gnuNify 2009

For all of you who must be wondering what gnuNify is? Please stop scratching your heads its a conference that was held in Pune at Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research (SICSR). Its Pune’s popular Free and open Source Software (FOSS) conference. I attended this conference accidentally this year and the overall experience was mindboggling. Check http://gnunify.in/ for more information.

As soon as entered the venue i was given a notepad, a pen & a special batch (gnuNify 09 crafted on it). I thought wow this was going to be an Out of box experience (OOBE) [I apologise for using MS Windows Keyword] for me. At the reception the first thing that i came to know was that the schedule has changed WTF (What the F*) i said. I still managed to get hold of the Ubuntu lab, where some novice users were trying to teach some other novice users about how to install Ubuntu (check http://www.ubuntu.com/ for more information). I have a habit of digging into the technology so i asked them few questions related to the boot loaders & the default page size, but the kind of response i got from them was pathetic. Its not easy to fool a skeptical person like me when it comes to technology but still those morons gave it a shot and that's where i caught them and made them taste the mud.

Now came the turn of presenters at the conference they tried hard to fool people around but as you know that i am habituated to asking tech questions, i asked them few but once again i was disappointed. The major reason for my disappointment was the response i got from them i.e please check the MAN (HELP as we say in Windows) pages. I then decided to move on to the next classroom where one presenter was explaining about the fedora project (check http://fedoraproject.org/ for more information). Within next 5 minutes the only audience left was the organisers and 3 more persons including me. I can explain the situation of presenters in one line "It was like acting in a movie without knowing whether you are playing the role of an actor or a villain (Gabbar to be more precise)". In the end i would just like to make one suggestion to the organisers that please give some respect to the Open Source Software (OSS) by calling the right people to speak in front of so many tech savvy enthusiasts.