On Mon, 6 Aug 2007, Roshan wrote:

> But won't they still make their way through some or
> the other medium? Only if we look at things a bit
> differently?

No, we do not want to duplicate the efforts of other events and those of
the LUGs. No newbie or advocacy talks. This is a developer/contributor
conference.

>> KDE, Gnome, Fedora, Ubuntu/Debian, OpenOffice,
>> IndLinux, etc.
>
> Aren't these /too/ broad for the project days?

Nope. try and understand what we are trying to do. We want people to
contribute to the projects. Also, these are just examples.

> Couldn't costs be lowered or be different for
> different categories of audience (I'm at the risk of
> being booted out of the list -- on this question, but
> I'll ask this because, I read about this in a local
> newspaper in B'lore during foss.in/2006) [Just curious
> to know]

By now, you probably know that there is no scope for lowering costs. Food
and facilities cost real money.

And we do not have "categories" of audiences. All people are the same to
us.

The article you read in a paper was based on a feedback of ONE person who
had not registered online and hence had to pay Rs.1000 instead of Rs.500.
Unfortunately, the person was a close friend of a journalist, and that
journalist wrote a story on a sample of 1, indicating that *everyone* had
to pay Rs.1000.

At the closing ceremony, Mahendra revealed that out out approximately 2000
people, only 23 paid Rs.1000 because they had not registered online.

> And since there are 5 days of fun at g33kdom, I
> assume, the need of volunteers would be huge!

It always is. However, the need is for *working* volunteers, if you know
what I mean. ;)

> I would also like to make a small suggestion.
> Engineering courses may have FOSS in their syllabus in
> B'lore Univ (I'm a Mum-univ PG student). If they
> don't, a workshop could probably introduce them to
> FOSS and get them started. BSc graduates in Computer
> Science / Information Technology, could also take
> advantage of this.

So not only do we replicate the efforts of other conferences and LUGs, but
we replicate the efforts of universities and colleges as well? :)

We have to pick our battles, or we lose the war. The focus of this
conference is development and contribution, not newbie orientation. And
even if were to allow this, the rest of the conference would be a complete
loss to them.

If someone comes to FOSS.IN, it is expected that s/he knows what s/he is
coming for. There are four months to the event - plenty of time to attend
LUG meets, surf the net, and learn the basics.

Atul