On Wed, Nov 13, 2002 at 09:51:51PM +0530, Ashish Kulkarni wrote:
hmm...subject sounds like 4 people will get dates in Linux-Bom 2003. *runs to sign up for it* ;-)
seriously, something in early-Feb to March-end would be great. If in April, it clashes with school exams. May-June, with exams of most colleges and July with engg. college exams. Note that imho getting engg. college students is *very* important as from now on, Linux (as in C on Linux) is compulsory for all engg. students. So we might have a new generation of Linux users out there who already have a good reason to be familiar with it.
August might be suitable (with Independence), but I feel it's too far away and the efforts will be more complacent. What I think is better is to have a sort of mini-Expo in Feb-Mar (taking care not to clash with the one in Kerela), so that we get to know how to work it all out...sort of trial run, really. And *then* have the main expo in August (with theme of freedom?). So basically, this will help us prepare ourselves for the big one, get to know each other, and generally have good fun...it'd be hard to achieve perfection at first try, anyway.
anyway, I agree that a consensus on the dates need to be reached soon.
1. If you call it Linux Mumbai 2003, I am out. If it is something like "Swatantram 2003: A Free Software Festival", I am in. If it also starts on august 15th it sounds good, with no regional bias.
2. Why Linux should not be the focus? We will be talking about PHP, Perl, Python, GNU tools, Gnome, KDE, GCC, Emacs, Xwindows, Zope, XML, Mozilla, etc. which work on all the major Free OSs as well as propreitary ones. Most free software tools are developed with standards in mind and are mostly cross platform. Therefore talking about the virtues of free software, whatever be the kernel is important. That GNU/Linux will catch everybody's attention is beyond doubt but the theme should be such that it can be repeated every year with different themes.
3. We need to do the Sunday workshops that support conversion first before we begin to embark on this festival. Let us first do this, to test whether we can take up anything. It will help us to identify people both speakers and people who will do the leg work. All the enthusiastic people on the list should work for the sunday workshops. Meanwhile we will have enough time to gather funds, sponsors, scout good quality speakers and enough advertisement etc. Also August will be good to hire IIT venue. Well it may rain, but who in Mumbai is afraid of rains.
Nagarjuna