ervin’s piece of web

My last evening in Bangalore has been spent at Atul’s place
with all the other speakers around and the organization team
for the “Speaker Party”. Once again great food, and great people
to discuss with.

I left a bit early with Till, Volker, Christian, Kartik and
Sheela. I got back to the hotel with Kartik while Till, Volker
and Christian left to the airport to take their plane.

This way I had some sleep, and early in the morning I got a
car sent by the organizers to get to the airport. Had my flight
for Mumbai with no problem, and arrived in time. I have to
admit that Mumbai airport is much bigger and cleaner than the
Bangalore one. There, Pradeepto was waiting for me and picked
me up to go to a hotel in Panvel (a small town near Mumbai).
I’m staying there for the next few days because I’m attending
Pradeepto’s wedding.

This post is officially the last one about FOSS.in 2007. But
likely not my last one from India this year, I’ll probably blog
about Mumbai and the wedding. As for FOSS.in, I have a short list
of things which I’ll definitely remember (in no particular
order):

• Most of the talks are all done by high profile speakers…
  I even wonder how I got talks there. You definitely have the
  best people in their field coming here. The “who’s who” of the
  Indian Free Software contributors is there, but you also have
  quite a lot of famous international Free Software contributors.
  If you don’t believe me, look at this year speakers list but
  also past years… I hardly know any other conference with such
  speaker lists (except maybe FOSDEM).
• The organization team is just awesome and I’ll really miss
  them all. Lovely and interesting people… I admit I was a bit
  heart broken when I had to leave the speaker party. I’m looking
  forward to meet them all again.
• The party at Opus, nice karaoke club, terrific atmosphere…
  and Shlipa learning how to count people when drunk (I’ll never let
  you forget this moment). @Shreyas: No need to smile while reading
  this, you were half drunk too, remember?
• The high quality of the organization (the organizers again, but
  also the volunteers and the logistics around the conference), it
  was just perfect. I’ve been speaker in quite a few conferences, and
  I’ve never seen something like this. As a speaker, you’re never let
  on your own, you always get help for anything, and you can feel it’s
  all done with a great pleasure. In short: it’s the best organized
  conference I’ve ever been to. And I don’t see another one beating this
  team anytime soon.