2008/11/30 Senthil Sundaram (sensunda) <sensunda@cisco.com>

Hi,

I guess it was a good programme yesterday for free software ...we have to concentrate on the long term aspects...please do write on what we could do better..please make this a community report on what you thought is good and bad..

We had many people saying "NO TO M$-VTU" Lock In. the nice thing was we were able to have some new people From colleges : both lecturers and students ..a good representation from all sections of civil socitey

i think somebody will have the media report and picutres..

thanks

senthil

0) we started with a 1 minute silence for all the tragedy in bombay

1) Lecturers : RVCE(renuka) , Chirst(viki) , CMRIT(pramode) ( one new college) ,

2) Students : christ , Amrita , bms-it, ait participated

3) We had research scholars from IISc

4) We had Dr Anja from IT for Change

5) We had a good number of programmers and people from the [proprietary] software industry - I think many companies were repesented ;)

6) the children from the slum computing center , wanted to make this a day out, to see what their teachers were upto..and sang a nice little song to end the program - a song which means "we are building the dreams for a new future" - they planned a visit to cubbon park, got late - but enjoyed the picnic of sorts..they were happy to see the encouragement they got from so many 'Drs and scientists" in blr..

7) some students from bmsit came - but didn't like the 'street mode' - we explained to them why its important to take streets at times - we will work with them and are sure they will relaise the importance of this...

8) a good amount of material - press notes , fliers were in kannada this time - this is important - thanks to the suggestion of sri ramadoss

9) we also had some t.v channels covering it this time apart from the press..i do know the press people who came - please update

10) Dr Vijoo Krishnan, Head of Political Science .

11) Dr chaterjee - a scientist with Astro Physics

12) Parth from NRCFOSS also helped with the material.

13) Anivar from SMC

14) Renuka lecturer from RVCE

12) The student fedaration of india also had lent its support and said that it will take the issue of free software [ the left naturally takes to free software i guess ]

13) if we could have had a teachers union that would have been great..

14) NRCFOSS also lent its support

15) There were folks from the kannada blogging community as well

Thanks

senthil