After intense negotiations with the college that made me realise that I could be a good business man, I was given OD to attend mukt.in. I was there to talk on DBus (which by the way was EPIC FAIL!). On a brighter side, I had fun showing off my gsoc code to people at qvantel. One of the things that I learned from this “version” of mukt.in was to prepare talks well in advance, otherwise you end up giving a mediocre presentation.

There were a lot of great things about mukt.in this year than the last version. The venue, the speaker list, the topics covered and the people who attended it.

The entire scope of mukt is to introduce people to FOSS. This is quite unlike other “biggies” in India like foss.in which is mainly concerned with the developer folk. In fact, mukt.in was more like fossconf with regards to its intended audience. Last year was more satisfying for me personally because I got a chance to actively help around. This year I didn’t move my butt and was pampered like a elite speaker, which I felt to be weird.

But at the same time, the event as a whole was a great success! The interactions between the speakers was awesome, many of us whom were using the free wifi at krish’s place. His mom made me feel home and all salutes to a nice lady who happens to make the best “chai” ever.

We also visited Charminar, Got stuck at Hussein Sagar in the midnight where there were no local buses, realised that samosas can cost a fortune in some places (;) ). And of course, thanks to Aju bhaiyya for the tee. (you are the best for now :D)

Ok, so here are some of my thoughts on improving mukt.in with which I have become quite attached,

• I feel the duration of the event to be too long. Two days would be apt and the third day, as mbuf put forth rightly, could be made as a “Picnic day”. Get a mini-van for the speakers and visit the tourist spots or some hang-out. A wonderful way to get together and make mukt more of a friendly cozy foss event that everyone would love to attend.

• Be a bit strict with the kind of talks that make it to the final lists. Ask the speakers to submit slides and be strict with it.

• Chinese food, all the three days was a bit sucky. Tokens from the local canteen would have been cool instead.

• I realised this rather late, but the mukt.in logo could have been a bit more expressive. Like a little image of Charminar or even the Buddha of Hussein Sagar that adds some weight to the logo. You get the picture.

I guess thats about it. Next time, I am ruddy damn sure mukt.in will be bigger and more “mukt”ier.

@mukt.in organizers, take a week off and sleep well. You guys deserve it!