Last month, I attended the KDE India conference in Gandhinagar, Gujarat from the 4th to the 6th of April. I made my mind to attend when Sahil told me about his plans to attend and giving a talk.
A day after my talk submission, the organizer Bhushan contacted me on Matrix and informed me that my talk had been accepted. I was also informed that KDE will cover my travel and accommodation expenses. So, I planned to attend the conference at this point. I am a longtime KDE user, so why not ;)
I arrived in Ahmedabad, the twin city of Gandhinagar, a day before the conference. The first thing that struck me as soon as I came out of the Ahmedabad airport was the heat. I felt as if I was being cooked—exactly how Bhushan put it earlier in the group chat. I took a taxi to get to my hotel, which was close to the conference venue.
Later that afternoon, I met Bhushan and Joseph. Joseph lived in Germany. Bhushan was taking him to get a SIM card, so I tagged along and got to roam around. Joseph was unsure about where to go after the conference, so I asked him what he wanted out of his trip and had conversations along that line.
Later, Vishal convinced him to go to Lucknow. Since he was adamant about taking the train, I booked a Tatkal train ticket for him to Lucknow. He was curious about how Tatkal booking works and watched me in amusement while I was booking the ticket.
The 4th of April marked the first day of the conference, with around 25 attendees. Bhushan started the day with an overview of KDE conferences in India, followed by Vishal, who discussed FOSS United’s activities. After the lunch, Joseph gave an overview of his campaign to help people switch from Windows to GNU/Linux due to environmental and security reasons. He continued his session in detail the next day.
Conference hall
A key takeaway for me from Joseph’s session was the idea pointed out by Adwaith: marketing GNU/Linux as a cheap alternative may not attract as much attention as marketing it as a status symbol. He gave the example of how the Tata Nano didn’t do well in the Indian market due to being perceived as a poor person’s car.
My talk was scheduled for the evening of the first day. I hadn’t prepared any slides because I wanted to make my session interactive. During my talk, I did an activity with the attendees to demonstrate the federated nature of XMPP messaging, of which Prav is a part. After the talk, I got a lot of questions, signalling engagement. The audience was cooperative (just like Prav ;)), contrary to my expectations (I thought they will be tired and sleepy).
On the third day, I did a demo on editing OpenStreetMap (referred to as “OSM” in short) using the iD editor. It involved adding points to OSM based on the students’ suggestions. Since my computer didn’t have an HDMI port, I used Subin’s computer, and he logged into his OSM account for my session. Therefore, any mistakes I made will be under Subin’s name. :)
On the third day, I attended Aaruni’s talk about backing up a GNU/Linux system. This was the talk that resonated with me the most. He suggested formatting the system with the btrfs file system during the installation, which helps in taking snapshots of the system and provides an easy way to roll back to a previous version if, for example, a file is accidentally deleted. I have tried many backup techniques, including this one, but I never tried backing up on the internal disk. I’ll certainly give this a try.
A conference is not only about the talks, that’s why we had a Prav table as well ;) Just kidding. What I really mean is that a conference is more about interactions than talks. Since the conference was a three-day affair, attendees got plenty of time to bond and share ideas.
Prav stall at the conference
Conference group photo
After the conference, Bhushan took us to Adalaj Stepwell, an attraction near Gandhinagar. Upon entering the complex, we saw a park where there were many langurs. Going further, there were stairs that led down to a well. I guess this is why it is called a stepwell.
Adalaj Stepwell
Later that day, we had Gujarati Thali for dinner. It was an all-you-can-eat buffet and was reasonably priced at 300 rupees per plate. Aamras (Mango juice) was the highlight for me. This was the only time we had Gujarati food during this visit. After the dinner, Aaruni dropped Sahil and I off at the airport. The hospitality was superb - for instance, in addition to Aaruni dropping us, Bhushan also picked up some of the attendees from the airport.
Finally, I would like to thank KDE for sponsoring my travel and accommodation costs.
Let’s wrap up this post here and meet you in the next one.
Thanks to contrapunctus and Joseph for proofreading.