[PLUG] Mini report on SFD at IIT Bombay, Mumbai

[Rajagopal Swaminathan]

Greetings,

The first ever Software freedom day was celebrated in Mumbai with a
Full Day of activities (and Pizza slices for all participants!)

While this whole event was spearheaded by One of our esteemed ILUGC
Members Shri. Thiyagarajan with Prof. Kannan M. Moudgalya,
(http://www.che.iitb.ac.in/online/node/52) was the long and powerful
staff of the pear and thrust which I have never seen defore given that
SFD ws to be organised with just two days of preparations. My
prostrations to him.

The keynote was delivered by Subrao M. Nilekani Chair Professor Dr. D.
B. Phatak,Department of CSE, Kanwal Rekhi Bldg,
Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, Mumbai, India.

And then we had our own Shri Asokan Pichai who expressed his views
about software patents in particular.

This was followed by presentation on Spoken tutorial
(http://spoken-tutorial.org) by Prof Kannan.

After the tea break the lightning sessions started: honestly they ware
progressing at lightning speed enlightening the minds of audience on,
inter alia, QT, Scilab, Eclipese, Kodeplay, GCC research etc. I
apologise If I have not listed others as each were given 12 minutes
and was so absorbed that I did not make notes and sequences.

It continued after Lunch (Pizza!) break.

There were so many that the original event was scheduled close time
was extended by 2 hours till 1800 hrs as against the planned 1600 hrs
closure time.

There there was a Quiz session (in which I got a nice comfortable Jute
bag with a T-shirt for answering the Question passed on to audience
about the Author of Minix (with whom Linus Torvalds still has
difference of opinions regarding kernel structure -- micro and
monolithic), my first one in all these years after attending umpteen
number of sponsored and Walk-in events of vendor driven and other
seminars and conferences.)  :)

Then there was a birds of feather session where each participant
introduced themselves.

There were about half a dozen stalls showcasing working projects
ranging from Arduino to blender based animations to CFD Software such
as OpenFoam (http://www.openfoam.org/) to robotics (e-yantra) etc.

I also had the opportunity to meed Shri S. Sivakumar who posts
frequently in this ILUGC list and and avid FOSS Evangelist.

All I can say that I was spellbound and thrilled by the experience.

Of course, my advance apologies for the typos and if I have not
mentioned the events of the day in order as I am still wrapping my
head around the wide range of topics and still gloating and floating
in the experience that I had throughout the delicious day.

E&OE

Aobove are my personal humble opinions. The official report may be
posted later perhaps by the organisers.


-- 
Regards,

Rajagopal