FUDCon India 2008

[Debarshi Ray]

> 2. Packaging marathon:
>    We do have a good number of experienced packagers. So, get them all, sit
> and let try to have at least one package per person packaged and reviewed. We
> can get the newbies there (they will need some extra attention) .
>    For this we should start discussion and ask interested people to join the
> mailing from now, so that we can have a proper discussion on basics here
> (which will help the new packagers).

We can extend this beyond packaging.

Lets decide within the Fedora Project what are the things we want to
be done, in a way similar to putting up possible ideas for Google
Summer of Code. eg., implementing feature X for Koji, packaging
program Y, documenting Z, etc.. Then we can invite possible FudCon
attendees who are interested in doing these.

Obviously some tasks might take much more than a day to complete, but
atleast we can lay the foundations (eg., design, initial framework).

Interestingly the event will be roughly 6 months after GSoC 2008 and 6
months before the next one (if held at all).

>> o how do we determine the success of FUDCon at foss.in

> After 1 month see how many new contributors keep doing the work.

>> o what lessons do we have from Project Day last year

> What I think, people love to listen and then forget when they go back to home.

I attended two project days last year -- those of GNOME and Fedora. In
a way they were a failure. Atleast Fedora was. Being a co-proposer one
can say I am partly responsible. :-)

The issue here is that most of the talks were like "technology
show-off" ones, except the one by Andrew Cowie on multi-threaded Gtk+
programming and a few others. Although most of the items did contain
internal details and were delivered by the core contributors, there
was not much oppurtunity for someone to walk in as an interested,
non-contributor and walk out as a newbie, contributor. What happened
was a large number of curious people came in and left with some amount
of new information, which they quickly forget as Kushal pointed out.

So if instead of having one talk after the other, we can interleave
"technology show-off" sessions with hands-on ones on the technology
that was shown off. Obviously the target levels and domains of
expertise can vary.

Cheers,
Debarshi