While we had all those GNOME people around we took the opportunity to set up some extra sessions for the “public” to benefit of the event. March 31st and April 1st saw 4 extra sessions organized with specific objectives separate from the GNOME 3.0 release: student training sessions over 2 days, one full day for a business sessions and a distribution collaboration meeting while we had some of the right people on site.
The student training was very popular, all the tickets sold out within a day and the trainers nicely extended the session by doing an extra day in order to accept more students. In total over 250 students were trained and introduced to the Google Summer of Code program. We received a lot of positive feedback and it was nice to see that participants are all very passionate about joining the GNOME community. As usual, we collected email addresses and will make sure they can join the local GNOME User Group later! For those who may not know I will talk about Building a GNOME User Group on Sunday (hopefully my voice will return – maybe too much GNOME people baby sitting?). It is probably a good idea to come and discuss if you are interested to learn some of the tricks to establish or grow your own community.
April 1st (yesterday) was the last day before the conference, so I spent most of my time with the volunteer team to make sure everything was ready for The Day including the three tracks, the exhibition hall and a few other details.
Being part of this hackfest really made me happy and I wouldn’t have thought being around all these GNOME hackers could be such an enjoyable experience! I was also very impressed by how productive each respective team – release, marketing and GNOME.Asia – has been on its own and in their collaboration with one another. Everyone has been working really hard to ensure the success of GNOME 3.0 and of the GNOME.Asia Summit. The hard work of the past 8 months for some, and more for others, was definitely worth it! Please stay tuned as I will continue to cover the two conference days on this blog.
- Lionel sharing his experience of GSoC after a hand-on session given by Akhil about bug squading.
- Josselin giving a speech about science computing with Free Software.
- Distribution collaboration meet up in progress.
Hey Pockey,
I had visited today, infact i liked the Brians and Vincents talks. Vincent really pour in a great deal of info to the audience. People like him do motivate younger guys like us.
Infact, i did spoke to you personally today asking about Gnome Friends. All thought i wanted to ask Brian about accepting Gnome Friends funds at Indian Rates rather than in USD currency and also reducing the rates too. Many times people back off by seeing the conversion they make viz $500= ~20000INR, which is huge to afford. The same goes with the merchandise stuffs you guys had put up, each rates were just converted to their equivalent USD rates right, which is again high amount. If for example, you had sold T-Shirt for say 300INR, you guys would have to order extra t-shirts to sell there for sure. I know the contributions goes to Gnome foundations, but not always an USD to INR conversion way.
Any ways, i wish you get your voice back by tomorrow. Bottom line is, you guys rock and doing a great job. Next time your hosting an Gnome summit in Bangalore, sure i wish to be a volunteer for the event, and in the mean time i wish to be a contributor in some way.
Yes i myself a FOSS lover and user since 7 years so far.
Suggestions:
1. Please put up 2 queues (stalls) for students and Other registration types.
2. Local User Group guys should make themselves introduce to the audience in some time so that any of us wishes to join can get in contact with them, infact i wish too.
3. Please reduce the number of Cd’s you guys are giving away, most people dont make use of it at all. They just throw it away after they try 1s on their own system and if it fails or not on them (Personally have seen most doing it).\
Thats all for now. Wish to meet you all great guys again tomorrow.
Rock on 🙂
@ Zenwalker
Thanks for your feedback!
We are not really selling any t-shirt or merchandises, we only have limited tshirts like 20 pcs, we would like people to donate money for the GNOME Foundation instead 🙂 If they donate a certain amount, we will give away a gift e.g. tshirt / sticker / pin as a souvenir. That’s why we also put up a donation box in the GNOME booth, you can donate any amount in local currency as you wish if you think joining the friends of GNOME program is too difficult for you.
For registration, I did mention it to the student volunteer team however it seems that we didn’t have enough resources to do so. But I believe it should be better tomorrow 🙂
Local user group team leaders from Beijing and Taiwan will introduce themselves respectively tomorrow. As Max (from the Taiwan user Group) will give a lightning talk while Emily (from the Beijing User Group) will join my talk. See you tomorrow then!
For Live CDs, it’s one of our sponsors, Novell who gives away those CDs 🙂
For GNOME.Asia Committee, we have a helpdesk helping people to copy images in their USB Stickers for installation purpose.
See you tomorrow.
Hi Pockey,
Thanks for replying.
Yes i am sorry i miss used the word Selling. I love to donate to the Gnome foundation. But not at the USD rates. As said, people here love to have an merchandise or Gnome Friends kinda membership so that they can show if off proudly in the public. Yes donation box is good at the venue, but few guys there were asking me weather donation box would lead them to any membership kinda stuffs. I had to answer no. Hence i suggested Gnome folks to bring their contributors membership at the india rates. The same i am discussing with the Linux foundation in providing there student or contributor membership at indian rates.
Infact, i did donate (kinda) 800INR for a Gnome3 tee. So i hope i did my part for Gnome. But i am looking for Gnome Friends if the rates reduces to a great deal at indian standards.
As with the volunteers, i did see many folks there not doing their jobs. Well none to blame here, its a self motivated job. Hope it would be better today. As already said, next event at blore, you can count me in for any help.
As to the User Group, i was more into India user group members.
Well its great Novell did a good job. But on the same side, people dont make use if it max is a sad story to see. Any ways hoping for the best.
C ya all today 🙂
@ Zenwalker
The GNOME accepts donations starting from as low as you can afford. Please review http://www.gnome.org/friends/step2.php for one time donation: you can see that the default amount is U$25 (and not $500) and can be edited to a lower amount.
You mentioned that India GNOME User Group, what’s your vision and objectives of building it?