for us in Hyd. We sent couple of our close community friends (mostly students) to their respective colleges with tickets and reciept booklets, to sell the tickets.They came back with tremendous success and our event was a sell out.
BTW, hats off to whomever who managed to convince the VTU people that this event is very important to the student community.
Your talk was great
I didnt have time to talk to you. You can recognise me as I wa sthe guy who volunteered to giv my yahoo id .
I couldnt come to ur BOF as I had to attend another talk.
BTW what did people ask at BOF ?
Wildlife Conservation
You photo journal has revived my hope in preserving the wild life of India. Can we get involved in some way.Please respond to MyIndianDancer@Yahoo.com