Linux Bangalore Planning

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.