Highlights :
• "TechNIT" event @ NIT Jalandhar, Punjab India
• Runtime of 2hrs aprox.
• Audience looked of about 200 100+ persons
• Goodies/media was announced to be distributed post workshop , as per management
• Faced troubles of long power-outage, denial of permission to install Fedora, reduction of actual workshop schedule from 3hrs
• On a positive note highly enthusiastic crowd, Fedora message of freedom and contribution opportunity well delivered.
• Could inspire audience to work around and deal with critical local problems such as power-outages that comes in way for them to learn and do more with computers.
Details :
o Fedora Ambassador Kevin Verma (myself) took charge of a Fedora workshop at NIT Jalandhar TechNIT on September 18th 2009.
o I reached NIT only about 45 mins prior to the workshop event, still nearly couple of hours late than my own plan. With better & upto mark directions I could have been there timely as I planned.
o Fedora & myself were introduced in the main auditorium where Venky had just finished his presentation. Just after introduction I was surrounded by a small crowd of 20-30 Linux enthusiastic students. there were great questions like, developing software for profit on Linux and what are the simulation application on Linux, does Maya really run on Linux etc.
Off course I had long answers to those questions, examples and reality touch etc. what matters is all were interested to continue to listen and interactive until someone reminded us to take a break fresh up as it was just a short time left before we start workshop.
o Originally the workshop was requested to be run for 3hrs (1pm to 4pm) but overall delay of lunch & due to some overlap of schedule we had to wrap up in just 2hrs.
o By the time all the audience what I think was 200-300 100-200, had be-seated in the "C" lab of NITJ ; some one had broke to me that management did not approve to let students install Linux on their systems, and so all we will use for the lab are Live CDs. This as a sign of discouragement but not for me. I was highly motivated to still go ahead and make our session a success with given resources.
o Soon we were all gathered in the NIT "C" lab, and I began to take charge by attracting entire chit-chatting crowd towards me and that worked. The first thing I reminded them was of the limitation of not being able to install Fedora for them actually, and how we will use Live disks, also provided them cautions so they don't accidentally install Fedora on IBM ThinkCenter systems there.
o Actually I noted for myself that since those systems were ThinkCenter systems it would actually be possible to be careless about Windows install and restore that later using the "Blue" button (famous on thinkpads/thinkcenter etc.) BUT only long as you preserve the IBM hidden partition. However, I had to let go that thought because we were nick of time for hacks at that movement.
o The movements while were were still in introduction & caution part we barely started with fist screen of my presentation there was a sudden power failure. And the following that was feelings of distress & hopeless in audience.
o While I had barely started that "Power Failure" became our metal for this workshop, and I could share and students could share back their feelings why we actually lag behind up here in Punjab to have maximum hands-on with computers. We also went ahead and took upto 10mins to discuss what we can change about major power cuts in future and why entirely it is so important an area contribution for all of us.
o List of topics we could cover in details and only a little hands-on for reasons above:
• "Why use Linux ?"
• "Fedora 11 Installation in 20mins !"
• "F11: Networking 123.."
• "F11: Managing Software"
rest topics on NIT's requested list could not be covered because the schedule was minimized from 3hrs to only 2hrs.
o Finally at the end I was honoured with a "Guest of Honour" shield
There was also a presentation which I prepared in a very short time. I thought it would be needed just for my own pointers but was useful more then that.
Some pictures that were emailed to me by NIT guys:
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7 comments:
maybe number of attendance less than what I reported here, maybe the room looked more filled of people actually than in pictures :-/
Also while there were few snags, I actually have to thank a lot to Mahesh & his fellows that they did a nice job keeping things together best they could.
I am certain there is more to come, and better and better !
Are the participants going to land up on the #fedora-india or, fedora-india mailing list ?
mailing lists & irc channels were talked about but fedora-india lists/irc was not a specific goal. That way I think might have failed :-(
Kevin, thanks for your great report, good job! What do you think, how many of the audience will become a Fedora Contributor?
@Kital, eventually I am hopeful there will be some score of contributors , of people those who get it.
I think I could actually do a nice job explaining career wise benefits of contributing for Fedora or upstream or even to other distro's. Also I could state advantages on FedoraHosted infra. and compared it to SF.net.
Context to this detail was on page-1 of my slides "Because with Linux you can ignore recessions ! "
Well I was there only for a workshop which I thought would be more about hands-on and won't get us time for too much talking, but situations changed it otherwise.
I can't think of measures with which I can even tell how many may turn into Fedora contrib. either. And frankly "scoring" was not my objective when I decided to go there, influence was.
So to say that my objective was instead to spread message of Fedora, in-sync with Fedora Project.
Even though NIT folks requested me to talk about Omega & extended multimedia support, I am proud that I explained demerits of bad/ugly multimedia bits first, and explained why is that support is not found Fedora-inbox, and how much it matters to discourage dependence on bad/ugly bits for freedom of everyone going forward even if we find ourselves in a geographically relaxed zone far as restrictions on bad/ugly bits matters.
YEah I was not representing FSF :-) ...
so I had to provide few cases where one could admit how not every technology under sun can be open, but what are good merits for developers, users, governments if it is !
So if they get the overview of my entire talking and interaction & if extended values of session helps revive some of their own, then they will sure be contributors in someway someday, I think.
~kevin
thanks kevin !
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