Courtesy -- Kernel AshLin THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN LIMO AND THE MERRY BAND OF ILUGD
LinuxAsia 2004 is over - thus ended another blast for ILUGD! Those of you who weren�t there missed all the Fun! 11Feb04-13Feb04, location India Habitat Centre. The organisers provided the Group with an appropriate setting - a long stall out on the back patio, with an open sky! Presumably where no one wanted to be. But they underestimated us. Very soon the ILUGD stall became the most happening place in a conference meant for and attended by suits! With hands on demos, Deep Purple, stunning graphics, a welcome smile and lots of laughter, ILUGD welcomed one and all. Most of all, we welcomed those who felt alienated from the Corporate doodaz and found nothing relevant - the Common Man. The mainstay was a demo of Linux Terminal Server Project where Sudev demonstrated how schools can redeploy their aging computers and still run really cool stuff. ILUG Cal sent their Ankur Bangla complete with a Nirban to demonstrate. In a show of anonymous support and not to be outdone, Professor Shah dropped in, handed us a CD and set up the intriguing Hindi desktop - Gnu Bharati. There was a heart-stopping display of Crystal Space graphics by Viksit Gaur, ILUGDite and co-developer. Raj�s trusty laptop blared out Deep Purple to keep up the spirits of all the stall guys in the neighbourhood - very soon he began taking requests. And just to complete the picture, we had a windows dual boot laptop to demonstrate GnuWin, Knoppix and the many kinds of free CDs on sale. While the conference had a number of tracks, the LUG had its own mini conference with Raj�s and Kishore�s spiels, the demos, an enlightening talk by Rishab Ghosh on software patents and the grand old man RobLimo on a wide variety of issues. We had interesting discussions all around the stall - LL on guerilla warfare, Spoonman and Sir Taj on development issues. The consensus was clear - everybody, but everybody, lost out by the non-inclusion of the ILUG in the organisation of talks. We could have produced an extremely good set of speakers on a variety of speakers; not just from Delhi but from all over the country and perhaps from abroad as well. The quiet confidence that underlaid this assertion reflects on the goodwill enjoyed by LUGs all over. Needless to say, it flies in the face of what a poster flouted - that Free Software exponents have a loser's attitude! (Or words to that effect). The sad part of this was apparent all around. The organisers had Windows machines at the registration. RobLimo and the Group were displaced from the Hall where they were to participate in a scheduled panel discussion it appears just to allow a sponsor to have an unscheduled push of this agenda. A casual chat after the Conference with the young folk hired by the event manager led us to believe that they were not even aware as to what Linux is all about - much less users of it. Naturally the group responded by bringing them to the stall, showing them the demos and giving them free CDs. This tale was found to be repeated amongst the young folks working at the Sun stand - notwithstanding their Sun T shirts, they were not exposed to Linux or aware of what issues Sun stood for. Among these and the many College students and the Common Man milling around, only the Free Community cared for them. The Free Community? Yup, besides the Delhi LUG and Calcutta LUG, we were happy to have Manpreet a volunteer from Patiala Lug for the entire three days. We had visitors from Dehradun LUG and Rohtak LUG (embryo stage, it appears). Best of all were our partners in crime - the Free Software Foundation, represented by Shiva 'Dance the Free Tandava' Nadkarni and Warren (who's NOT Trevor and definitely NOT related to Fred Noronha!) Seriously, guys, don't forget its LinuxGnu not just Gnu. These guys worked harder, longer hours and drank some ILUGDites under the table - no mean feat that! We had tremendous moral support from all the ILUGDites who turned up to visit the exhibition. It was great to have Amitabh Trehan, Sandip Bhattacharya, Raj Shekar, Nitin Chandra, Triveni Yadav, Xyberdip, Ashish Mukerjee, Tushar, Nikhil Datta, Edwin Wells, Yashpal Nagar, Atul, Sandeep, and many others back. Trevor Warren came over not from NCST but CDAC. The ILUGDites had a wonderful time with RobLimo. He became our patron saint. He spent so much time with us that the Organisers suspected that he had come over on pretext of this conference to be with us! Well, Rob was certainly under this impression - he very kindly spent most of his time with us. He regaled us with stories of the Linux scene in the States and of his escapades in 'Nam. The ILUGDites had three great parties to celebrate and this illustrious Son of SunCoast LUG raised his glass to ours each time. The first night was Tuxmania at Raj's. The second was a night on the Town at Akasakas and Sanjha Choolha. The third was a beer bash at AshLin's followed by grub at Gulatis at Pandara Park. The beer just didn't give out man - we must have put away almost a hundred bottles in three days. Kapil, Sudev, Anirban, Viksit, Pankaj, Mary, Atul, Sandip, and Mairu did sterling work at the stall. Tarun Dua turned up on day one but vanished out of sight when asked about the Tshirts. He however made up for it by spiriting a wonderful ILUGD banner with Vivek's Maharaja Tux on it. See Vivek smile :-). We had our Mascot with us too. Young Arjun Asthana, the thirteen year old, was there and spoke as a participant in the Panel discussion on "Is Linux ready for the Desktop". AshLin as usual got his kicks by ordering people about, helping out with weird requirements and ogling all the Newbabies! To reward him, the Group has given him the privilege of writing the Minutes. He's still trying to work out whether it's a compliment ;-). Thanks to Ankur Rohatgi, Ghane, Kishore, Raj, Sudev, AshLin and their companies and institutions for lending us equipment. Some others had brought hubs, wires and such like tech stuff - thanks to you guys also. Thanks also to Harkesh, AshLin�s Man Friday for his help in oddjobs and security of the stall. The co-sponsors Robert 'Technetra' Adkins and Alolita Sharma, who had so kindly accommodated ILUGD at LinuxAsia, also dropped in and had a chat with us. The Group is thankful to them for their courtesies. Well chaps, the writings on the wall - we really had fun; we've got the taste of blood now. Look forward to the Group organising a Linux Conference in the future. Hopefully we'll be able to emulate the Bangalore LUG and make this an annual feature of Linux world in Delhi. -- _______________________________________________ ilugd mailinglist -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd Archives at: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.user-groups.linux.delhi http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
