Quite a few of you have been asking the question “So what big changes can we expect in FOSS.IN this year? What eggs are you breaking this year to make an omelette?” The former is a reference to the fact that we have changed our “small, regional event” every year, tuning things so that it met the larger objectives of FOSS.IN. The latter is of course a reference to the notorious “Omelette Post” from last year.

And this year isn’t any different

But first, some background.

FOSS.IN Objectives

FOSS.IN’s objectives have always been to get more people involved in FOSS development/contribution, especially from India. And in this, it has been stupendously successful – a report  published recently showed contributions have risen a factor of many. While we don’t claim all the credit for it, we are quite sure that we have had a role to play there.

One thing that FOSS.IN has consciously avoided is becoming a platform for sales or propaganda, including FOSS advocacy and politics. We have focused strictly on the last “S” of FOSS – software. In short, we have been a technology and development focused event.

But at the same time, we have had a well-known, hidden agenda – to give the (inter)national FOSS community a place to meet every year -  to get together and rub noses, so to say. And in doing so, we have tried to give people here in India a way to get a feel of one of those “mega” community events, such as Linux.conf.au, OLS, LinuxTag, GUADEC, Akademy, etc., without having to spend a bomb to travel abroad to attend one of these legendary events. And here too we have been quite successful – many participants from across the world have publicly stated that FOSS.IN is one of the best events they have ever attended.

The Culture

But one thing has always rankled us – the fact that despite the fact that FOSS is now very much mainstream, and part and parcel of the technology scene the world over, we have always faced inwards, and been pretty “exclusive” in nature. By this we mean that we have been focusing on pure FOSS, but more or less disregarding te underlying culture that drives it – basically the hacker culture. (Any media people reading this – hackers are the good guys, the bad guys are the crackers).

The Jargon File defines a hacker as

“A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary. RFC1392, the Internet Users’ Glossary, usefully amplifies this as: A person who delights in having an intimate understanding of the internal workings of a system, computers and computer networks in particular.”

This “hacker mentality” is what brought about the birth of FOSS to begin with, but has seen very little traction in India, largely because technology tends to be vendor driven in India, and many parts of the world. From this December 2008 blog post:

The hacker mentality (which others have written about in ways far better than I ever could) is something that is sadly lacking in India. People are just not curious enough to find out more. They don’t want to learn more than they need to – it’s a “just enough” approach to learning that I totally abhor. And this results in a mediocre workforce, people who have to be micromanaged, who show no initiative or desire to change the world.

We have observed that, unlike in the rest of the world, people involved in FOSS in India tend to focus heavily on  FOSS politics/advocacy, or development, but not on the technologies that FOSS addresses. This has had the unfortunate side-effect of the FOSS community in India not really being seen as a pool of technology-savvy folks, but more of politicians or just plain coders.

We had recognised this issue a long time ago, even more so when Tim Pritlove of the Chaos Computer Club gave the closing addres sat FOSS.IN/2006. He clearly highlighted the fact that almost everyone involved in the CCC was essentially a FOSS community member in some form or the other, but not for the sake of being one – it just happened that that was the way things worked best for everyone. FOSS techniques and sharing of information are just a natural way of operation in the technology enthusiast (read – “hacker”) world.

We would have loved to create an environment where the FOSS community of India could interact with technology enthusiasts in India and across the world, especially at our event, but we were severely limited by the venue we traditionally used (ironically – the Indian Institute of Science), which did not give us the flexibility or time to develop on things. Also, in terms of size and facilities, the venue was far too limited.

All that changed this year, when we moved the event to a newer, much larger and less restrictive venue. We are now able to run the event literally from 6am to 11pm, have no restrictions on what we can do at the venue, and have MUCH more space to do things.

With this in mind, we have decided to expand the scope of FOSS.IN greatly this year, and to address the issue of “hacker culture” and technology information exchange.

FOSS.IN/2009

Let me make it clear that we are NOT turning into a free-for-all conference, where everyone can come and present on some technology topic or the other. We continue to remain FOSS-oriented, and in fact from 10am to 5pm, the conference will be very similar to what it was last year, when we focused on FOSS contribution and development, through talks and “WorkOuts” – that unique FOSS.IN activity (now being adopted by other major events as well) where groups of interested, motivated and qualified people get together to work on a set of issues related to a FOSS project, or start up something completely new.

Since we now have more suitable space (lecture halls as well as flat spaces), we are also introducing workshops and tutorials. The first floor of the venue will be dedicated to vast areas filled with tables, network connectivity and electricity, where people can get down to some serious work on projects.

And every day, we will have two halls dedicated to “project day conferences” – half-day or full-day mini-conferences focusing on some FOSS project or topic, aimed at improving it, expanding it, etc. In the past, both Gnome and KDE have had very popular project days, as has Nokia’s Maemo project, various Linux distros, OpenOffice.org, OpenSolaris, etc. We encourage people to come up with project day ideas and discuss them on the FOSS.IN mailing list, or contact us.

The main hall will be reserved for “big talks” – talks that will be about FOSS topics and projects, presented by actual contributors, which will run from 10am to 5pm. Just as it was last year, these talks can only be given by actual contributors, though we will loosen that restriction if the person who is speaking is someone who is going to get interest no matter what s/he speaks on – i.e. Linus Torvalds can probably come and speak about scuba diving, while Sirtaj Singh Kang could probably get away with a talk on post-industrial guitar shredding, or Danese Cooper could probably get away with a talk on knitting, but in general, it would be good if all of them kept the topic “FOSSy”, and kept the special interest stuff for post 5pm.

The changes will become apparent after 5pm.

Ch-ch-ch-changes!

This is when we will introduce the concept of “technology talks and discussions” that go beyond just FOSS, but are still very much related to it. This, in fact, will be “hacker talks”, where people will talk about aspects of technology they have worked on – whether it is setting up private GSM networks, reverse engineering protocols, developing new technologies altogether, optimising or improving networks, dealing with network and computer security, etc.

In short, post-5pm, FOSS.IN will expand to become a technology-enthusiast conference – i.e. a hacker conference. And it will go on till around 10:30pm.

Who can present at such technology sessions? Well, anyone qualified to speak about such stuff, of course! Sorry, no sales talks, no proprietary product talks, no advocacy talks and no politics, but otherwise anything goes, provided it is technology oriented, it is preferably something you have personally been involved with, and it has a FOSS angle to it.

And it has to be interesting, of course. No boring “Introduction to XYZ” talks! But if you have been doing some interesting work in, say, ebook readers, wireless communication, robotics, reverse engineering, protocol analysis, porting, etc. – you are on.

Dealing with controversy

Invariably, these posts of mine end up with some controversy or the other, resulting in some people deciding to stay away, only to regret it later when they see just how much fun people had, and how much work got done at the event.

So let me request you to assume goodwill.

We have been doing our best to support the FOSS community and keep things going, and it doesn’t help if you decide to go ballistic simply because you find yourself unable to give a talk at teh event because you aren’t a contributor, or because we don’t allow you to come and sell your product from the stage (we have a commercial expo for that – do get in touch for stall rates). Yes, we do set the bar very high (everyone hates a shallow talk, or a “low hanging fruit” workout that barely tickles anyone’s intellect).

Just because you can’t stand on stage at the event (for whatever reason) does not mean that we are excluding anyone – anyone with an  interest in FOSS and FOSS-related technology is welcome to participate at the event as a delegate. In fact, you will probably enjoy things more this way.

I need to make one thing very clear – if you plan to participate in any of the technical events, like workouts, or workshops or tutorials, you are going to need a laptop of some sort, with WiFi capabilities. This is the 21st century – netbooks are cheap, even in India. This is also a financially very hard time for conferences, so we will not be able to supply any PCs to people to work on, apart from a projection PC in each hall, and maybe a PC to each FOSS-expo stall (commercial stalls have to bring their own equipment).

Speaking of the Expo…

The Expo

As usual, we have two expos happening side by side – the commercial expo (typically sponsors, and people who rent commercial stalls), and the FOSS expo. The FOSS Expo is free to qualifying FOSS projects (not commercial FOSS-based products that earn from sales of the product), and we will try and accommodate as many as we can, and provision them with network connectivity, equipment and power, and of course stalls/tablespace, but understand that we have financial limitations, and depend heavily on sponsors and the commercial expo to finance things like this.

If you are interested in participating in the expo (either commercial or FOSS), there will be place where you can apply for it (stay tuned to the website, the mailing list and to our Twitter account for information).

Delegate Fees

Delegate fees are being kept as low as possible, with the usual “starving hacker/student” and “corporate delegate” split. The former will pay Rs.750 (Rs.500 for students with valid student ID) if they register online (Rs.1000 if they come to the venue without registering online), the latter will pay Rs.3000 per corporate delegate.

The delegate fee includes access to the entire conference for all 5 days, and includes lunch and coffee but not dinner. As we expect fewer people to attend the late evening/night sessions, we are making dinner optional – if you decide to stay for dinner, you can pay cash at the counter. Food will be vegetarian only, as usual, and we are talking to some of the highest-rated caterers in the city to get the best quality food possible.

Unlike in previous years, we cannot afford to make too many conference take-aways available from our side (sponsors will of course be free to include as much swag as possible) – instead, we are working out a system by which people can order discounted FOSS.IN mechandise online, starting shortly before the event, and continuing for several months after the event.

Speaker travel funding

Speaker travel – as always, please look for corporate/organizational sponsorship first, before asking us to bear your travel cost. We have very limited funds, and will have to be very selective on whom to fund. We will provide speaker accommodation, of course, and the delegate fees are waived for speakers (not FOSS Expo exhibitors!).

There are a lot of things that may have been left out in this note – bear with us, and do ask questions on the mailing list, twitter, etc. Do check the website (RSS feeds available), and by all means interact. Remember – FOSS.IN is NOT a commercial conference. It is run by volunteers (and this year many raw, new people join Team FOSS.IN), and the best way to fix an issue is to follow the FOSS methodology: report the bug, with a fix.

There will be more information, and more posts soon. And the formal CfP and registration system will be open up in the next day or so (bear with us – we are trying to make it as comfortable as possible for everyone), and will remain open for several weeks.

A formal request for Sponsorship will be out along with the CfP, as will be information about the commercial expo.

Please do get back to us with suggestions and queries – we’ll try and get answers back ASAP.

Many thanks for helping us to make FOSS.IN the world’s best technology conference!

Oh, and one more thing…

Given that we have these fabulous auditoriums, we plan to have some form of entertainment every evening – and that includes movie showings, rock and other music shows, “amateur nights”, and more. Start practicing now!

Atul Chitnis
Project Lead
FOSS.IN