Chitnis: Why I came back

[Posted December 16, 2010 by corbet]

Atul Chitnis has posted a long discussion on why he stepped up to organize FOSS.in 2010 after saying that he was done. The key information is at the end, though: "So yes, you read correctly: There won't be a FOSS.IN next year. FOSS.IN/2010 is the last one. This is Team FOSS.IN's swansong." Here's hoping it doesn't turn out that way in the end; it would be sad to lose this important event.

Key information

Posted Dec 17, 2010 13:17 UTC (Fri) by pboddie (guest, #50784) [Link]

I think some other key information is that it can be a lot of work to organise a conference, especially if it involves establishing an event from scratch, and that a lot of people don't really understand exactly how much work it can be, especially those who turn up and expect gold-plated treatment (rock-solid, ultra-fast wireless Internet, for example) on a budget, complaining if they don't get it.

I have a lot of respect for anyone who has been involved in organising something like FOSS.in for so long.

End of an era

Posted Dec 19, 2010 14:45 UTC (Sun) by jamesmrh (guest, #31622) [Link]

From what I could garner from the rather expansive closing speech by Atul :-) is that they feel they've achieved what they set out to achieve, and after ten years, it is time for many of the team to move on to other challenges.

Anyone who's helped organize even one community event at this level should understand that ten years of this is an utterly vast investment of personal time & energy, and in some cases, money.

The team is the critical aspect of the event: they built a a great team with each member working as a specialist in their own area (catering, networking, funding etc.). Building such a team is a prerequisite to running something like foss.in.

Handing foss.in off to another team is a problem in that there is no other group with a track record of being able to deliver such an event.

They also hope to stimulate the development of a new conference by not having foss.in (which was getting all the mindshare).

There are also many other smaller events around India, so, locally, there will still be good options.

To attract top-level developers from all over the world, though, I suspect they may need to establish another national peak event.

I wonder if an LCA-like model might work, where the core foss.in team solicit bids for the next "foss.in", and then work with the winner to provide a template for organizing the event, provide mentoring & support, but leaving the actual delivery to the bid winner. Perhaps existing events could also bid and be the "foss.in" for that year.

But yes, the conference is over as we knew it. The team developed one of the few international-class grassroots conferences and ran it exceptionally for many years, going out on a high. It is now legend :-)