-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 I normally try to avoid being baited by Kenneth's online fantasies, but in this particular case perhaps some facts to temper the FUD are in order. Response bottom-posted as good netiquette dictates...
On Friday 26 October 2007 15:21, Kenneth Gonsalves wrote: > On 26-Oct-07, at 2:06 PM, Sandip Bhattacharya wrote: > > Anybody else dismayed by this? Any theories? > > heavy handed admin. If you check the two biggest mailing lists in > India - chennai and mumbai, and you find that there are no > moderators. Sure, threads go offtopic, flames rage, but there is no > killjoy to dampen the spark. People are terrified to post here - > there was even a case where someone asked where the tutorials were > taking place in freedel and he was told to rtfm. And any suggestion > for improvement is met with a post from Kishore invoking the > notorious 'ilugd rule'. Take the latest freedel conference (or the > previous one) - it was a mega flop. Audience on the second day was > about 50 (including speakers and volunteers). First day, in each case > was about 200. OK, lets call it 500. 500 in the capital of the second > largest country in the world? One reason for poor attendence is that > it was held in JNU. JNU is an elite institution, and hence not a > place for FOSS. My experience in the last two years is that elite > institutions are the last place where you can go for innovative ideas > and talk about freedom and sharing. Strangely enough, although there > was a huge debate about where to hold the next ilugd meeting, The > committee, without any debate, has decided to hold the next edition > of freedel in JNU - a place without a LUG. RKGIT and JIIT have LUGs - > and hugely enthusiastic members. So why are they ignored? Anyway, as > far as NRC-FOSS is concerned, we will not send a team to freedel > unless we are assured of a double digit audience for our talks and > stalls. > > As far as the lack of traffic on the ilug lists is concerned, ilug > was shot down by atul chitnis long ago. Since atul and raj have now > made up, it is just a question of the other big dadas in the foss > movement joining them to make it viable - srs, idg, gn - are you > listening? The ILUGD mailing list is not moderated. Kishore is list admin (which, please note, != moderator). If people who flagrantly violate mailing list etiquette are publicly rapped on the knuckles once in a while, it only helps make a better and more relevant list with a higher S/N ratio than most of the other region/city-specific lists in the country -- you only have to look at the interminable, meaningless threads on some of the other city mailing lists to see what I mean. I personally am proud that our user group runs a tight mailing list that has experts in almost every field subscribed, who step in with advice and solutions when required and do not fear being drawn into trivial debates, unlike many of the other lists where the experts just keep shut because they know that any mail of theirs will result in 50 useless messages. And I shall also continue to do my bit to keep the list tight and focussed. Coming to freed.in (there was no freedel this year, or didn't you notice?): your figures are probably the ones that Benjamin Disraeli had in mind when he spoke of lies, damned lies and statistics. I won't even go into the actual figures, but it is enough to say that we had to actively decide to stop publicity some 10 days short of the event since we were getting overwhelmed with registrations. We were actually in the position of not wanting more participants, since we didn't have the infrastructure to handle them -- our planned capacity was already overflowing. We don't know what sort of numbers we should plan for this year, but it won't be 20 and it probably won't be 2000 -- we are growing slowly, and we want it that way. If you feel that you can make a better event happen, please join us and work with us -- armchair critics are a dime a dozen and I don't need someone who has never attended the event and has no grasp over the reality of the event to be telling me how it should be run. We wanted to offer high quality to a (relatively) small audience, and I believe we more than succeeded in that objective. It may surprise you to know that the venue, JNU, was one of the most referred items when people were asked what they liked about the event this year. JNU with its sprawling grounds, informal atmosphere and excellent infrastructure is ideal for holding an event such as freed.in. If even one of our participants had complained about JNU we would have been having second thoughts about holding freed.in 2008 there. As it is, all the people who were actually there -- speakers, participants and organisers -- are more than happy with the venue. Regarding participation by NRC-FOSS, if you're speaking officially for NRC-FOSS then I can try to convince you to change your stance about participation, but I'm afraid that's just a cross we'll have to bear. If you're not, then I suggest that you specifically mention whether the decision on participation in freed.in 2008 is your personal opinion or an official NRC-FOSS decision. I have no clue what I fought with Atul about and when and what we'd made up about, so leaving that part of the fantasy alone. Regards, - -- Raju - -- Raj Mathur [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kandalaya.org/ Freedom in Technology & Software || February 2008 || http://freed.in/ GPG: 78D4 FC67 367F 40E2 0DD5 0FEF C968 D0EF CC68 D17F PsyTrance & Chill: http://schizoid.in/ || It is the mind that moves -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFHIg3eyWjQ78xo0X8RArUwAJ9yrKxj+qN8L2/i/58aQhjJdMlIIwCgmGX2 r+Be7aE+Gxi50nEIrMHtiTg= =cjH/ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ ilugd mailinglist -- [email protected] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd Next Event: http://freed.in - September 28-29, 2007 Archives at: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.user-groups.linux.delhi http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/
