Hi All:

(I'm writing this mail as an ILUG-Mumbai list member, and not as an official representative of the Bangalore Linux User Group.)

For those who don't know, The Linux community in Bangalore - The Bangalore LUG- organizes an event every year for the past few years. So far, this event has been called "Linux Bangalore".

I'd heard of this event in 2003, but was able to attend the event in 2004. You get to meet lots of techies, listen to talks, learn lessons, share knowledge, and build contacts. I feel that apart from the name and the venue, there's nothing Bangalore specific about this event - all are welcome and there's no discrimination.

This year, the event promises to be focussed on FLOSS and community issues, than be limited to just Linux. Since it is the attendees and the various enthusiasts who'll benefit the most, all are invited to participate in the discussions.

While there are people from this list who're already members of the linux-bangalore-2005 list, apparently not everyone is aware of this event, and the planning for this event.

Learn more about this event from the following post, and join the yahoo group.

-- Sriram

--- Atul Chitnis achitnis@exocore.com wrote:

To: Linux Bangalore/2005 linux-bangalore-2005@yahoogroups.com From: Atul Chitnis achitnis@exocore.com Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2005 13:25:39 +0530 (IST) Subject: [lb/2005-announce] The next 7 days...

All:

The next seven days are going to be crucial to some of the plans being now carved in stone for the event.

We have looked at the suggestions and comments made so far, plus the tons of private email that we have received with even more suggestions, but when you see the final plans, you will clearly see your recommendations and suggestions there.

Here is what we need now:

More.

More suggestions from you, more recommendations, more comments. They are literally the bricks that we are using to build this house - without them, we will have gaping holes - and windows - that problems can creep through. (If that sounds familiar to you, don't blame me :) More involvement, more willingness to make things happen.

Some ideas to discuss:

• What will work better: a few halls that seat 1000 people at a time and

have a guy speaking, or many midd-to-small sized halls that allow many topics to be discussed?

• Special Interest Groups: what kind of groups (say Gentoo, debian,

Fedora, Gnome, KDE, Education, User Groups, Indic/localization), and would these groups be able to set their own agendas, keeping focus tight, and not duplicate stuff from other SIGs?

• Topics: Advanced, or newbie tutorials as well? Developer only, or admin,

user etc. topics as well?

• Community: What would make LUGs participate more actively, so that the

world can see them? What would get them talking to each other at a non-political level? What would get them sharing ideas, discuss issues, work out solutions? Directions for the community (and - echoing the comments of one person in private email - is there a community, or have we allowed the vendors to take over?)

• "Non-Linux": Our event is about Free and open source Software, not a

single product. Sure, Linux is a great posterchild, but Linux isn't the only FOSS thing out there (despite some vendors trying their damnest to make the world believe that). So how do we get the non-Linux projects to get involved? How do we get our *BSD colleagues to consider this their event as well? The FOSS-on-Windows people? The OpenOffice people? The FOSS-on-OSX people? The PPP (Perl/PHP/Python) people?

• Education and Government: What are the issues that need to be addressed?

The Indian Government is committed to FOSS, how do we help them take things forward? How do we fix the problem of vendors getting their products into the educational curriculum? How could the government and academia get involved at our event to get their issues addressed?

• Formats: Speaker+audience only, or discussion groups as well?

• Anything that doesnt seem to ever get addressed, but needs to be?

These are just samples - feel free to add any more topics.

Anything relevant will get considered, and if we can fit it into the event, we will. Provided you tell us about it, of course.

This is a Free and Open Source event - it can't happen if you don't get involved (just like every other FOSS project).

To discuss these and more, get onto the mailing list:

linux-bangalore-2005-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

or

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/linux-bangalore-2005/join

Read what has been previously discussed:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/linux-bangalore-2005/messages

Have your say. Build your event.

In a few days the event announcement and the call for participation will go out - at that time, we need to know what we should use as selection criteria.

Please spread the word - on your mailing lists, in your forums, in your oganisations. Get involved, get people involved.

Believe me, when you see what we are building up here, you will kick yourself if you don't get your say in *now*.

Think Woodstock, think revolution, think change the world.

It's time for something new - and you are the one who can build it. Let's show the world how to do it right.

Consider this the world's largest building block set - and you get to place your pieces in it to build something tremendous.

Atul

p.s. We would appreciate it if you leave your politician hats at home - we are trying to build here. Please come to the discussion with a positive frame of mind. If your dog bit you this morning, maybe you should take a day to cool off first - don't take it out on the list. :)

If you need to offer criticism, make sure that your suggestion for an alternative is in the same message. No 100% negatives, please. In the closed source world, bug reports are "I used your product, and here is a bug". In the FOSS world it is "I used your product, here is a bug I found, and here is a patch/fix/suggestion".

The rules of the list follow the FOSS world.

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