The first Bangalore Debian Developer Conference was held on Saturday
August 20, 2005 at the International Institute of Information
Technology, Bangalore (http://www.iiitb.ac.in.) The video recording
of the talk at the Debian Day by Jaldhar H. Vyas "What is Debian?"
was
played as the registration was progressing before the formal
inauguration. This talk set the context for the topics to follow
during the conference. The Debconf was inaugurated by
Prof.S.Sadagopan, Director of the IIIT-Bangalore. During the short
address, he highlighted the need to increase participation from the
Indian/Bangalore students, academia and IT community as contributors
to the Free and Open Software movement. He put forward a challenge
to
the Debian community to bring up twenty developers by the next year
conference and offered active support from IIIT-Bangalore to make the
challenge possible. The two Debian developers, Ramakrishnan M. and
Ganesan Rajagopal participated and spoke about the Debian philosophy,
process and their experience of becoming Debian contributors. Ramki
remembered and thanked the pioneers Arun, Bdale Garbee, Raghavendra
Bhatt and Sudhakar Chandra who helped in their process of becoming a
Debian Developer. He explained the life cycle of a package and
highlighted some opportunities to contribute. Ganesan brought up the
need for attention to details at a developer level. He explained the
packages he is contributing as a developer. He brought up his vision
for integrating and merging other India-based free and open source
projects with Debian. Following as a brainstorming session involving
Debian developer aspirants and others from the free and open source
community. Prof.Srinath of IIIT-B chaired the session and spoke
about
the contributions IIIT-B is planning. Others who spoke during this
session also demonstrated vision and enthusiasm to participate and
contribute. Those who came forward to speak were: Chirag Kantharia,
Ramakrishna (Indlinux project), Ganesh Gudigara, Sriharsha Shetty,
Anish, Kishore Sampathkumar, Praveen, Rohit, Alok. At the end of
this
brainstorming session, several volunteer opportunities were
identified
with respective ownerships. In spite of the low-key nature of the
conference, the first Debconf evoked a good response from the
Bangalore community. About 70 Debian enthusiasts showed up at the
conference. The next Bangalore Debian Developer Conference is
announced to be on Saturday August 19, 2006. The team is planning
few Developer-focused events during the year to support aspiring
Debian contributors and developers. Those who are interested to
participate in this initiative and contribute are welcome to
DebianIndia-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.