Hi all,
It's been around a week since Gnunify '06 ended. So it's time
to unwind & replay some of the stuff back as well as some obvious &
perhaps not so obvious takeaway from the Event & things we could improve
on :-
Takeaways/Observations :-
1. The quality of presentation has been improving year after year. This
time too was not any different.
2. Most of the machines had one distro. or the other. This is far
removed from the times when we used to have XP as a backup
or something. Exception couple of imac Powerbooks.
3. Most of the speakers had a distro. working on Laptops. This speaks
volumes on the maturity on the kernel/device drivers as
well as perhaps with the manufacturers also that devices do work.
More interestingly saw some of the developers/hacker
community exchanging notes with an external notebook
hdd/wirelessely/wired (all three modes) using linux.
4. The no. of people who had notebooks were remarkably more than last
yr. So lots of mobile accessories were on display as
well as wireless solutions.
5. There were quite a no. of people who were looking at it as a
business/problem-solving solution rather than just a geek OS.
Minuses or things that still need to be worked upon [from my biased
perspective :)] :-
1. One of the major things for any platform to succeed (for mass
adoption) needs publishers. Although quite a few of us know
O'Reilly, Linux For You, Linux Journal & other major
publishers/publications who support the community the common
person/student perhaps might not be aware of .
2. There is/was still quite an enormous amount of FUD still prevalent
among people who are/were still unsure/confused about
various distros. The developer was well targeted as well as the
systems admin side but still nothing for the common joe except
3 sessions given in Room 307-A by Gaurav/Sudhanwa Sir (Multimedia),
Vinay Pawar(Graphics), Devendra (Internet/Office)
perhaps we needed to have some more eye candy sessions , something
with WOW or cool effect. Either a gaming session,
WOW desktop eye-candy theme/wallpapers or both. No fun aspect
shown/stressed upon.
3. Most of the things were shown exclusively shown on KDE. This while
putting people on ease atleast on my opinion
didn't tell anything about the other window managers like Gnome,
Xfce, Enlightenment (more links at http://xwinman.org/)
4. PLUG could have used some of the publicity in the event to also let
people know about PLUG & it activities more. This was
kinda side-lined. If this was given some more impetus then the
community would become better/stronger. There were hardly
any banners of PLUG where the booking for distros, T-shirts etc.
was happening.
5. No idea if the Events have been video-taped & available as a
download or as a CD from PLUG, Symbiosis
6. We don't have either colorful or controversial people here at PLUG.
It has been quite tame & somebody like Danese
Cooper or the Yahoo developer gang was required to infuse some fun
element. We need to improve here.
7. Last minute timings are changed or Rooms are changed (the
communication needs to be improved upon here).
8. Cell-phones should be switched off or put on vibration mode
announcements should have been given.
Now although all the congrats &
brick-bats have been given let's get to the real meat of the Event.
Sessions/Techie Talks/Workshops I attended on the first day :-
1. Multimedia (Gaurav Pant/Sudhanwa Sir) Gaurav had an accident but like
any other regular hero turned up (slightly late) on the
occasion & gave the presentation on the various multimedia utilities
present on the system. There were lot of people who had
no idea about free formats & was tempted to kinda tell
(Linux/OpenOffice.org/Mplayer is better) but restricted myself. Till
Gaurav wasn't there Sudhanwa Sir took over the presentation & in his
own inimitable style shared his views. This could 've
been more than 2-3 hrs as people did have lot of queries & perhaps a
seperate session on hands on with multimedia could
be looked upon .
2. The second session I was confused whether to sit in for the graphics/
or Portlets (Topic even the site Gnunify site doesn't have
any info.) Although it was interesting but there was no info.
anywhere :( Anyway instead of me mis-guiding about anything
surf to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portlets . (Not free but Open
source/proprietory implementations still confused) From
whatever little I could garner I do see immense potential for this
technology as personalizations is the key today & perhaps not
just in sites but also appliances like Set-Top Boxes & all which are
networked today or any network-aware appliance.
3. The first workshop I attended was Mr. Shantanu Kulkarni's Regular
Expressions. I think I was the only non-developer there
maybe couple more but don't really know, anyway he was brilliant. I
do hope he puts some tutes on his site on Reg-ex so we
can all learn & use our systems more effectively. Searching could be
so much easier. :)
4. The last topics to choose were also sort of confusing, It was tough
to decide either to go with our Regular/Irregular PLUG
Q&A session or go with the Localization of GIS. Ended up going to
PLUG Q&A and as always didn't get disappointed.
As any other conference where 10 experts would have 10 different
opinions the same was happening here. It was beautiful,
chaotic & being PLUG.
Phew. That's all for the 1st day. Did
I mention that it was draining. Lots of people to interact with +
not enough coffee :)
--
Shirish Agarwal
Life is a dream Enjoy it!
Creative Commons, Attribution
Non-commercial, non-derivative
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