Day Two - GNOME Asia 2024

The second day of GNOME Asia 2024 was on 07th December 2024 - and owing to the fact that we did not have the audio-video tasks to take care of, we could have the luxury of starting late. I, in particular, wanted to ensure that I kept myself occupied with only the things that were of prime importance and used the remaining time to look after myself. I slept in a bit late and woke up at around 0630am Indian Standard Time and by around 0800 Indian Standard Time, I was present for the breakfast. Sumantro Mukherjee, Samyak Jain and Nikita Tripathi joined me at the breakfast before the three of us left for the office as Sudhir Dharanendraiah mentioned his planned late arrival. We got to know during breakfast from Muhd Syazwan Md Khusaini that the streaming keys used the day before had expired and had to be reinstated by the audio-video managers, which took the Fedora Project folks by surprise as that could result in late starts again.

By the time we got to the Red Hat office, we had folks already present there to attend the second day of GNOME Asia 2024. Sumantro left to work with the audio-video managers and I was contacted by Saumili Dutta and Aditya D. who requested if there could be a spare laptop made available for their demonstration. As Aaditya Singh had not arrived by then, I asked for Khairul Aizat Kamarudzzaman to help moderate Track 1 and provide his laptop for at least displaying the slide decks. While I resonated with their despair of not being able to present their demonstration, I could not - in good faith - allow for commands to be run on somebody else's laptop and hence, the first presentation on "Leveraging GitOps for GNOME Development: Streamlining Configuration and Deployment on Ubuntu" took place without it at around 1015am Indian Standard Time, with them asking folks to follow up with some resources for catching up with the demonstration.

As Siddhartha Sitaula was moderating for Track 2, this time around he decided to have his laptop to be present there to present the slide decks. Muhd Syazwan Md Khusaini had the first talk there on "The Law in Open Source: Basics and Choosing the Right License" and here again, there was a certain offset between Track 2 and Track 1 timings with Track 1 being basically around the scheduled time while Track 2 being delayed by a bit. Once these talks were settled, I heard back from my friends, Shivang P. Swain and Shaleen Jha who were visiting the event on that day. After a heartfelt reunion after so many years with Shaleen with whom I used to go to school, I asked for them to take their seats as I made myself busy with arranging the swags for the two of them. At around 1115pm Indian Standard Time, the second talk began on Track 1 delivered remotely by Om Prakash Sharma on "From Drupal To GNOME - Unlocking The Power Of Open Source Communities".

I checked with Justin W. Flory in the meanwhile to see just how far he made it from the hotel while streaming into Samyak's talk on "Open Source Mentorship: Crafting Communities, Creating Leaders" from GNOME's YouTube channel. As the role-play enacted by Justin and Sumantro was how I wanted the talk to begin - it was in my best interests to probably start my talk with some introductions before moving on there. I took the SyncStar application for a spin again by flashing a couple of flashdrives with Fedora Workstation 41 and it seemed to work just fine. Like a good samaritan, Aaditya again ensured that the ending of the previous talks across both tracks was in synchronization before starting the one in Track 1 as Fedora Project was hosting a giveaway as a part of my talk and folks could get themselves a flashdrive with their preferred GNOME distribution flashed atop it by either answering some simple questions or by entering a randomized raffle.

As I wanted the randomized raffle to be as fair as possible - I decided for the folks not involved with Fedora Project to run it and it was due to help provided by Siddhartha and Aaditya that we were able to run it successfully. Following Justin's advice, I started off with the introductions before he entered the room before I handed it over to him and Sumantro for a quick roleplay of interactions between an attendee and an attendant at a GNU/Linux Distribution booth like that of Fedora Project in a free and open source software conference like FOSDEM. Aside from the giveaway aspect of the talk - people were genuinely interested in understanding just how something like this can help users want to become contributors down the road. I decided to make the best use of the folks being present in person by making the presentation as interactive as possible with a bunch of questions/answers and audience applauses for the ones answering.

After the presentation was through, I moved over to the registration desk to hold what was the first deployment of a SyncStar system in a free and open-source software conference and I had a focus on ensuring that we hosted distributions running GNOME there, we had three folks electing to pick Debian 12.8.0, one folk electing to pick CentOS Stream 9 and one folk electing to pick Fedora Workstation 41 from the randomized raffle. The five folks who won the flashdrives during my presentation ended up getting Fedora Workstation 41 which was already flashed onto the flashdrives when I was testing them out to save some time during the actual talk. Apart from the minor hitch that I faced with the projector system glitching, the entire talk mostly went smoothly with the participation of the audience showing interest in using the SyncStar project in representing their communities as well in various free and open-source software conferences.

Once I was through with my presentation and the overwhelmingly positive interaction that I had with the folks wanting to know more about it after the talk at around 1230pm Indian Standard Time, Shaleen, Shivang, Soumadeep Dhar and I spent some time in the meeting room beside the reception area to catch up on the conversations while streaming the talks through the GNOME's YouTube channel. At around 1330pm Indian Standard Time, the four of us decided to head for lunch in a nearby place called Chulha Chauki Da Dhaba. We were also invited to the Ubuntu Linux 24.10 Release Party by Aryan Kaushik and had there not been a prior commitment with my friends - I would have most definitely joined them in their celebrations. We caught up with the conversations during our walk to the place but decided to head back in a cab to save ourselves the trouble of facing the unfavourable hot and humid weather of Bengaluru after having quite a lot to eat.

It took us some time to get back with the delays in the schedule as well as in the delays in finding Uber cabs but by the time we were back, we had already begun watching Sammy Fung's remotely delivered talk on "Open Source Movement: Empowering Career & Communities" from GNOME's YouTube channel. Shaleen and Shivang decided to return back and after some pictures were clicked with the Fedora Project community folks, I saw them off from the Red Hat office. The following talk was supposed to be delivered jointly by Justin and Nikita on "Fedora x Outreachy: Mentee/Mentor Retrospective + Making A Career Out Of FOSS" at around 0300pm Indian Standard Time. Right before the Fedora Project folks were about to leave for lunch - we decided to extend a warm gesture of appreciation to the Red Hat Global Workspace Solutions folks for supporting the event closely with all necessary arrangements and helping to make it a grand success generally.

The Red Hat Global Workspace Solutions folks were provided with Fedora Project branded tumblers and some tasty meals from Dunkin Donuts as tokens of our gratitude. After a set of breaks in between, it was time for a set of lightning talks that we had on the schedule and as we were unable to find Sumantro around at the time, I asked Aaditya to go ahead with Khairul Aizat Kamarudzzaman's talk on "People Say Linux Is Secure, You Can Make It More Secure" first. After a quick roundup on distribution security, it was Sumantro's turn to deliver a talk on "Toolbx Project - Supercharging Your Container Workflow" and finally, the last lightning talk on "GSoC Experiences - TinySPARQL Web IDE" was delivered by Divyansh Jain. Aaditya shared his appreciation for those who participated in making the event happen including the GNOME community, Fedora Project and Red Hat folks before declaring the closure of GNOME Asia 2024 as a success.

We, of course, did not seem to have had enough and stuck by for a bit longer to connect with the attendees, organizers and speakers of the event over multiple social media platforms and click photographs while we were at it. As Justin and Jona Azizaj were occupied for some time, I decided to take the lead on booking the Uber XL from the Red Hat office back to the hotel at around 0530pm Indian Standard Time. We wanted to ensure that the folks get some downtime before they head back to Toit in Whitefield for dinner - then that Amita Sharma was able to get us a reservation for the folks there. We met downstairs at around 0730pm Indian Standard Time at the lobby to depart for Toit and we met with the likes of Jens Petersen and Sudhir when we got there. With a toast to the reuniting Fedora APAC team during the conference, we started with our drinks - while Sudhir helped us with ordering the best stuff there is available at the place with his experience.

Samyak, Smera Goel, Nikita and Jona decided to depart earlier for the hotel at around 1000pm Indian Standard Time once they were done with their food while Sumantro, Justin, Amita and myself followed up later. I ended up liking Toit a lot more than I did Skygarden Restaurant due to the tasteful selection of music and relatively lower sound intensity that made it convenient for us to have conversations all while listening to some good tunes. Soumadeep decided to leave a bit earlier to ensure that he was able to find some cabs and as Sudhir and Jens left, we decided to catch a cab back to the hotel as well, discussing our dreams of growing the community around APAC and the experiences that people have had in their attempts. By around 1130pm Indian Standard Time, I was done with getting myself freshened up and ready to give the uncomfortable bed of the hotel another try to see if it helped me wake up a bit fresher than it did the day before.