Debian Conference India -- Report
The first Bangalore Debian Developer Conference was held on Saturday August 20, 2005 at the International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore. The video recording of the talk at the Debian Day by Jaldhar H. Vyas "What is Debian?" was played as the registration was progressing before the formal inauguration. This talk set the context for the topics to follow during the conference.
The Debconf was inaugurated by Prof.S.Sadagopan, Director of the IIIT-Bangalore. During the short address, he highlighted the need to increase participation from the Indian/Bangalore students, academia and IT community as contributors to the Free and Open Software movement. He put forward a challenge to the Debian community to bring up twenty developers by the next year conference and offered active support from IIIT-Bangalore to make the challenge possible.
The two Debian developers, Ramakrishnan Muthukrishnan and Ganesan Rajagopal participated and spoke about the Debian philosophy, process and their experience of becoming Debian contributors. Ramki remembered and thanked the pioneers Arun, Bdale Garbee, Raghavendra Bhatt and Sudhakar Chandra who helped in their process of becoming a Debian Developer. He explained the life cycle of a package and highlighted some opportunities to contribute. Ganesan brought up the need for attention to details at a developer level. He explained the packages he is contributing as a developer. He brought up his vision for integrating and merging other India-based free and open source projects with Debian.
Following as a brainstorming session involving Debian developer aspirants and others from the free and open source community. Prof.Srinath of IIIT-B chaired the session and spoke about the contributions IIIT-B is planning. Others who spoke during this session also demonstrated vision and enthusiasm to participate and contribute. Those who came forward to speak were: Chirag Kantharia, Ramakrishna (Indlinux project), Ganesh Gudigara, Sriharsha Shetty, Anish, Kishore Sampathkumar, Praveen, Rohit, Alok. At the end of this brainstorming session, several volunteer opportunities were identified with respective ownerships.
In spite of the low-key nature of the conference, the first Debconf evoked a good response from the Bangalore community. About 70 Debian enthusiasts showed up at the conference. The next Bangalore Debian Developer Conference is announced to be on Saturday August 19, 2006. The team is planning few Developer-focused events during the year to support aspiring Debian contributors and developers. Those who are interested to participate in this initiative and contribute are welcome to DebianIndia-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.
