Report Flock 2016 - Kraków, Poland

Photo credit to JFlory !!

Trying to be on the spot !!

• Got a chance to meet existing contributors, who are doing great work and i am communicating regular. I help them and they help me. Jean-Baptiste, Zoltan, Noriko, Alex, Patrick, Fale, Gabriele, Justin, Paul Frield, Matthew, Ryan,  Jona this list is bit big, so if i missed your name please consider its here. May be i could had written Team names.
• Though G11N workshop was planned was on 3rd day but we were actually daily discussing open issues and how to get rid of it. It actually helped as a prep-work for workshop.
• 1st and 2nd day, i did not missed even single track and attended at least one talk from each track. My schedule is here, feel free to ping me, if you want more info.
• We had good number of talks on G11N this time. 
• Please Note: Its not only APAC where there is need for languages other than English but its Europe as well. Only major issue APAC face is language with complex script. Europe most of the languages use Latin (extended), its make life bit easy for processing it on computer.
• Talks and presence of more G11N members helped to make things more clear to other attendees and it actually help to get in new contributors. This is mostly from Translation side though but new contributors bring in new mind sets and help to improve processes. 
• I presented on G11N audit of Fedora Atomic and happy it was well taken. Since presently more focus on modularity and containers, its right time to get involved and make sure adding language support will not become more bottleneck during implementation period. We need more testing.. At least in presentation i have mentioned more visible issues and even possible solutions as well. Going to work on then in coming Fedora releases. Presentation slides here. 
•  G11N workshops was really with nice discussions and more action oriented. We all agreed to have 
• Globalization steering committee for language related issues though need many fixes to proposal itself.
• Mike Demonstrated IBUs Emoji typing feature and ibus typing booster multilingual stuff. these are key features in Fedora 25. Unicode 9.0 is already in Fedora 25.
• Most of the members requested for T-shirts for G11N contributors. (FPL came as a rescue and mentioned it might be possible and depends.)
• G11N FAD - More members are interested in hosting this :) Albania, Hungary and even Japan and India and i think some more locations. We have to coordinate with all and see how can we proceed for this.
• Jean-Baptiste presented on improvements points and issues he gathered with Zoltan. I really liked those and even thinking it as a TODO list for Localization in coming year. We were need more time for discussions 2 hours is indeed not enough with many active people with different expertise, L10N, I18N and Zanata. I will be very happy if each members can blog with there TODO for next year, it will help to gather me improvements plan. May be we can push on community blog.
• Summary is drafted in PiratePad. 
• I also attended famsco and Budget workshop. In FamSco i think we are agreed to move ahead with fosco without replacing famsco and start with minimal groups. In budget, fyi.. Budget is happens for year "Mar-Feb" next cycle is Mar,2017-Feb 2018 and we are almost in planning phase for it. Any things which required specific budget please start listing it somewhere. 
• Knowing this, its difficult to do G11N FAD till Feb 2017 requiring big budget. But if its less budget, good to propose it, there is always some chance. I am more oriented for doing virtual one till Feb 2017. Planning to having "Localization oriented FAD in Albania and Hungary", I18n oriented FAD remotely for F26 (Japan, Germany, India and may be other countries.)
• Also we (with Jean-Baptiste and Zoltan)  got interviewed for Radio stuff. It was really great to see, recorder was so involved in the interesting things we were speaking that he forgot to start recording and we again redone recording :) Exciting to hear recording soon.

    * Though you might feel this is big blog, actually i missed lots thing into it, expecting dedicated post for each one.

Other highlights

• Nicely organized Flock, in 2014 we were running whole day from Hotel-Venue-lunch dinner. Here it was same place, so actually gave more time for talks with other peoples.
• Social events were nice. I loved it. In fact Location itself great. Nice to learn about Krakow history, its very reach.
• Kudos to organizing team !! Joe came as a saviour for me in last moment and booked ticket in last stage. I confirmed my travel on 29 July, it is enough to explain pain. All other members including Bex, Rafel, Spot, Paul, Ruth there are many name here missing again, so please consider them.
• Lucky to meet Ekaterina and David. After using and working for Gnome almost a 10 year, happy i became Gnome foundation member now.

    Might be i will write other blog with some specific things, i think enough for this one. Thanks for reading.

G11N related talks in flock 2016

In 2015 flock there was not even single talk on big domain like G11N. Happy in flock 2016 we have more and more talk on this domain. Those are as follows

• Localization (G11N) from Noriko
• Zanata - translation platform  By Alex Eng
• Globalization audit of Fedora Atomic By Me :) 
• Globalization in Free Software Communities by Adrian Mârza 

Other talks with connects to Localization efforts are: Fale (Fabio Alessandro Locati) is talking about "A year managing the Italian Fedora Community"  and Jona Azizaj and Justin W. Flory are talking on University Outreach – New task or new mindset?

Most important part is G11N meetup of all active contributors. Please join G11N meetup

There are only few highlights but we have also many active contributors present in conference.

Looking forward for nice discussions and plans from flock 2016 :)

Summaries from Gnome Asia Summit 2016

Hats of for making it happen in India again. Most of the information regarding conference available at web. Though i am using Gnome almost 10+ years, this is my first Gnome summit and also mine first conference as a Keynote speaker.

Day Zero

1. Manav Rachana is big university with promising upcoming talents in the form of bright students. Its worth to making event Gnome Asia here.
2. Excellent campus
3. Workshop on first day was worth, Since i arrived late, attended last GStreamer workshop and that happened really in great depth. Excellent stuff from Speakers Nirbheek Chauhan and Arun Raghavan.

Day One

1. It was good to see Gnome contributors on stage. Quick introduction from most of the members. University lead by excellent peoples. Talk from K.K. Aggarwal was really motivating. Loved some stories from him, specifically Frog one - Good to be deaf in some situation.
   
2. Next Billion users for GNOME talk was good. Even i am sure with sandboxing, application will become platform independent and best one (most likely FOSS apps) will win Users. Amen !! for Next Billions :)
3. Though i thought we are behind schedule but case was not that, due to good buffer in lunch time. Happy nicely handled by organizers.
4. Here my talk started. As usual i tried to make it bit two-way rather than one way communication. Covered Indian language status and also covered how it can help to contributors specifically students.

    After my talk: We had good lightening talks.

    Post lunch we started parallel session. Ankit Prateek had huge slide deck for "Privacy & Security in the Age of Surveillance ". He covered very important topics, i am sure after his talk many attendees must have thought for there privacy on Web 2.0 Era.

    Later there was talk by "Functionality, Security, Usability: Choose any two. Or GNOME."   He invited developers for contributions.

    Thanks to PJP, Pranav for managing Fedora booth during first day. We had good crowd around and good communication whole day.

    Day ended with lightening talks. In the evening i visited Tughlaqabad fort with Tobias, Daiki and Raju.

Day Two

    Third day i arrived bit early, had good conversion with faculty and students. Ekaterina gave nice keynote and provided most of pointers for starting with gnome contribution.

    After Tea, i remained at Fedora booth. Had good time resolving queries from new users. I think overall 6-7 students installed Fedora in 2 days, mostly on VirtualBox. They were asking what's are the feature of Fedora? and i was like what do you want? :)

    During August Manav Rachana planning for activities on FOSS stuff and they were collecting contacts from speakers.
    Post lunch, i attended talk from Ueno on "Contribute your first application to GNOME" and Tobias on "Five years of GNOME 3"

    Then we had again nice lightening talks and closing ceremony.

Nice Swags  

• University provided Momento and Certificated to all speakers.
• Also speakers received Micro Charge&Data.
• T-Shirts and  Shoes from Conference.

    Funny part was last year FUDCon 2015 we provided socks to participants and Gnome went ahead and provided shoes ;)

Fedora booth 2nd last day Pranav

Conclusion

    Overall Gnome Asia 2016 was good conference with good content and at right location. I hope we will get lots of contributors from Manav Rachana International university in coming years.

   We had good presence of Fedora over all days. Missed Fedora 23 DVD's.

Experience of attending DevConf.CZ 2016 - Day 2 & 3

Contd...

Day 2

    Attended number of talks on day 2.

• A Graybeard's Worst Nightmare - How Docker Containers are Re-Defining the Linux OS
• LibreOffice in a (Sand)Box
• Atomic Developer Bundle - Containerized Development Made Easy

Second day, Noriko introduced me with Jona. Jona recently conducted two translation sprints for Albania. Noriko and Jona both were at Fedora booth on second day. Happy Noriko was in Devconf she helped to gather contributors interested and working for Globalizing Fedora :) I also spared sometime with them near Fedora booth. We decided to talk more in G11N meetup planned at 4pm.

We started moving to meetup room around 4pm. It was me, Fale, Jona, Noriko and puiterwijk. I earlier thought it will be quick meetup but gradually we discussed number of topics and it went on and on :) I learned lots of interesting things from localization point of view.

Second G11N meetup at DevConf 2016

Unfortunately markers was not working well and we started to add points to piratepad.

It was Networking Party day at Starobrno brewery pub. It is big pub and party was on till 2am but unfortunately next day my talk was there also don't wanted to miss Denise and Matthew talk in morning. So with heavy heart back to hotel around 11pm.   

Day 3

• From schedule itself i started feeling its mini-flock :)
• Was just in time to first talk, where Denise was explaining what Red Hat looking from Fedora, which i often explain in Fedora introduction. Then Matthew took over for State of Fedora, was happy with nice stats. Happy we are gradually moving from guess numbers to actual numbers. 

 

Relationship of Red Hat & Fedora+State of Fedora

• Then i attended next talk from Matthias Clasen and Paul Frields, It was good talk and covered lots of topic.

And here comes my talk, First of all it was Sunday afternoon and parallel talk by Ralph Bean :) Even i was interested in attending his talk ;)

But happy, most of the people interested in G11N were there including Remy :) I made sure to make it more interesting by showing Voice Recognition Elevator - ELEVEN funny video demonstrating problems of non-globalized voice operated elevator system and same time technical.

Slides of my talk are available on slideshare. I intentionally avoided details on L10N, since Noriko's more detailed talk on L10N was next.

Noriko - Explaining huge tasks from L10N

It was good after my talk there was Noriko talks, it came in natural flow and few more people were there in Noriko's talk including docs members.

Then i went for lunch, found Matthew alone there at booth. Had good discussions with him on G11N, Flock and FUDCon and how to increase contributors and also bit roughly talked on idea of having G11N FAD with flock so more people from G11N can attend flock also they can have FAD.

Then comes final session...Grand Finale! Win Win Win!

Finale session.

Wow, it was hosue full and great to see happy faces all around with excellent DevConf. I liked the way, goodies distributed with easy competition. Though it sounded it was not since, most of the people sat down after few questions ;)

Then bye bye bye to all. Wanted to attend EMEA Ambassadors FAD but i was very tired and also next morning early flight to Mumbai.  Me, Huzaifas and Sinny moved to nice dinner at Pizzeria Al Capone to have Pizza.

At morning 6am started tiring journey back to Mumbai. Thought it was 24hrs but its always feels good to return back home, specifically after back to back conferences :)

My experience of DevConf CZ 2016 - Day 1

This was my first DevConf, not able to join last year due to other schedules. Had very good experience and if get chance definitely would like to attend DevConf 2017 :)

Day 1

• From registration desk to conference room, everything was well organized.
• I liked Keynote on first day. It was motivating for all developers and provided key points about how to become "Rock star". During the start only Tim mentioned all these points came from him own experience of working with 1000+ engineers. 
 



Tim Burke - Talking on "Rock Star Recipe"

• We had planned Globalization meeting specifically for FLTG and talks with Council. Most of the rooms were already booked for meetups. Luckily we got 1pm slot. Some time went on organizing this meetup and communicating with interested participants.

• In DevConf there is no slot for lunch, rather they have live food counter for almost all day. One can simply go there as per his preferred time. It provided one more slot for sessions.
• I met Remy on first day. It was great meeting him, we had quick conversation on G11N and he mention he is interested to get more idea and also has some plans for localization. 

Remy, Ani and Mike Fabian - During G11N meetup

• It was me, Noriko, Remy, Mike Fabian, Fale and Ani for the meeting. We started by having discussion on on-boarding steps for new contributors. Significance of badges. Remy also informed about Fedora hubs and how it will be beneficial. Luckily we got free lunch boxes from earlier meeting and we enjoyed lunch there :)

Summary of discussions in meetup

• After meeting i attended talk on "Ceph vs Gluster vs Swift: Similarities and Differences". It was good talk and nicely provided idea on basic concepts and differences between all these projects.

Lukáš Fryč - in Workshop

• End of day i attended workshop on "Create & deploy mobile apps in minutes with Red Hat Mobile Application Platform". It was already housefull, luckily i got one seat. Lukáš Fryč going in good speed and was making sure everyone with him during workshop. I have already deployed few apps on OpenShift, it made bit easy and quick for me. At the end of session i had app developed by me, deployed in my Mobile.

Me with Guide and Group during City Tour

• First day Devconf had organized "City Tour", i joined it. Guide was excellent and kept us busy with interesting information about Brno. 

contd...

Fedora release event in Yangon, Myanmar 2016

This happened in Fedora - Myanmar community office. Location is nice and ideal for hacking
We came around 10:30 but since few more people were stuck in traffic decided to start bit late. Cake was ready and then me and Leap decorated it with DVD's and stickers.

 We started with introduction of all participants. Most of the participants were already Fedora users around Fedora 20. Interesting part was they all were more from the users side of Fedora, so decided to put more strength on how they can move ahead and become contributor.

 As per schedule Yan started with introduction of Fedora. He talked on "how he came to Fedora world". He mentioned regarding earlier he was not happy with Fedora for not providing media codecs but later learned its because Fedora follows strictly FOSS principles.

Then Leap, started talk on how one can contribute to Fedora even if he is from different domains. I was adding few points with him as per required.

It was already around 1pm, so we decided to cut cake and go ahead with lunch.  During same time around 10 students joined from "University of Computer Studies Yangon”.

Lunch was very special since it was home cooked by Wai Yan (John Reginald) and other Fedora members here . Really excellent place, you can cook, eat, work and hangout :)  Appreciated cook and gang helped to him. Indeed very lucky to get in-home cooked food in Myanmar. Much much better than outside food.

Must say thanks to Yan Naing Myint for sponsoring lunch and lovely cake for Fedora 23 release !!

During lunch, we had some discussion with students, we got some interesting questions. Leap helped to answered regarding Admin side and me more from Development side :) I wondered no one from Myanmar contribute to GSoC.

Two students were from Tamil and one from Bihar and they specifically mentioned it, Glad to see Indians in event.

We started after lunch and Yan again started with Fedora intro talk. This time it was in Burmese language, he explained number of topic. Including how to get Fedora and what are Fedora philosophies.

 Then we asked Leap to talk on How to contribute again :) 3rd time in 2 days he was talking on this topic ;)

This time even much better and had good impact on audience. 

 Then i started bit interactive talk on "What students required?" and "How can they get it from Fedora?". I mentioned one point during talk is to start using Fedora and start play with system and report issues. Also shown them what patch does mean.

Audience requested if they can know how to install Fedora.  Here Yan started with demonstration of Fedora 23 DVD's. He explained in details most of the topic and in middle i highlighted missing things from Myanmar, i.e English (Myanmar)  locale, no translations and recommended if they are interested they can contribute into it.

We all decided to take Tea break, while packages were getting installed. We moved to small local stall for Tea.

 Then it was already 6pm and attendees were planning to go home, thought will quickly check newly installed system. Later Yan shown them how to create FAS, there name Wiki page and bugzilla account.

After everyone went we started working on testing Internationalization support for Myanmar (Burmese) language. I demonstrated few things to Yan and asked him to check with hall.  Then we started creating Myanmar localization group, we completed all steps.  Luckily we found noriko on IRC, she also checked those things Only thing remained was to create group in Zanata.
   
Around 8:30 me and Leap left from Venue.  Mostly decided not to meet on second day, since we had flights around afternoon and attendees mostly comes post lunch session.  Also our Hotel was bit far from event place and Yangon is also well know for Traffic Jams ;)

This way we had nice Fedora 23 release event. Next day planned more work by attendees to Fedora. i.e. becoming contributor to Fedora. But not much happened since it was working day.

Exprience of BarCamp Yangon 2016

Arriving at Yangon

    Lucky enough i got a chance and i actually able to made it to BarCamp 2016. I had bad experience with Bangkok Airway during travel, that listed in other blog.

    But its full of nice experience after coming to Myanmar. People here are very supporting and kind and indeed nice place to visit.

    Our plan was to represent Fedora strongly with multiple talks. Me travelled from India and Leap Soak from Cambodia. We had 2 meetings before BarCamp Yan and his team mates.

    Yan suggested to be at BarCamp around 8pm, so we will get slot quickly. I already thought its too early but since this is my first BarCamp tried to be early.

BarCamp Day 1

    Me and LeapSoak reached early around 8:30 to MICT Park. Location was indeed good with nice campus and good crowd.

    Inauguration started around 9am, we were standing in front row but not helped much since all talks were in Burmese language ;)

    After inauguration, everyone started running to propose there talk for BarCamp. They were allowing only 1 talk per person. Me submitted talk on Learning Unicode. I thought there will be some voting on talks to get it finalized. But it was almost 13 parallel tracks and enough to accommodate all talks.

    Since most of the talks were in burmese language we were simply doing networking there. During time i requested if i can submit one more talk and luckily got permission :)  I submitted other talk on "Basics of FOSS and Introduction to Fedora". It was scheduled in main conference room.

    We planned to distribute Fedora 23 DVD's during this talks but we actually forgotten DVD's at hotel ;)  Our hotel was near to Venue so i quickly took taxi and collected DVD's for distrbutiion.

    Felt good for getting chacne to talk on "Basic of FOSS and Introduction to Fedora". Got number of questions mostly on Fedora side. I felt few people were finding it difficult to understand either English or may be its our ascent, so Yan did transaltion for me for few questions.  We distributed 50 DVD's to interested participants and also announced regarding Fedora 23 release event just after BarCamp.

    Mine second talk was from 2:00 to 2:45pm. It was on hot topic at Myanmar that is "Learning Unicode" :)

    Room was bit smaller, for around 20-30 people. 30+ students attended talk by standing. I covered all basics of Unicode. Number of people came after talk and said they want to move ahead with Unicode from zawgyi and need support from me. I forwarded my presentation to them.

    Since all other talks were in Burmese, was simply waited there for some time and went to Hotel.

    Leap mate with some old friends at BarCamp first day and we decided to go China Town for dinner, had good time with all.

BarCamp Day 2

Second day was bit relaxing. Reached to BarCamp around 9:30am, still came to know, they accepting talks around 10am. Attended there first talk, something like KeyNote. It had few impressive stats regarding How many people registered, how attended on first day. etc.

I submitted my talk on "Fedora Globalization - How to cater local needs" got 1-1:45pm slot in room 204.

Had one technical issue, projector cable was not working.
 There was less audience, just thought will start presenting on Laptop.  Again covered some basics on "why do need language supports?" and few other things. I mentioned we need some active people from Myanmar in Fedora Globalization. Meanwhile organizers brought working project cable and i moved to projector :)

Had over all good talk and lots of questions and discussion. Few more people again mentioned issues regarding Unicode and Zaw-gyi. I provided slides of my Unicode talk to them. I think there are number of people wants to move Unicode but i am still not clear what is issue. I think they are planning to write some article on issues. Looking forward to work with him on this.
Around 5pm, BarCamp had closing ceremony, where again language of communication was Burmese :)  They distributed gifts with lucky draw to students.

Few key points

• Fedora talks were well taken, students need more guidance to get starting with Fedora.
• I thought BarCamp is more risky from quality side, but had good topics from so many people. Start-up was trending topic, almost 5-6 people talked on it.
• May be good to have few more talks in English language, need more international speakers.
• No internet, even for speakers
• There was good marketing drive from companies like telenor and universities at Venue.
• Many attendees. !!