The CFP for our February meetup closes in a week!
Please note a change in the timings for our February meetup.
Time - 11 AM IST
Date - 24th Feb
Location - Smallcase
The video recordings of our January meetup are now available on YouTube!
We are delighted to announce that Nemo will be facilitating the “FOSS Workshops” based on the topic ”My computer, my data, my code - liberating your data from user-hostile apps”!
2 Likes
JANUARY 2024 MEETUP RETROSPECTIVE
By FOSS United Bangalore Team
Theme: Empowering FOSS in Machine Learning
STATS
Total Attendees: ~76
Women attendees: ~9
Total Speakers: 6
Women Speakers: 1
THE GOOD
- Nasdaq provided a nice and spacious venue
- Meetup started around 14:30 and ended by 18:00
- The Speaker lineup was decent, covering topics that are on the hype train right now
- Venue provided with professional photographers, which gave us nice photos we can use for different community pages
- Venue also conducted a nice small interactive quiz along with prizes which stirred up the audience nicely
- Break in the middle again proved to be nice for networking, there were engaging discussions everywhere
- We were able to nicely convey FOSS United Plans to the audience with the help of Aakansha and Vishal
- Small activities conducted by hosts prevent fatigue in between talks, we can continue on the same
- Small bump in women’s participation and overall audience since the last few meetups
- Nasdaq also gave gifts as a token of appreciation to all the volunteers and speakers
- Fenil and Vaishnavi hosted very well, keeping the audience engaged throughout
- Asking the audience to give a quick introduction and how they are using FOSS helps in engaging the audience before we start the meetup, thanks to Shrilakshmi, we have been doing this for the past few meetups.
- The energy of the audience was good and we were able to have some buffer time for the audience to ask questions after the speaker’s talk.
THE BAD
- There was a technical glitch at the start due to which the meetup was delayed
- Diversity in the audience - more representation of women. We are doing better but we need to do better
- There were some recurring technical issues when speakers were asked to come to speak, tech check might help us prevent that
THE UGLY
- A speaker was very poorly prepared and did not deliver much useful content despite having a nice proposal
- The audio for the opening note didn’t come out well so we couldn’t upload it for this meetup.
All inclusive, it was a fun and engaging domain specific meetup with a targeted and engaging audience!
2 Likes
We are excited to announce that the CFP for our March meetup themed “FOSS For Everyone” is now open!
FEBRUARY 2024 MEETUP RETROSPECTIVE
By FOSS United Bangalore Team
Theme: FOSS Workshops
STATS
Total Attendees: ~40
Women attendees: ~16
THE GOOD
-
We conducted our first workshop in February 2024
-
Smallcase provided a really nice venue
-
Meetup started around 11:15 and ended by 14:30. We were able to start a bit earlier than usual but the workshop end got slightly extended. Nemo and Vivek did a great engaging workshop with a full hands-on activity which the audience really enjoyed
-
Venue also conducted a nice small interactive quiz along with prizes which stirred up the audience nicely
-
Break in the middle again proved to be nice for networking, there were engaging discussions everywhere
-
A great bump in women’s participation since the last few meetups, Join The Dots an NGO sending women attendees for the meetup was amazing to see.
-
Asking the audience to give a quick introduction and how they are using FOSS helps in engaging the audience before we start the meetup. We have been doing this for the past few meetups and it’s been working out well.
-
We also tried starting the meetup relatively early i.e. 11 AM this time and people nevertheless showed up on time, so that was an encouraging point!
-
Snacks provided from the host were nice and prevented the audience from going super hungry.
-
Being able to follow workshop from any point was a good upside
-
Nemo and Vivek took the workshop together, while Nemo spent more time hosting whereas Vivek kept helping everyone. So having another knowledgeable person with a host helps a lot!
-
Overall, trying a workshop for the first time was a really good idea!
-
This time it was Shrilakshmi’s office and she took full responsibility of making sure that everything is taken care of at the venue right from stage, camera, snacks and everything.
THE BAD
- We had a bunch of complaints around registration, quite a few people showed up but their names were not in the google sheet exported. This was probably because list monk had a recent upgrade so going forward in march meetup onwards we decided to use the FOSS United platform to accept registrations and hopefully this will not happen again.
- It seemed like there was some disconnect at times, this seemed to have arised due to the host using few terms the audience were not that familiar with. Some people came without laptops. Solving problems like this is tricky, but a good starting point could be understanding demographics of attendees, specially in workshops so that for e.g. if a lot of new grad software engineers are attending workshop host can tailor workshop in particular manner
- There were pacing difficulties, few participants felt it was a bit fast, and host felt they were not able to complete as much in detail, but again this point seems to stem from same problem as discussed in last point
- Small activities conducted by hosts prevents fatigue in between talks, we can continue upon the same, we did not do this
- One thing we noticed while talking to participants was it was in between their lunch time and hence a lot of them were hungry. This was first time starting the meetup at 11 am and one of the reasons was that 2 pm a lot of folks including us come to the meetup without lunch which often makes it difficult, however, we need to break early when starting at 11 am so people get a good snacks break and also finish the meetup slightly early so everyone is free by lunch time.
THE UGLY
- Nothing seemed super ugly in this meetup!
All wrapped, it was a fun and engaging first workshop, with many more to come! We will keep improving and do better in the next upcoming workshops. One of the main highlights was a bump in women participation and we hope to continue and get better in future meetups.
1 Like
April Meetup 2024
We are happy to inform you the CFP for our April 2024 event themed “FOSS Workshops” is now live!
Date: Saturday, 27th April, 2024
Time: 11 am IST
Venue: MapleLabs, koramangala
CFP
CFP - FOSS Meetup BLR April 2024
Registrations opening soon!
1 Like
April 2024 Meetup
CFP Closing soon for our “FOSS Workshops” meetup (1 day to go)
Reserve your seat now!
Celebrating 2 years in May 2024!
We are excited to announce Call for Speakers is now live!
Submit your proposals!
CFP
https://platform.fossunited.org/events/blr-may/cfp
Date: 25th May
Time: 11 AM
Registrations opening soon!
April 2024 Meetup
We are excited to announce that Aman Manapure will be facilitating the FOSS Workshops on the topic “Mastering Docker”!
Register 
RSVP for FOSS Meetup April 2024
March 2024 MEETUP RETROSPECTIVE
By FOSS United Bangalore Team
Theme: FOSS For Everyone
Stats
- Total RSVP: 395
- Total Attended: ~230+
- Students: ~100+
- Women Attendees: ~50+
The Good
- The venue was well set up, thanks to Navi. Everything was set up, from the video recordings for the meetup to arranged chairs, and people at the front desk to guide meetup participants to the venue at the top floor. The venue was also spacious, allowing us to host a large number of audience.
- Meetup started on time at 11:00 with two wonderful hosts - Shrilakshmi and Fenil and ended on time by 14:45 with a great panel discussion.
- We had many students participating in the meetup, as well as women. Once again we were happy to see the women from Join the Dots. Some of them had traveled from Andhra for the meetup. It also drives the FOSS team to provide greater value in the meetup.
- We started the meeting by asking the audience for a quick introduction of them and the projects they are working on currently.
- The talks were diverse and engaging. We had two talks on the tech-policy side (one of which was about using an open-source tool, ScanCode to detect licenses and copyright issues), one technical talk, and one hardware talk.
- The panel discussion on Sustainability in FOSS covered a core issue concerning FOSS projects. The Panel covered a wide range of topics on how FOSS projects can survive, how monetization can be done, and open-source business models, and the insights from the panel discussion were useful. All the Panelists shared their experiences and insights and the Panel was well moderated by Vasundhara resulting in more impactful discussions.
- The demo in the hardware talk by Amit captured the audience. There was DIY hardware stuff, arranged on a table (once again, thanks to Navi for a great venue) and it engaged everyone in the meetup.
- The audience count turned out to be very high (exceeding beyond expectations) but huge thanks to Navi, they handled it so well and also ordered food twice to ensure everyone was served.
- The recording quality was awesome, and undoubtedly the best till now. We will be uploading it soon. Thanks to Navi for providing such high-quality recordings.
The Bad
- A college has asked students to attend the meetup for marks. The students have to attend the meetup and send their geo-tagged location to verify their attendance. This led to a large influx of students, which is one way good but the incentive structure seems bad.
- Audiences were chatting during the talk, causing disruptions to the speaker as well as other audiences.
The Ugly
- One of the speakers ended up using some abusive words during the talk. We should strictly prohibit this going forward and to make sure this doesn’t happen again, we have added this in the presentation guidelines as well and MCs will also communicate this to the audience before starting the meetup.
Overall the meetup turned out to be absolutely amazing! Highest audience count and highest women participation. The talks were very engaging and diverse as well.
1 Like