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.