In a series of community-driven unconferences targeted specifically at promoting FOSS implementation and development in India, OSScamp organized its first meet of the year at Amity School Of Engg. and Technology. OSScamp is India's largest unconference on open source. They bring together the best brains and the most passionate technologists and enthusiasts under one roof and create a platform for sharing best practices, experiences, and knowledge. OSScamp Delhi January 2010 saw 120 participants come together to celebrate technology.
OSScamp Delhi saw IT professionals, Enthusiasts and Students come together to discuss and shape the future of open source in India. It was a unique experience for everyone including the students, many of whom were novices to the area of Open Source.
The session began with a meticulous analysis of Open Source, what it means for us and an introduction to the OSScamp community by Kinshuk Sunil. It was enriching to discover the innumerable opportunities that Open Source provides to students. The session continued with a hands-on talk on Version control that included a demonstration of Git by Pratul Kalia. It was demystifying to learn that Git is a great way to implement version control in projects, big or small, much simpler and efficient as compared to SVN. Every session was followed by an open house discussion, where participants put forward their queries as well as suggestions.
P Sugathan, from IUAC, then took the participants along a crash course on deployment of Open Source in Science and Research. His presentation can be found at the OSScamp Slideshare group.
An interesting demonstration of building Facebook applications and ways to earn through it, by Anshu Verma, was a highlight of the unconference. Using FBML-Facebook Markup Language, and its objects was made easy through the interactive presentation.
Ravi Sagar and Pratul Kalia, then, talked about Drupal, which is a free and open source Content Management System written in PHP. It is an excellent platform for beginners to create their own visually appealing and interactive web sites. A special session was provided to introduce newbies to Drupal. This was an excellent way to spur everyone’s interest towards the new avenues of open source. Later on, Babul Gogoi talked about the various avenues and benefits of open source for NGOs and how, actually, open source is helping us shape the world around us.
The unconference saw numerous Social Sandboxes, where the students got an opportunity to interact with the industry participants and share their own ideas. The camp has provided us with the required encouragement and a blend of prospects to work upon.
All in all, the event was a major success for all participants and students where everyone discovered something novel. We hope to get a chance to organize many more such OSScamps in the future.
