Day Two - IndiaFOSS 2026

Theme

Experience

While I had enough respite to prepare for the first day of IndiaFOSS 2026, I could not say the same for 27th September 2026. After returning to SRS Springs And Spa Hotel late the previous night, I found myself horrifically awakened by the noise of running water coming from the bathroom. Creeping cautiously towards the source of the sound while trying to shake off my headache, I was relieved when I realized that the room had not been intruded upon by anyone. It was the Jet Spray Faucet Device that had suffered a leak due to the change in water pressure, and that was where the noise was coming from. I was facing a mixed bag of emotions as I rang up the reception desk at around 0700am Indian Standard Time. I was glad that I had been jolted awake by the noise, as I did not have an alarm set for the morning, but I also had to waste some time dealing with the plumbing issue in the room before I could begin preparing for the day.

I did not realize how quickly my mind moved from finding something to use as a weapon against a potential intruder to gathering the necessary supplies for setting up the Red Hat Community Booth. Keeping myself immensely occupied helped in spades to shake off the sudden shock, and since Samyak Jain had tapped out of the 0930am Indian Standard Time booth presence, it was down to me alone to get things going. Deferring the cleanup of the leakage until after I was gone, I left for breakfast at around 0830am Indian Standard Time to be greeted by a (comparatively better) assortment of morning munchies. Grouped with Aaloo Bonda, Chholey Bhature, French Toasts, and Medu Vada, the menu selection was a whole lot more pronounced than the day before. I ordered myself an Uber ride at around 0900am Indian Standard Time, and within the next fifteen minutes or so, I found myself at the NIMHANS Convention Center Bengaluru.

Since it was Sunday, there was no flagship Bengaluru traffic to battle through, and along with me, Jaison Raju also happened to be the first one at the Red Hat Community Booth. I checked in with the likes of Rajan Shah and Deepesh Nair, who planned on coming later that day, before setting up the swags and laptops at the booth. I knew that I had to pace myself while addressing the booth visitors on that day, given how I had a numb voice and dry throat from the day before. The medicine intake allowed me to push through the pain, and I was more determined than ever to exhaust the inventory of Ceramic Branded Coffee Mugs and Round Magnet Pin Combos by the end of the day. For a change, I also brought my microphone to record our conversations with consenting community booth visitors. As an underlying principle, we were more interested in the feedback than in the contact details of the folks interacting with us.

Thankfully, we had a slower-moving community crowd on that day, which allowed us to stand our ground until our representational backup from the Ansible team and Tekton team arrived at around 1100am Indian Standard Time. Sudhir Dharanendraiah and Samyak came about half an hour later to help Jaison and me with the visitor interactions. Just like the day before, the swag offerings from Fedora Project ended up being indeed great conversation starters, not just for our community but also for those surrounding us. We also came upon some familiar faces from our community, like Muneer S., who used to contribute to Fedora Project at that time. Offloading conversations to Samyak and regularly keeping hydrating myself allowed us to keep going until lunchtime. Chats related to CentOS Stream's midstream value, the utility of generative tooling, and the open source software careers were, more or less, the stars of our presence on that day.

Right before we headed for lunch at around 0130pm Indian Standard Time, we met with Saumilli Dutta, whom we had met at DevConf.IN 2026 and GNOME Asia 2024. After meeting some more familiar faces from the Maintainer Summit and taking another round of group photographs, we headed for the lunch break, where we ran into Shivani Bhardwaj after having previously met her during FOSSAsia 2026. Finishing off our catch-up chats and okayish meals, I took the time to explore the venue offerings before heading back to our community booth. With Deepesh heading back much sooner, we were helped by Veer Kumar Patil with his professional lossless recording instrument. Using designated mics for the interviewer and interviewee allowed us to cut through the venue noise and retain a great deal of what was actually conveyed so that it could be transcribed accurately using generative tooling, once we were back.

After a visit from our FOSSUnited friend, Ansh Arora, we were also joined by the legal ambassadors of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, Mrinmayee Nagarsenkar, Biju Nair and Dakshana AM, whom we felicitated with the Ceramic Branded Coffee Mugs. We had immense respect for what that they had been doing, and they also provided us valuable feedback as general-purpose computer users. With nothing significant planned for the evening, we cross-promoted our swag at the FOSSUnited helpdesk community booth who appreciated our swag supplies. At around 0530pm Indian Standard Time, it was about time for us to pack things up at our community booth, with us finally managing to finish off the offerings inventory. Connecting with Ramakrishna Yekulla, Shivraj Patil, and Gaurav Kamathe at the coffee stand, Samyak and I kept looking for an Uber ride back to the hotel to finally complete this event as a grand success.