[fedora-india] request for speaker for our FOSS festival Mukti 2010

[sankarshan]

On Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 12:42 AM, Debayan Banerjee <debayanin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> 2010/1/8 Aanjhan R <aanjhan at gmail.com>
>>
>> On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 7:40 PM, Debarshi Ray <debarshi.ray at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> > So why don't _you_ take Kushal's role this time?
>>
>> Is there a replacement for our ever enthusiastic Kushal?
>
> On a more serious note, Roshan is desperately trying to get Fedora folks to
> talk at Mukti. I think we can assume that he has considered the idea of he
> himself being a speaker, and also rejected it.

I have two concerns about the lines above. One, the notion of Fedora
folks from outside having to talk to a crowd of students (which I
interpret as in-house experts aren't considered glamorous) and, two,
the fact that since the last time, barring Debayan, Shreyank and
Roshan, there haven't been newer faces coming up from NIT-Durgapur.
Think that through. If Kushal did make an impact at all, why did it
have to be just 3 people in, I assume a batch of 200 ? If you have an
idea why this is so, including the now-established notion of "cool
hai", I'd be interested in hearing.

Personally, I am all for participation in college events to raise
awareness. But, we have to accept a couple of things:

* awareness is a good measure in institutions which have no FOSS culture
* participation requires someone to volunteer their time
* participation costs money

In other to provide a reasonable justification for the last two, there
needs to be a follow-through of the first item. Awareness ->
participation + contribution.

Along the lines of what I did ask Shreyank in December - where are the
folks from Roshan's batch and, other batches ?

> Respecting his decision, would it now be possible for a Fedora contributor
> to speak there?

I haven't read about anyone volunteering to be at Mukti and requesting
sponsorship to travel. If there is anyone interested, now would be a
time to use the ticket on fedorahosted.org/fedora-india. If the budget
permits, it would be easy to sponsor someone to visit Durgapur, we'd
need a ticket on the trac, an idea of what the presence would be for
and, the estimated cost of making that happen.

As regards media, I'd suggest that you sell them. The monies should
come of some use. Pressing media in bulk to give away does not seem to
have the same effect. The other option I can think of is getting in
touch with LFY as a partner of some sort at the event where they
sponsor media.

-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
<http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog>