MiniDebConf & Me

So actually I was also helping organizing this conference, For that Me and Ravi went to meet local organizers to get the show rolling but what rolled was us due to all the security checkup hell we had to go through, When you first enter the IIT Kanpur campus, you need to wait in line, give your address, your purpose of visit, Ok I can tolerate this but there is more, You also need to get your face save in a database of a random private security company, give them a government id to double check. This pissed me off, What If I just wanted to explore then campus? , I would not want to go this experience ever.. But wait there is more.

We met with the local organizer Sanskar at the gate and took a e-rickshaw to his hostel, and guess what, you need to enter the hostel as a Outsider, You need to write your Government Id details into the register and submit it with them, I mean What the actual Fuck!! . So I wrote false information as any normal person would.

It's not over yet!

The conf was on 14-15th of April but most of the people had reached kanpur on 13th, so bunch of us had dinner that day at Under the Sky, its the place name :P, It was pretty interesting meeting new people and seeing faces of people I had been having conversations with over the years via various communication medium.

Some things I remember:

• Subin asking me "How you got into Free Software"
• Abhijit asking me about Emacs
• We all waiting for Contrapunctus and joking she might be mapping on the way :P

So you remember the The IIT Kanpur's Security Hell? Yes I had to face that once again, So when I reached the campus on 14th, I saw there is a Option for QR Passes, I let out sigh of relief, see I don't particularly like QR as it is not accessible to someone without a mobile phone, yes we exist but I thought, "At least I won't need to go through that horrible process again", but how wrong I was, so on the webpage, you need to give your name, number, address, upload your photo, same usual shit.. but whats outrageous is that you also have to put the number of the person of contact inside the IIT and then they would need to allow something in some app then you get the otp on your number and give that to the security guard, and that means you still have to stand in the line and wait.

Just kill me!!

So while doing all this shenanigans I met Niya and Luna and lucky for them I just added them to my QR pass so that they don't have to go through this.

But Our problems did not end here, When we reached the venue, We were notified that the room we booked for the conference was not given to us, So This delayed the conf for over 2 hours. In the meantime, We waited at Cafe Coffee Day, There again, I got meet many new people, I was happy either way, This made me think that "It doesn't matter how shit things goes, If you have people you can vibe it" you won't remember that, i.e "We can't forget bad memories but we can make lots of good memories, so we won't have to think about bad ones".

So Finally we were allotted a room, we all rushed there and conf finally kicked off, I had so much fun listening to bunch of talks and also nervous for my talk, It was in the evening. I was trying to perfect the slides (I had so much content, so I deleted most of it and just kept pictures) and also as My Slideshow program show notes in the terminal, My setup was little weird, I just wanted to share one window and keep the terminal window side by side and I had never successfully screencasted my screen to a projector before, So I was nervous. So when we were going for lunch, I tried to test it but was unsuccessful, What finally helped me was wl-mirror , I mirrored the projector's output and shared that.

Then It was time for my talk, I had my first slide of my talk as black, So people kept pointing that "The screen is black", So I had to tell them that It signifies "the current state of the world", I think that made people tad bit curious or I don't know. I thought I would be shaking as my first talk but I was super chill, I had so much fun telling people about Permacomputing, the thing I love, I felt people were more intrigued by my slides.. I don't know if I was able to get the message across but I did make one person curious about this, So I guess I can call it a success :P.

../media/permcomputing-talk-collage.png

• How did you make the slides?
• Are you crazy?
• It was a powerful talk
• I missed the talk, give it to me personally

These were the comments from the people after my talk, I was elated that people listened to me rambling for over 15 mins :P

As everything was delayed, So did the lunch, Lunch was supposed to be at Sanskar's hostel's canteen, but as it turns out there was electricity cut at the campus that time, So we couldn't order anything there, we then went to the mess, we were late again, but some people were able to eat lunch there. We then had to walk about 1.5 km to different hostel's canteen. We ate our lunch there. I was getting pretty tired with all this, but all that was overshadowed thanks to the colorful conversations I was having with people. Ok this is getting too long.. Fast-forward time

lunch done > again the 1.5 km walk > back to hall > conference started again > Amazing Talks & Amazing Conversations.

I won't get into the talks as then this post won't ever end. At the end of the day we all went to the Server Room where we tried to see the ever rumored Sun Microsystem Computer but we couldn't as they were doing some renovation there but we did see the "Samyak" Supercomputer.

I really liked this street..

After that I went to meet Ravi and badri at their hotel for dinner, There, I also met Orendra and Aditya, There Aditya told me their Kanpur experience, it is seriously crazy, but that is Aditya's story to tell, Then we went to a nearby place called Baniya Ke Redi, The food was nice, especially the bread pizza. I first thought it would be rather mid as I don't eat out much., but it was actually pretty nice. After a while Sahil joined and we got another bread pizza and just talked about things.

When I reached my dormitory, I was pretty tired but happy, I just went to sleep.

Day 2 went smoothly. I had no problem getting in this time as I had already gone through all the horrible things on previous day itself. The conference went fine. I had another talk on How I got into Free Software / Prav. It went super fine. This day we had some participants from the outside as well. Aryan from Kanpur itself gave a talk on networking. Lothar had the Libreoffice Workshop. And we also had bunch of new students join us that I later found out, came through the mailing list. So yeah, it was overall pretty good. After the conference, we went outside for a Supertuxkart lan party, we were scolded because we were too loud but disastes2life did conduct a small lan party.

So, At last.. everyone was leaving, I was kinda sad, but overall pretty happy that we had these two days. I was just meeting with people, having conversations, saying goodbyes and reminiscing…

It's not The End!!

As everyone was leaving, I found out that NLBRT's train had delayed, So I offered them to stay at my hostel while all that pans out, Sneaking them in was easy as my dorm have no security. 67, The day after, Contrapunctus, Niya, Perry also joined us as their train was later as well. Niya had brought many board games with her, I wish we had the chance to play "Exploding Kittes" but Catan took most of our time.

It went for a very long time as we had a very difficult setup from the starting, I WON!!, No it was actually Niya but it was fun, In the Evening We all but Contra had a Supertuxkart party all because she wasn't able to join us due to networking issues. It was also fun, I always came at last..

Later that night, we bid farewell to Contra and Perry. Next day, Niya went home. And after a day or two, NLBRT also departed..

And this was my experience of these 4 awesome days.

Remember At the top of this post, I put a quote saying "As long as you have candy, you can enjoy it even if you're alone." But If you have lots of amazing people around you, you can taste all kinds of wonderful candies, and I ate lots of delicious candies in this little conference.

Until Next time