Wikimedia hackthon 1st day

Amazed with the passion and spirit of wikimedia team during hackthon. Eric gave good starting explanation of basic things of wikimedia and other ongoing activities, such that offline support, mobile support, internationalization.

Hackthon project list was excellent http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/India_Hackathon_2011#Topics

I was interested in all but since all activities were parallel thought better to check Lohit fonts support for remaining Indian languages.

I was the leader for font testing activity http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/India_Hackathon_2011/Schedule_notes#I18N
Glad to see 4-5 hackthon attendees shown there interest in font testing.

Pre lunch session went in introduction of project, group forming etc. Actual work start after lunch.

first 1 hrs i was just enabling students OS for Indian language, couple of had Fedora in there machine so did it quickly, santhosh helped for enabling Ubuntu for Indian languages.

It was great to see there expression's when they actually started writing in Indian languages. One of attendees (Jatin) father works in CIIL :)

Then explained students important of activity they are going to do, then finally we started.
http://etherpad.wikimedia.org/LohitFonts This is the page where finally we put all the testing reports.

In between we had good offline discussion regarding Lohit Tamil fonts, Discussion with Amir regarding on 1 language 2 script problem.

Ended first session with Group Photo  http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/Hackathon_Mumbai_2011_Groupshot.jpg
 

My 1st day at Wiki conference at Mumbai university

  First thing notices is the security, did not allowed anyone without checking it photo ID and wiki invitation, even inside university there was good security. (Many Police)    

  Later understood this is due to controversy created by BJP http://www.newsreporter.in/bjp-youth-activists-detained-for-protest-against-wikipedia anyway that's other part.     

  From last couple of days seeing excellent coverage by media for wiki conference(even there was new in local Marathi language newspaper Sakal) and same noticed even in conference. First row was mostly occupied by Media.     

  University convocation hall was small compared to COEP Pune conference hall, it proved land/space crunch in Mumbai. ;)    

  Met with Ramki and Santosh and introduction with wikimedia developer. I was interested in attending tech talk session but seminar hall was full, even few people sat on ground. So went outside and had good discussion on indic computing issues and plan for hackthon. Problems and development of Lohit fonts.
     
  Attended Post lunch session about introduction of wikipedia, in that understood wikipedia also facing same problem, we faced 1 year back, one language multiple script, so asked question regarding same in Q&A. I think they are planning good to transliterate language content of one script to another script, so it will save lots of effort and will help people knowing either of language. Since limited time decided to take further discussion offline, so will discuss more in tomorrow's hackthon session.     

  From couple of session i attended wikipedia made it clear regarding there high priority task is to provide fonts, input method for at least 22 official languages of India. It is like providing food. cloth and shelter Only few are missing though, i am working on this from last 1-2 year and my dream to announce sometime "Fedora now support all 22 Indian languages", only 4-5 language support is remaining now major part is testing and confirming the support, so in tomorrow's hackthon planning to highlight this testing points. If any bugs raised i am definitely there to fix. I am sure withing next 5-6 month we will able to announce support for 22 Official Indian languages.
     
  Second part was discussion with the attendees, met with dhananjay Aditya, saw him while discussing regarding adding pali language contents in wikipedia with "Alolita sharma". I am also very interested in doing something for Pali language, we have lots of great Buddhism content available in Pali language and high time to digitize it. Had good discussion with Dhananjay he is very passionate regarding Pali looking forward to work with him together in between Dhananjay is Admin of "Superstition Eradication Committee" http://www.facebook.com/groups/ansindia/ and very active in many activities.           Was interested in showing i18n development, specifically Marathi language to IBN lokmat representative Amruta, gave 5-10 explanation to her. Lets see if anything happen positive for raising awareness of Open Source indic language computing activities.

Fudcon second day

    It was excellent day, unfortunately was not able to attend till last session. Started with the session on Fedora security, it was interesting and definitely fedora user felt proud to see effort of security team.

    My session with Anish was from 2 to 3 PM at seminar hall 2, started bit late since it was experience from first day that audience need some time to change rooms. It was about 20-25 audience but good part was most of them were interested in doing something for Indian language computing.
    Session was very interactive. following questions were raised during session.
    1. Can we add barah layout support? i think yes we can
    2. Since same data used across different users, is there any chance is privacy issues? No. since each user will have separate user db saved in his home folder
    3. is this available in debian? still not need one packager, but still one can install and use it on ubuntu and debian easily since ibus is already there.
    Best part was when in session after showing demo and architecture we asked regarding Advantages of Booster ime, audience able to tell its advantages perfectly.
    Sessions slides are available on fudcon.in.
    Outcome: Had good interaction with all. Decided some project to work with students. Looking forward to sometime visit COEP again and actually work on some task with student.        
Thanks fudcon for giving me this opportunity.

Excellent first day at Funcon 11 in Pune!!

    Jared smith gave excellent talk on Fedora and motivated lot to student to come forward and start contribution. He explain just using in not means contribution to community but one should come forward and report bugs give some feedback is taken very well.
    Saw many desktop powered by Fedora 15, gnome 3 :)
    Amit shah's session on git was very interactive and i think it was required some more time but yes he managed well in available time.
    Had a small running chat with Jared smith, briefed him on Fedora indic i18n activities and number of Indian languages and script. (Lohit fonts). Will be good if tomorrow get some time i can show some demos to him.
    Met with Prof Abhijit (COEP) was interested in meeting him from long time. He is great supported and promoter of opensource. I had meeting with some of his project student working on Gnome Terminal indic rendering stuff. Had a nice talk on indic language computing project. There is still lots of things to do and that also interesting for Computer science student. Will give show project demos and plan for some project tomorrow.
     Big news came after lunch with the Inauguration of fuel website, it is done by Satish Mohan. There are many open task for student do go through it if one wants to learn and contribute in opensource.
    Attended talk Vaidik kapoor's on how development of Fudcon.in  happened Case study was great and overall excellent work in limited time. I am sure we will do great next time and can use same experience for other such events. COD with Drupal is really excellent module for developing event website. Liked this session.
    Last talk of Aman was nice, He explained Fedora QA process very nicely. Still i think there need some motivation for students to test and reports bugs for Fedora. May be in Fedora new somewhere name regarding the person name with number of bugs he reported.
    My session is tomorrow and very excited about it.

Pravin Satpute
Fedora i18n team