Last weekend, From Aug 31 to Sep 1 there was 4th edition of UbuCon Asia in JECRC Foundation, Jaipur, India. Just like last year, I’ve been involved with organizing this event as part of the global committee. Providing organizing guidance to local team and help with gathering sponsors and some audiences.
Day 1
After a long flight with transfer at Kuala Lumpur, I was able to arrive at Jaipur late night then attended the event. Day 1 program was started with opening remarks from @aryan, keynote session from @varshigupta about the Juju community.
Before lunch, I was able to organize LoCo Council & LoCo Leaders BoF with @bhavi @rjhsiao @fenris with some introduction on LoCo Council and Ubuntu LoCo as well as what LoCo Council do such as LoCo (Re)Verification and LoCo Leadership handover through the handover process which was formalized very recently. I also encouraged audiences to introduce themselves and ask some questions and able to find diverse Local FOSS community members and leaders during the BoF.
At lunch, meal was served at dining space. 2 kinds of curry along with rice, roti, naan and more. It was first time to try out Indian food other then localized one, but it tasted pretty good for me 
After lunch, I also joined Building Ubuntu remix with Iona workshop by @rs2009 as well as Debian packaging workshop delivered by Ananthu C V. I were not able to fully participate with full focus, but it was interesting to join and learn about Iona which enables people to build custom Ubuntu iso file with simple yaml config and also packaging software for debian, ubuntu or other debian based distros.
Day 2
Day 2 program was started with community keynote delivered by @bhavi and @fenris on keynote, they discussed about how to get involved with Ubuntu community and what they have done and how newcomers can start with contributing to Ubuntu.
@bajinra’s talk on his journey with designing with Ubuntu Studio with open source tools was also one of the interesting talk i enjoyed. Which showcased actual use cases of design work with Gimp, Inkscape, Ubuntu Studio at Work, Community event and much more.
After that I delivered a BoF and a talk before and after the lunch. BoF was about discussing about what UbuCon Asia team do and some possbilities about where to host UbuCon Asia next year. I introduced what it takes and what roles and responsibilities involved and some timeline for organizing the event.
After that, I invited some folks who would be interested to host UbuCon Asia in their city.
This time Aadyita from Nepal shared some idea about hosting UbuCon Asia 2025 in Nepal either Kathmandu or Pokara. and Syazwan also shared some idea about maybe hosting UbuCon Asia 2025, 2026 or later in Malaysia.
I also delivered a talk about how i built and operated a Check-in kiosk for UbuCon Korea - with Ubuntu Frame, Ubuntu Core and Flutter. I shared what i have done for the project and what kind of issues i have faced while working with project using Ubuntu Core and Ubuntu Frame.
After that, I also joined other sessions such as “How to extract the XZ backdoor malware payload” by @Buo-Ren_Lin and “Your app everywhere - Just in a Snap! - Interactive Workshop” by @till-kamppeter & @soumyadghosh. On Snap workshop, there was a attendee using Arch Linux - and it turns out that attendee tried out snap during the workshop and liked it. It’s always good to see new people try out Ubuntu and technologies in the ecosystem then start to be part of the community through the event
With that, Day 2 program and conference program were finished successfully!
After the conference program of Day 2, there was also a conference dinner that invites speakers and staffs at Fort Restaurant Jaipur. Which looked very beautiful place at night and served tasty food
Day trip
After the conference days, there was a day trip arranged by local team. Visiting many beautiful places of Jaipur. Such as Jaipur City Palace, Jantar Mantar, Hawa Mahal, Jal Mahal, Amer Fort and more.
Conclusion
Just like last year, Another edition of UbuCon Asia was successfully organized and closed. the event was smaller then last year since last year was joint event with LibreOffice Conf Asia. But the preparation process, content and many things have been improved. Communication with local team was also very responsive which minimized silos between global team local team and led to another success.
What’s good about this year’s event is that this event rebooted Ubuntu Indian LoCo by attracting many people in India. And now Indian LoCo leaders are shaping their idea on organizing UbuCon India with Oppertunity Open Source Conference co-located every year. - And this is why I’m organizing UbuCon Asia every year although it’s very challenging and sometimes stressful. But to make opportunity to reboot Ubuntu LoCo in the hosting city and connect with other LoCos in Asia.
The UbuCon Asia Committee is already looking for hosting city for the next year, 2025. Which offers opportunity for not just organizing large scale tech conference in your region but also good opportunity to build or reboot Ubuntu LoCo in your region. If you would be interested, you may have a look at the Call for bid announcement and prepare your bid today We’ll be looking forward to see your idea on hosting UbuCon Asia!
https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubucon-asia-2025-call-for-bids/47578
