Our closing keynote is renowned usability expert and magician, Nakul Shenoy!

Nakul is well known for his completely mindblowing presentations that thoroughly mix magic, usability and fun. He travels the world enthralling his audiences drawn from top corporates.   With performances spanning Asia, the Middle East, Europe, UK and the USA, Nakul Shenoy is one of a few elite performers dedicated to psychic entertainment and the only entertainer in India to have presented seven TEDx talks (and counting).

Be prepared for a magical experience to wrap up this year’s FOSS.IN!

Our problem is that walk-ins skew all our logistics (food, goodies), which is why we have higher ticket rates for walk-ins.

So we are going to take a rather big risk here.

We have enabled offline payments at DoAttend. This allows you to register online, select offline payment, and then come to the venue early on 29th morning, show your ticket order number, and pay for the ticket (sorry, cash only). If you do this, you only pay the regular rates (1500 for students, 2500 for regular delegates).

If you do not register online, you will have to pay the full walk-in delegate rate (3500).

The risk we take is that you may register online with offline payment, then not show up, and our logistics get skewed anyway. We are hoping that you won’t do this.

Note that all online registrations end at midnight on the 28th. After that, if you haven’t registered online, you pay the full walk-in delegate rate (3500).

Now nothing should stand in your way of registering, and being at the tech event of the year.

See you at FOSS.IN!

For reasons beyond our control, we have been having a really hard time with sponsorships.

Read this post to understand the problem, and how you can help.

Details for sponsorship here.

Thanks in advance!

Maybe you think about the talks, of meeting some friends, of the boring food — basically an escape from the monotonous routine of the office. Well, in the case of FOSS.IN that is far from the truth. FOSS.IN has had an impact on a lot of people –so let’s hear from one of them!

In 1999, a college boy sent a harmless message to a mailing list asking if he can attend the next LUG meeting. The response was a resounding “of course” you may attend, the more the merrier and thus started the journey which continues to this day. The college boy in question is none other than acclaimed naturalist and wildlife photographer Kalyan Varma in conversation with Team FOSS.IN.

KB: Kallu, how and when did you get involved with FOSS?
KV: I’m not certain of the date, but it was back in college and I came across the PCQ issue with Slackware on it. I was terribly excited and had been on the lookout for something like this. I promptly grabbed a copy and installed it on my server at the college.

KB: What happened next?
KV: In a nutshell, my life changed. I heard that there was a Linux Users Group in Bangalore and they were about to meet, I sheepishly wrote an email asking if I could attend and was happy to have attended. Next came IT.COM where there was a Linux pavilion  and there was no way I was staying away from that I volunteered to work with the community on that event. I had such a blast. Installing servers on all kinds of machines, showing stuff to people walking in and watching in amazement at how they were shocked and awed by what was happening.

KB: What were your feelings about this community?
KV: I just could not believe it, or get enough of it. I went back to college and started doing lectures, talks and demos on a regular basis. I loved the community and started contributing in any which way I could. It was like a religion.

KB: What about your college and studies?
KV: To be honest, while I was studying Mechanical Engineering  I spent most of time doing stuff with Linux and the community. I think my learning was far greater than what I got from classes and books. So in a sense, it really defined what I am today. College was not about classes it was about hanging out with this community that defined me.

KB: Did your FOSS experience help you in your career?
KV: As I left college, I interned with a FOSS solutions organisation. Soon after that Yahoo! hired me, purely because of my Linux and security skills. I learnt security the hard way, but it was a great lesson and I dived in completely. Early on I started sharing all my exploits and learnings with college students and at all FOSS events that happened. Exposure to both FOSS and the community most certainly helped me in my career.

KB: Let’s call that the geek phase of your life, what happened next?
KV: While at Yahoo! I was busy with work and kept as active as I possibly could with the community. Somewhere around that time I got the opportunity to explore nature. I quit my job and went into the jungles. By no means did I forget the FOSS community or the events. On the contrary, I decided to share my work with the world and started putting high-resolution images on various sites and blogs for anyone to download and use. People were amazed and shocked to find this kind of work available for free. I applied the FOSS model to sharing my work, and it paid off.

KB: In all of this how did you get around to making a calendar for FOSS.IN?
KV: I was back after a long stint at BR Hills when Atul and Swati cornered me and suggested that I share some of the work with the delegates of FOSS.IN. We were not clear as to how that would happen, but the timing was just right for a calendar. Given that FOSS.IN happens in the last week of November or the first week of December, a calendar made perfect sense. The rest as they say is history. I was able to put my work out so easily and share it with a special audience and community.

15 years on, I still do what I do and am happy to be part of FOSS.IN every year. Am looking forward to the event this year as well.

KB: Thanks Kallu for sharing that wonderful story with us .

Kalyan Varma is one of the few who made his journey with FOSS.IN a life experience, he started as a volunteer, came back as speaker initially on “security” and then eventually as a photographer. Was also the keynote speaker at one edition of FOSS.IN and is always there for the event. His calendar is truly remarkable and finds it’s place on many a desk around the world.

Special thanks to Sanisoft for making the calendar happen every year!

As an organiser I have been involved with the event since it’s inception and I can recall only one time when I was not part of Team FOSS.IN but a delegate. My reasons for being involved are way too many so rather than diving into that I thought I’d take the view of a regular at FOSS.IN.

One of our regulars at FOSS.IN is Kushal Das.

Photo credit: Tarique Sani

He’s someone I have seen for many years at FOSS events and in many ways I can say I have seen grow and flourish. As a person, as a FOSS developer and as an amazing photographer.

Kushal will be speaking at FOSS.IN/2012 and I asked him why he has been attending all these years. Here are the responses I got:

KB: How many years have you been coming to FOSS.IN?
KD: As far as I can remember five years.

KB: Do you have a good reason to be at FOSS.IN?
KD: Several good reasons, let me see a) meet people with same interests b) learn about new technologies and projects c) the overall environment of FOSS.IN is something I do not want to miss personally.

KB: Seeing that you love the event so much, is there a favourite moment over the years?
KD: Wow! that is a tough question, don’t really know where to start. But yes there are a few. First of the special moments was in 2005, having dinner and discussions with Till Adam, Alan Cox and the rest of the
FOSS.IN team. It was a dream moment for me. There was also the time we worked through the night with Milosch. So many more moments, I don’t think I will be able to list them all.

One of the real fun/funny moments was in 2005 when people were queuing up next to Alan Cox to get photographs taken. Was amusing to witness that.

KB: Is there an unfavourite moment or anything bad that happened to you at FOSS.IN? We don’t include your shoulder in that list
KD: It has been such a fun, fruitful and good journey that I do not recall a single bad moment.

KB: Thank you Kushal, we wish you all the best for the event, happy hacking and you see you at FOSS.IN/2012.
KD: Thank you!

The Team has had some real fun moments with Kushal, we are thankful for his contributions to the FOSS community and absolutely love his photographs of the event over the years.

Kushal has good reasons to be at FOSS.IN/2012, will you also be there?

Cheers…Kishore
–

Photo credit: Karunakar Guntupalli

Those of you who’ve attended FOSS.IN events in the past have probably seen a bunch of harried looking people in black jackets running around looking like there’s a fire waiting to be put out at the end of the corridor.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is Team FOSS.IN!

Much of the team came together for the first time in 1999 when they decided to host a Linux Bangalore stall at the IT.COM event held in Bangalore that year. At the time, I was 9 years old and I remember standing in the drive-way of our Malleshwaram house, tears streaming down my face as I watched the the team leave for Electronic City — I wanted to go too!

Today, Team FOSS.IN is tight-knit group of friends who comes together every year to put on an event to remember.  The initial group comprised mostly of individuals who had been working together creating Free and Open Source Software community events since the late 1990s.  Today, there are a number of team members who are not active in the FOSS world, but still believe in building a platform that gives the Indian FOSS community a chance to come together and learn from each other. We work on every aspect of the event (such as making sure there’s enough coffee to fuel the hacking, putting together the delegate kit that so many of you look forward to and setting the schedule so that you get to plan which talks you want to attend) EXCEPT the actual content. The talks and activities come from the FOSS community.

All of us at Team FOSS.IN have begun as volunteers, who were eventually “recruited” into the team after consistently helping out for a few years. Every member of Team FOSS.IN has joined the group this way. Our collective weakness? Donuts from Donut Baker, which we sneak into the venue when the team is running low on energy. Although one team member has a soft spot for gulab jamuns and has been to known to have eaten more than 30 of them at once!

Can you guess who?

Photo: Kernel Hackers in the corridor via James Morris, a FOSS.IN regular.

Been to a conference lately? Most conferences pride themselves on having great content. Content being defined as great speakers with great talks. FOSS.In is no exception. We have an extremely rigid process of talk selection and not many manage to make the cut. However, at FOSS.IN it’s not just about the talks. The real conference happens in the hallways and corridors.

If you have ever attended a FOSS.IN before you would know what I mean. There are some great conversantions always happening in the corridors. We recognised this as one of the strengths of the conference and built around it.

At our earlier preferred venue the Indian Institute of Sciences (IISc) we did manage to create a small hack centre during one of the events. The real change of course came about when we moved our venue to NIMHANS.

The corridor is the conference. The talks are incidental. While they are great talks by great speakers, they just seed the right amount of action and things move into the corridors.

Our corridors now cater to hackers in the best possible way. Plenty of WiFi, power points and power strips, a few tables and chairs and endless streams of music and coffee!

At FOSS.IN/2010 we had groups of people hacking not just on software but also on hardware. And we intend to have more this year.

Don’t miss the excitement of FOSS.IN/2012 be there!

Dates: November 29 – December 1, 2012
Venue: NIMHANS Convention Centre, Bangalore

Cheers…Kishore
–

Never fear, we have you covered.

We just enabled group discounts for Regular Delegate and Corporate/Donor Delegate registrations.

Now all you need to do is collect a few friends/colleagues, and book multiple tickets in one go, by selecting the number of tickets you want to buy. The system will instantly apply the group discount, based on the number of tickets (more than one) you are buying.

Instant discounts, more money saved for beer!

Go register!

All three delegate classes give you the same, unlimited access to everything at FOSS.IN, including all talks, lunch, coffee/tea and all other activities over all three event days.

But there is a relationship between the latter two delegate classes (student and corporate/donor):

When someone buys a corporate/donor delegate ticket for Rs.5000, the extra amount is used to subsidise students, so that students only need to pay Rs.1500.

To recognise this gesture, we will list all organisations who buy corporate/donor tickets on our website, so that students know whom to thank.

This is a win-win situation for everyone – we do not have to cut corners to provide subsidies, students get to attend the event for a substantially lower price, and corporate/donor ticket buyers get a warm feeling in the tummy, plus some exposure & recognition for their organisations.

No matter what ticket class you purchase – you are all going to have a fantastic time at the tech event of the year.

And stay tuned for more announcements!

See you at FOSS.IN!