Last week from 8-10th Sept, I was with @till-kamppeter, @aaryan-porwal and @abhigyanghosh30 at IIT Mandi, a university nestled in the Himalayan ranges of north India. Till, with Canonical’ s support had converted a proposed GSoC student meetup into a conference to promote open source - with tracks on OpenPrinting, Zephyr and documentation.
Initially I was in two minds about attending the conference physically, due to the frequent rain related landslides and road blockages in the area. But after giving a highly interactive talk that reminded me of my long-lost teaching days, I was left with no doubt about the importance of physical presence.
Till gave multiple talks on OpenPrinting and also held a workshop on creating snaps. I got some students excited with my talk on whether documentation can be fun, and finally we had them all sold on Canonical with a panel discussion about applying and working at Canonical.
The conference was live-streamed and is available on Ubuntu OnAir:
Among other highlights, Till bravely had dinner at a local ‘dhabha’ (a small roadside restaurant that traditionally caters to truck drivers) – under a fan which when switched on, sounded pretty much like a helicopter taking off!
We concluded the conference with a small trek to a nearby river, some Zephyr kite flying and a friendly game of basketball.
