Reviews & Comments

• Naba Kumar

  Thanks for organizing such a great event. That was really a Hit! And those photographs from Atul were great. I will also be soon posting up the photographs I took.

• Ravi Pratap M

  Just wanted to thank all the organizers and everybody out there at the conference which made it such a terrific place to be :-) I really had a great time and interacting with all you guys and girls - I seriously had the best conference of my life :-) Thanks so much for everything - your hospitality, your cheerful demeanour and everything else !

• Surjodas

  I certainly did enjoy the event, even though I attended sadly only on the final day as I was not in Bangalore for the first 2 days. I even had nightmares about not being able to make it to Bangalore on the final day and worst of all not showing up to present my talk and then getting flamed ! But, I made it all the same ! The closing session really inspired me for next year. Some of the delegates whom I had invited personally, even told me after the event that this was the most professionally organised seminar and the best IT Seminar that they ever attended ! And of course, being a regular visitor of seminars myself, I also felt the same. This was organised much better that any big software house would have organised it. Like Atul mentioned during the closing session, the cream of the seminar was not in the corridors but in the actual place of action - The Huge 1000 seater and the moderately sized 60-90-120 seater halls. Kudos to everyone - the managers, volunteers, delegates and of course our sponsor ! We will need them next year also ! And BTW, Mahendra, meet the HP Representatives at Pizza Hut instead of Casa Piccola for finalising the event sponsorship details ! LOL !

• Guntupalli Karunakar

  Hi,
  I would like to thank the organisers, managers, volunteers + sponsors for such an informative event and giving me an opportunity to talk on stage for first time. Also it was a good common ground for diff localisation teams to meet and discuss. Thanks Sorry Mahendra for taking up half ur talk time (Biju was constantly reminding me abt time (I was not wearing a watch) finally It took Biju & mahendra to push me off stage , when they came in to announce the BoF session)

• Kedarnath S

  First of all my hats off to all you guys for having such a wonderful event I probably learnt more in these 3 days than in my 4 years of engineering. The talks were superb. I especially liked the ones on bandwidth management implementation of IPv6 by Mr.Gopi Garge, enterprise databases in linux by Mr. Gurunandhan Bhat. The talk on PHP by Mr. Tarique Sani were simply superb. I know you guys have had a lot of appreciation.

• Pradyumna Sampath

  Wasnt this great!!
  Kudos to Mahendra, all the managers and volunteers!!
  So here goes my report!!

  I happened to be one of the volunteers at the LB/2001 and now I regret why I ever Volunteered... ;-). We all had a great time in LB/2001.The most of the time we were running around the place trying to get machines to the halls. Well there were instances where there was a speaker in the hall with a jam packed audience and no machine to project his slides. Thank god none of the delays were large. Sometimes the delays were for getting the presentations into the respective machines. You may have an argument that this *shud* have been done earlier. Well, well.... we did not have the machines to do this. Amidst all this mayhem we suddenly find that the CD containing the slides is lost!! Whoa.. Then we got Shanu to rush to the office, burn a copy of the CD and get it. As of Sunday night, it was originally planned that that there would be one server where all the presentations would run and all the other machines would be networked (This was Atul's idea). But unfortunately there was no machine powerful enough to become the server.

  Well.... now for act 2: I happened to be a speaker for the first time. Oh this was a experience worth remembering. Initially, I started to talk and I notice Kishore sitting there in the very first row. Whooops!, there I go. I got nervous and stuttered initially for 15 mins. Then I got comfortable and started to relax. Now for the funny part. There was this guy in the very first row, and was supposed to be changing my slides (He is my close friend ). He dozed off in the very first row and the only time he got up, maybe, was to change my slides ( thank god he did at least that ). Hey Manish! ( the fella who slept ) thanks for not snoring dude. Otherwise the talk went off well .

• Vinu Balaji

  I wish in LB/2002 they will be more. Yeah! want more in LB/2002...talks should not be therotical..may be practical demos like the one we had for vmware where good...like that we could have demo for starting up or doing certain things in linux...may be some tips by linux gurus..i.e it should be focused more practically..and not those ones like lectures in a college..more ideas to come.... just suggesting!!!

• Dr.K.S.Sangunni

  The conference went like a clock work after a hiccup at registration counter. Though registered, we had to wait more than an hour. But other wise all the speakers were very conscious of the time. I noticed that the grouping of the subjects was done very scientifically. I have not seen this kind of pain taking exercise in any of the scientific meetings that I attended. Mix is so good. I attended all the talks that fascinated me. As a user and I am benefited and now you have set a trend that next meeting has to be better than this. It is a big task.
  Congratulations

• N K Sundaram

  Hello managers,volunteers and others who made it happen,
  It was really a great show as atul told that day. I know it will be a really difficult thing to repeat, but we should try. Well a thing or two about my experiences,
  

  1. It was a really tough time trying to figure out what talks catered to a somewhat newbie like me.
  2. I had to really miss some presentations due to similar ones held at the same time. anyway if u can put up the presentations on the net maybe I can go over the ones which I missed and try to siphon some info about the subject.
  3. Somebody had cribbed about the quality of food. I think it should not be a big issue as otherwise it will divert our attention from the subjects and also make us sleepy in the afternoon sessions [ if we stuffed ourselves!! ]
  4. I would have liked at least a seperate line of talks focussing on desktops right from the setting up of x servers to the latest developments. I think the few talks we had, had Ravi trying to give a general outlook and would have been much better if followed up by config talks on various typical desktop subjects.[ since we are talking of taking over from MS-what with its new licensing policy!! ]
  I know I may be sounding a bit trying, but this conference really gave an insight into what amount of effort and dedication goes into development what with talks from Taj,Ravi,Tarique etc.

  I really enjoyed the presentation of Dr. Bhat. It was really in the nature of linux spirit and at the same time very informative for a lay person like me about databases in linux.

  Finally, I still have the feeling that the time period of 3 days was just right, but I would have loved to attend all talks even though it was not physically possible!!

  Great guys, this has reallly set the benchmark for all the other conferences to follow.

• Munish Biddappa

  Dear ...everyone??!!!,

  I really enjoyed LB/2001. Everything was arranged very well and the topics chosen was very good too. I liked Atul' story about some company for whom they had set up a mail server on a 386 (or was it a 486) and even though everyone was logging on to the mail server no one really knew where it was (it was supposedly under the staircase!!).....That was a good one..

  We should defintely have LB/2002 and even if funding is a problem all the LUG members should try and make the next event possible.
  cheers

• Rati Naren

  Hi,
  It was a funda & fun rolled into one kind of affair. We must give it to you guys ~E.. It was very well organized. The seminars were good & very informative. Among the lectures I attended, I liked the one on Virtual Memory. The way the speaker put across his stuff was good. The talk on IPC by Mr. Jagan was refreshing and the talk on TUNTAP by a young college student could be described as very professional. The one on the device drivers by Hanish Menon was "hard core techni". (I am going to try & write a driver one of these days.) . Some of the other lectures needed a bit of preparation or experience from the audience's side. On the whole it was like a 3 day orientation course & I guess all of us have gained something here.

• Harish Thota

  Hi,

  I could only attend LB/2001 Day 0 (the day before) and Day 1. But the memories will really last. Here are some memories that I could think of:

  1. On Sunday, me and other volunteer Srikanth went to Jessie's house to get her 3 computers to the venue. We carried all of them down 3 floors along with Kingsly, fitted them into Jessie's Maruti 800 with great skill (any guys moving house, u know whom to contact now! ;-) ). But the toughest part of course was to manage Jessie's 1 yr old Kid Jade, who i was managing and she was sticking her lollipop all over me! ;-)
  2. On Monday, we run from hall to hall to fix things up well. My task was to see that the first 3 rows of seats in the J N Tata Hall(the biggest one, where the opening ceremony was held) were only occupied by the speakers and the sponsors. I stood there for almost 1 hour, unpetrubed by the fact that over 1000 pair of eyes were constantly looking at me, as nothing much was happening on the stage anyway!
  3. In the afternoon, I had to manage the LLI hall. After a long time, we could boot Kartik's(one of the volunteer) system and set up the projector only to know that the project needs to go to other hall! And the best (or should i say worst :-) !) was that the projector was giving the power supply to the machine so we had to reboot the machine again when we setup the new projector. After booting, we found out that it was totally out of focus! So we could call up on the one and only saviour for projectors, Hanish! So I had to drag Hanish out of one of his (as usual !) long discussions with some one in the main Hall (who took the sensible step of taking down Hanish's email ID, knowing how popular he is!) only to find that focus was back again! :-))
  4. Managing the registration counter was horrible all along with streams of people pouring in! But one incident really took the cake! One lady appeared over the counter and was trying to say something. We asked her whether she was registered. She said no. We said please register. Looks ok,right? Wrong! The wrong thing(was it wrong?) was the lady was the Vice Chancellor's ( VC ) wife, and to top it all, the VC was the chief guest at LB 2001! It turned out later that he was supposed to come for the opening ceremony in the morning but could not come and his wife came and we thought she was a delegate! :-0

  Some more LB2001 memories (just attending first day, i have so many! just imagine if i had attened all 3 days! :-) )

  1. Some one came looking for "a guy who can help setup the projector" in the LLI hall where I, Nijo and Hanish were standing. Nijo started explaining to the guy a description (with glasses and all!) which sounded like Hanish's. Hanish tapped Nijo on his shoulder and asked him whether he was describing him! :-)). Nijo said no no not you some one else! For a moment, me and Hanish thought Nijo was describing him all the time, hanish being just behind Nijo!
  2. The most sought-after volunteer was of course Gourav, whom we kept dragging out of the halls, cause he was the "key" person. He had the "key" to the organiser's room, which had all our stuff there! He was being pulled up from all sides of the venue whenever we guys needed some stuff, and he guarded his key against his life!
  3. The LLI tracks really had very passionate member who sat through all the talks of the track! Dr.Pavanaja, Karunakar and Mahendra were constantly kept on their toes by the selective audience who kept on discussing till very late. Hoping to see much larger role of LLI in the LB 2002!
  4. It really reminded the college days when we used to organise college festivals and used to run from here to there to make sure everything was ok! Thanks BLUG for making me relive those old days! :-X
  5. The food was excellent! And I am sure the caterer had a real roaring business! and to think, Atul and Mahendra had to promise him that they can't gurantee the number of people! (LOL!) I am sure the caterer will be the first person who will land up at LB 2002! Thanks Soan for getting such a good caterer!
  6. The volunteers were really treated well (what with 50 Rs.food coupons per day which really treated us well !) and we will love to come back for LB2002.

• Frederick Noronha

  No great piece of literature this... just for those who might not have the inclination to visit the website... FN

  PS: Apologies for the references which might not make sense for a readership outside Goa. To explain insufficiently, Paulo is a local privately-run bus service owned by the family of a former MLA here. (It's sometimes efficient, sometimes breakdown prone, but always run by the type of crew that believes stopping for a two-minute roadside pee every two hours is the equivalent of criminal activity. They'll do everything to convince you to hold on to your bladder for just two hours or so, if you're lucky. The government was, at last count, detaining the 'sleeper' Paulo and some enterprising others introduced on the route. Unfortunately, this has less to do with saving our bladders, and more to do with politics (busowners have always been seen as a strongly politically-aligned lobby here).

  Tom Fernandes, like Atul, is half-Goan, half-German. To catch up, his programming and sys admin skills have a long way to go. Tom is trying hard. To make up, he's gone and bleached his hair in intricate patterns.

  Returning from an outstation trip means unpacking bags. Here are some stories which need to be put out, and which could interest our Linux-Goa friends.

  • There were a record number of 13 participants from Goa. Seven of us went in a team. Notwithstanding talk of the government swooping down suddenly on sleeper-buses, we braved a Paulo journey. Marilac and Simao, from Agnel Polytechnic, preferred the train, being closer to the South. We met up with Prof Bhat and Bijon Shaha (both speakers) in Bangalore. We were surprised to see two more GU students staying at our very own hostel. (Apparently Jhony D'Costa accosted them when he heard somebody speaking in Konkani... and we all got introduced to Manish Pai and Shailesh Porob of the MCA batch.)
  • Lectures were mostly very interesting. The event was amazingly well organised. There were four parallel sessions underway simultaneously. This meant we all missed some of the talks. But since we are largish group, we could spread ourselves out. Of course, ILUG-Goa members are not going to hear much about what happened. All attempts to coax Arvind and the others to write have so far proved futile. "I can't write to save my life," is Arvind's argument. Should someone be getting out the knives then?
  • But we did discover that talking till late in the night was not such a tough task. One night, the talk continued till 1.30 am... of course on the pretense of exchanging notes about sessions that couldn't be attended. The next night, Tom Fernandes (Goa's attempted answer to Atul Chitnis ;-) passed out on us, while all the laughter brought on a mild asthama attack on one victim who will for now remain unnamed!
  • Both Goa's speakers put up a good show. Prof Bhat, as usual, was in control of the subject which he peppered with the right amount of information, tongue-in-cheek humour and lively points. Even someone as technologically-challenged like me could almost understand Prof Bhat's talk. If one had to stay in longer, one would have got out far less ignorant. But the stories beckoned. Bijon Shaha of ETDC was making a fascinating points to show how ISO requirements could be met by using suitable solutions. My commerce and economics background helped one appreciate that this was a useful contribution indeed. But the fact that we had just a couple of minutes before rushing off to catch the return-bus home meant we did not gain the most from this second talk-from-Goa. Perhaps if we get projection equipment somewhere, Mr Shaha could help us all by repeating the talk... just as we should be badgering Prof Bhat.
  • Before we forget, a 'thank you' is due to our Bangalore friends and organisers. Not just because they so graciously helped us jump the long serpentine queues on Monday morning (you wouldn't believe how long the queue was, with an estimated 1300+ registering that day... hope the figures are right). But they also took care of giving us access to inexpensive, homely and clean accomodation. Thanks a lot to Jesse for all the help. Even if this wholly-free event had charged a costly entry-fee, it would have been well worth it. Incidentally Atul Chitnis, KDE developer Sirtaj Singh Kang, keynote speaker from Germany's Humboldt Uni. are all Goa-bound in the next few days.
  • In the bargain, we also managed to grab a PHP-packed CD from one of India's PHP gurus, Dr Tarique Sani of Nagpur. (Freddy, do make sure that copies get around to others interested.) ILUGers rubbed shoulders with some of the big names in the Indian Linux world. Gaurav (21) was duly impressed to to learn what other 21-year-olds are doing... and diligently sat through their lectures... hopefully the inspiration will show up. We were all suitably chastised to see the skills at presentations and making a point developed by other young Bangaloreans and others.
  • In between, our guys got a chance to do a whole lot of shopping. Freddy disappeared somewhere and came back with a top-secret plastic bag, the contents of which we are still not sure of. Seby must have exhausted all the CD-writers, TV-tuner cards and other hardware from a section of the Bangalore market. (He also got writeable CDs at Rs 26 apiece. Tell that to vendors in Goa selling the same item for Rs 40+.)
  All in all, it was an interesting meet. Did anyone feel otherwise? Nevermind the pre-dawn changeovers from the Paulo sleeper to the Paulo sitter-bus, at dark Ankola.

• Ravi Rao

  Hi,

  Sorry to write in this late -- I promptly broke my leg on returning from BLR, and hence the delay.

  Thanks first of all to the organisers for the lovely time I had at LB/2001. Special mention to Ravi Pratap M (RPM) for everything. Just checked out some of the pictures online. I have pictures of stuff myself on my regular camera -- Will work on that sometime. Naba, can you point a URL at your pix too sometime, please?

  Seeya guys next year!

• Some Suggestions

  Some tips that can make it better in 2002

  1. schedule it on a fri sat and sunday ( frankly i applied personal leave)
  2. more on application software and enterprise level solutions,databases and Linux as a development platform( I am sorry if I have missed to attend them)
  3. More talks to enable users to migrate from windows( personally I am working on windows platform and want to migrate to linux platform but certain jargon like "compile the kernel" etc seem very scary to help such lesser mortals like me)
  4. More on how anybody can contribute towards such an event or a group thanks for having such a great event three cheers for all you guys

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