IndiaFOSS 2026 - Feedback

IndiaFOSS Conference IndiaFOSS 2026
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IndiaFOSS 2026 is a wrap - a sincere thank you to the co-chairs, reviewers, staff, volunteers, devroom managers, pre-event organizers, and, of course, sponsors, and most importantly, all of the event participants for making this a success! 2500+ tickets were sold, and at least 2100 participants attended on Day 1 and 1600+ participants on Day 2 ( IndiaFOSS 2026 Live Stats )

A feedback form was already shared with all of the participants via email, but we’ll also use this topic for feedback if anyone is interested in sharing it publicly. We’ll also be using this thread to collect public feedback that is being shared on other social media platforms regarding IndiaFOSS 2026.

EDIT: I wanted to clarify that the positive responses you see below are as important as constructive criticism because it gives us pointers as to what aspect of IndiaFOSS they liked

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Retrospective - Booths at IndiaFOSS 2026
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Spaces like this matter because open source depends on people finding each other. A question after a session can become a contribution. A hallway conversation can give someone the context they needed to get started. Being in a room full of people willing to share what they know makes the work feel possible, and makes you want to do more of it.

Ref Spent the weekend at IndiaFOSS by FOSS United, and I’m still thinking about the conversations between the talks. Spaces like this matter because open source depends on people finding each other. A… | Harini Anand

IndiaFOSS 2026 reminded me that Open Source is much bigger than code

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People speaking about problems they have actually lived through. Farmers and communities coming forward with their own problems and asking what technology could do differently. Conversations around digitising old books and making knowledge accessible. People working on documenting culture and stories from places that don’t usually make it into our digital world.

Ref #indiafoss2026 #foss #opensource #fossunited #fossunitedmangalore #digitalcommons #opensourceindia | Deetya S Salian

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It is indeed a breath of fresh air to be in a place that has a philosophy about why it exists. Most other places inhabited by technologists, including academia, don’t think that deeply at all.
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Finally, when you put in one room problem solvers who are also philosophers you find the most exciting and inspiring set of people – who are solving stuff because they believe very deeply in something. What can be more delightful than being in their company.

Ref Reflections from IndiaFOSS 2026: Thoughts for the CoRE stack – CoRE Stack

The IndiaFOSS organizers did a fun thing this year with the last leg of Day 2, Communi-Con. A bunch of ten minute talks that were chosen by popular vote. I really like the idea because the talks themselves feel like they have significantly lower stakes than a talk you need to prepare for months for. I think I speak better off the cuff than when I rehearse endlessly and get all in my head about what to say.
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Getting to meet people who are on your wavelength, all concentrated in one place. Seeing old friends and other cool hackers who inspire us and were inspired by us all in one place.

Also see posts from Fenil Jain about their IndiaFOSS 2026 experience - via https://blr.indiewebclub.org/

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One heartening moment was seeing our AI Operations Associate, Abhay V facilitating an DIY AI agent session for a group from an amazing tech programme for underprivileged girls from Chhattisgarh. :woman_technologist::robot: They had travelled especially for the conference.

Seeing their curiosity and engagement in this field was inspiring. :light_bulb: It’s moments like these that made the FOSS experience so special. :heart:

Ref #indiafoss #indiafoss #fossunited #digitalempowerment #techeducation #opensourcecommunity #gooeyai | Gooey.AI

IndiaFOSS was a great reminder of how much there is to learn when you surround yourself with people who are building, contributing and sharing what they know.

Just being surrounded by people who really, really like building things, breaking things, understanding how things work, and sharing what they learn along the way.

Ref #indiafoss #foss #opensource #fossunited #surge | Meet Mehta

Bengaluru has led Indian technology for decades, and its open-source community has since the days of Linux Bangalore and FOSS.IN, but this felt like a step up: broader, more practical, and reaching well beyond developers.

What struck me most was how much the social sector and government could gain from open tools and, more importantly, open data.

Ref #indiafoss #fossunited | Sathyanarayanan Sankaran

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It was also a reminder that technology is much bigger than the tools we use every day. There are entire communities building, maintaining, documenting and sharing technology openly — and being around that community made me want to explore and contribute more myself.

IndiaFOSS felt less like simply attending a conference and more like stepping into a much larger ecosystem for a couple of days.

Loved interacting with people who are genuinely shaping the open-source ecosystem and thinking long-term about digital commons.

Events like this remind you why community-driven tech matters.

What stood out to me the most was the passion with which people explained what they were building. Even when I didn’t understand a particular topic, the way it was explained made me curious rather than uncomfortable. It reminded me that learning becomes much easier when people are willing to share knowledge without making others feel like they are expected to know everything already.

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And some constructive feedback from the Fediverse (which one of the devroom organizers already responded to)

After Amit’s opening keynote and lightning talk, almost every session I’ve seen in the AOSP devroom has had blatantly Claude generated slides. Very disappointing that people continue to delegate prose to LLMs when they’re knowledgeable enough about the topic at hand to do it themselves.

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Hi All India FOSS organisers,

Thanks for the great event for the past 2 days.

Would like to give some feedbacks and probably a solution. I highly suggest u to look at this constructively.

  1. Regarding Communicon proposals :

I understand that we all have voted fairly etc etc. But why allow those who have talks/workshops/ especially stalls to give the eligibility to propose. I mean the email we all have received literally said " …If ur talk got rejected or missed deadline…"(I’ll attach the screenshot below). I see that tangled have got lots of votes. But why allow them, I personally loved the project and everything, but why a mail like that and allow them. I mean will it make sense to give someone 15 mins opportunity if they already have a stall running for like 2 days. It’s ok that they wanted to share more about the project, but imagine if all those popular stalls did the same and they got more votes. The communicon would have lost it’s purpose right?

Proposed solution:

From next time if such things are organized, it would be really great if u whitelist it to non stall/workshop/talk people. This way it would be fair as the message conveyed in the mail.

Or it’s intended and the email wordings were wrong about the opportunity. Idk. Either of them have to be corrected.

  1. Lunch area:

When I went to lunch with a friend, some volunteer didn’t allow us inside the sitting area mentioning it’s only for people who registered for talks. He stood in the stall for the whole day and wanted to sit atleast for eating. I thought the intention could be to avoid too much traffic in a same space. Being optimistic, I still hope that’s the reason.

Here’s a better fair solution proposal:

i) Get a form beforehand if they need priority due to any medical condition or something.

ii) Have some way to limit the max people at a time can stay in a hall. Like small cheap plastic coins or something which the person who goes in gets and gives back when they are out. Those who have coins can only go inside. U can bridge this with (i) above in some possible ways and let them have a fair priority like (i) first, then stall people, then any other priorities.

Kindly think about these in the next upcoming events planning.

Not gonna say the usual cliche like “even my friends felt that” etc etc.

It’s something I personally felt.

Please enlighten me if I missed out anything.

I wish I have an option there in the form to keep the feedback public or private and also an option to stay anonymous or not.

Though I might sound picky, I want the initiative to better wherever possible. So once again:

It’s a constructive feedback.

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Can you please help us in one way… write down that email in your own words and send it to us ? The flowery language and the fun communication may miss the mark. So your input will help.

Talk proposals were open for everyone - without exceptions - and that includes sponsors, booths, speakers, volunteers and every single attendee. This is by design. One sponsor getting a talk slot isn’t unfair. Maybe they successfully conned the audience right ? :wink: The tangled proposal got 42 votes - just ahead of the last batch - it could have gone either way! By the way 6% of the votes were invalid. The voting website also randomly shuffles the talk order for every user to reduce bias.

If you observe the results - I am last with 41 votes tied with 2 others - in-spite of being arguably among the most visible faces - and literally running around explicitly asking for votes for my talk. And I did that - including from my stage talk in the GB reflections session - and even before the conference started ! :rofl: So what did I learn ? Mere visibility cannot get votes, and neither can asking for them guarantee a win. I just about made it.

We have ideas to make Communi-Con even more fun for next year. E.g. we could have 5 minutes of voting in the beginning from the audience, and require every potential speaker to be present in the room ? Nail-biting moments for them :smiley: No live feedback to see who landed where. Then the results and bam!

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Ok. So communicon is for everyone. That’s what I get it now. I think it’s fine given that’s what the goal u mentioned of it is.

And as for the mail wordings. This is the mail people got:

Hello aaaaaaaaa,

We’re in the final stretch before IndiaFOSS 2026, and this is the last email you’ll want to skim before Saturday.

Here are your ticket details:

xxxxxxxx

Here is a quick map of the weekend, because “figure it out at the venue” is a strategy but not a good one:

Here’s the full schedule, this includes the general track, as well as the devrooms, sort your favs and add them to your calendar

Here’s the map and the list of community booths and tables to hunt for.

Check out the Participants’ Guide for everything else!

A couple of quiet asks: bring a bottle (refills > landfill, you know), and say hi to at least one stranger!

Can’t wait.

See you this weekend

P.S. New this year: Rejected talk? Missed deadline? CommuniCon’s got a stage for you. :megaphone: Propose the talk now!

If communicon is for everyone, I’ll suggest avoid the wordings of giving another chance. Instead do the PS section like:

P.S. Want to get a short time on stage? CommuniCon’s got a stage for you. :megaphone: Propose the talk now!

Use ur creativity here. But point is, this way it’ll atleast mislead less.

Coz earlier it was like:

Rejected talk? Missed deadline?

Propose a talk.

But still u have to compete with those who already have 2 days of stall.

Also a request:

And I request people to go about like whitelisting it for non talk/workshop/ stall people to let others have a chance at it. I mean some stalls had a huge monitor/TV and 2 days of stall. That’s a great opportunity for them and I don’t think a 15 or 10 more minutes of lo lightning will boost them much more.

But it’ll for sure help those who really couldn’t make it to the proposal this year a chance, some small indie dev, indie researcher etc

It felt like same talk is given in both a main hall and also a devroom.

That’s a consideration request, not saying that u “should/must” do it.

And as for the sponsored thing:

I never mentioned anything related to sponsored stuff​:thinking:. I’m totally fine with as many sponsors proposals as u wish given that’s fair for them too. I’m just saying that if all popular stalls did the same thing, it’ll be another devroom thing instead of a chance for others. Or it’ll become a sponsored room instead of communicon.

I’m trying to be more inclusive here. Nothing against your actions or indulgence. Just thought doing it this way will propagate better, hence this feedback.

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Made a note to simplify emails @Vivekanandan_KS . One idea is that next year we may not do emails at all - we might just use the companion app to push notifications. People don’t look at emails - and several have felt excluded this way. Way more people perhaps.

“Stall running for two days” ? Tangled wasn’t a community booth last time I checked. What am I missing ?

Oh well. Gonna hope no devroom managers read this. Devrooms are the reason 50% of the speakers in the conference have a “chance”. How many speakers were at IndiaFOSS before devrooms ?

You are welcome to state your opinion of course. But excluding people is not being “inclusive”.

Overall, I dont get your logic. Going by your idea - should we exclude “popular people” too - in order to be inclusive ? And who decides who is in and out ?

Our story is simple: all attendees have the option to propose and decide. Yes, some may have an advantage. Doesn’t necessarily translate to votes. I have 50+ people in my volunteering teams - 23 AV, 20 livestream, 8 network. I know lots of FOSS United staff and other volunteers. How did I get only 40 votes (I voted for my own talk haha - so only 40!).

Finally, the audience can boot out the speaker if the talk is boring. And that happened to nobody. There is enough disincentive built into the system to reward the right thing.

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If we’re able to get a bigger space next year, we should have a space to just “chill”.

Many good hackathons have a corner with a few chessboards, carrom boards, fooseball, bean bags etc. It’s meant for people who want to relax and have some downtime inbetween a hectic event. With IndiaFOSS tending towards a 3 day event, there will be stretches where a person just wants to chill out and relax at the venue while waiting for the next talk they want to attend.

This is not super high priority and it would be good to do it in the cheapest way possible (borrowing chessboards and other stuff from volunteers for a weekend). But it would be a “nice to have” feature.

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Oh well. Gonna hope no devroom managers read this. Devrooms are the reason 50% of the speakers in the conference have a “chance”.

Exactly how I thought the Communicon would be.

It makes sense on the point that being democratic and not excluding anyone here would be right for the methods u follow. No issues with that. That point made sense. Coz audience are the ones at the end gonna listen what they vote, so it makes much more sense to let them vote stuffs instead of us having to exclude people.

So by that logic, any plans to do the same democratic voting for all talks, booths, devrooms etc? That’ll make more sense as audience are the ones gonna listen to it anyway. We can even do a more democratic voting there right.

If we are much more inclusive why not allow a proprietary domain too in that. I mean we are all foss people so we can trust our people that their voting decision will be correct right?

Democracy is great if there are some objective ground rules set right.

I kind of have to agree on what u said, but it contradicts with existing workflows. Or these are the ground rules which we all have to agree upon.

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You’re assuming that Devrooms don’t have any checks and balances. That couldn’t be further from the truth!

Many devrooms had way more extensive review processes than the general (main) track. Some did community voting. And almost all of them had managers that were representing communities - nobody was a rookie who was just randomly selecting talks based on their whims and fancies.

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OMG. That’s totally not what I said at all. I’m not talking about devroom being wrong. I just am saying that if communicon should be democratic and fair to vote instead of excluding some people. I asked about doing the same good thing for all the talks etc. Coz as Sree kumar pointed out even with many known people he got only some votes, so democratic voting is working great according to that. After all it made sense.

So now wondering why it’s not done for all other talks, workshops, stalls etc with a fair voting?

Or I’m missing out something.

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It won’t be called “democratic” if “somebody” makes all the choices. I have some proposals - some of which were heard in the feedback session. Interest based scheduling from attendees is a great way to allocate space for tracks. Beyond that, how a track runs its own business must be up-to those running that track. IndiaFOSS is a “conference” not an “unconference”. The element of curation (e.g. devrooms, BoFs) makes things interesting and balanced. Voting isn’t the answer to everything. And neither would everyone be interested in voting all the time.

Oh well - there’s plenty of proprietary stuff around now - it’s just accepted so much more nowadays. That’s natural - “software is eating the world”, and everyone has varied needs ! Hard to find real purists these days. Every FOSS advocate is a consumer at some level.

FOSS itself is a unifying concept - a bridge trying to link the F and the O worlds. An attempt to keep a sense of overall identity - even more important in a rampant “fork” culture (remember the slogan on IF25 T-shirt?). And we are sitting in India - the land of diversity. Everyone here has an opinion. So the more flexible we are - the more we will be able to unify. And if we are rigid, we will fail the primary purpose of why the acronym “FOSS” itself exists.

No idea what you’re talking about. But feel free to start a new thread !

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Here is my first feedback after the event!

Regarding booths and Pre-Events:

  1. Pre-Events - missed to post the RSVP link - we need to make this a default feature to propose the event so last minute catchup and confusions can be avoided. Though I had created a portal access for participants to submit the inventory for digitization, we couldn’t get that going.
  2. As I had talks and booth duty missed the potluck and book sharing activity though it seem to have happened on the same floor :smiley: Next time, need a reminder (or a loud speakers to join such pop-up events)
  3. We did give-away books but missed to collect lots of cool stuff! Planning to bring a hand bag for collectibles in the next version.
  4. Met very interesting College Grads & School children - One of the school kid is now prepping her novel to be published! talking to them about Open Knowledge & Open Access & Open Tech was fun!
  5. I think more than just a booth - we need demo stations (Yes, I have a on screen guide for many of my gigs!) would be great and then guide people to their developers! - that might streamline some crowd too. - This time we were crowded, swamped and more - it was all great fun!
  6. Few TVs can be used to show whats happening where (without sound ofcourse) in various spots.. that would also help us check live streams while attending to few other activities…
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Retrospective - Booths at IndiaFOSS 2026
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This feedback is spread across teams as @Vrinda_Gandhi and I were overseeing the whole event along with volunteer management on the day of. Special thanks to Aditeya from FOSS MEC for helping with volunteer management. Mentioned below are my personal thoughts and observations:

What worked

Volunteers

  • We had more than 100 volunteers, the most at any IndiaFOSS. This let us spread responsibilities and assign different owners for things we weren’t able to earlier such as devrooms, livestreaming and photos and short-form videos. In my experience, this was our strongest and most responsible volunteer group so far.
  • At least 95% of the volunteers were students. Most volunteers were referred by FOSS Clubs and their leads. This built trust and made early filtering easier.
  • Selection was through a form and a video response and I strongly believe we should continue this. In the previous editions, we stuck with people we knew. That put us in a difficult spot, because negative feedback risked losing a club or a city community or even spoiling personal relationship. Not saying that’s how it should work, but unfortunately we’ve seen that happen.
  • We gave volunteers small tasks early to find people ready to take initiative. We shared feedback along the way and also parted ways with a few. This avoided problems when we met in person.

Event operations

  • The team prepared a detailed run of show for both days. It included a break schedule and a list of floating volunteers by time slot.
  • The pre-event briefing worked well. We briefed everyone together, walked the whole group through the venue, then held team-wise briefings. Each team knew what it owned and what it did not. We also briefed them of the escalation matrix.
  • Meal lines ran (almost) smoothly. Unlike previous years, F&B volunteers, not the logistics lead, spoke to the vendor on the days. Others handled crowd control and coordinated meal spaces for attendees and speakers.

What to improve

Volunteer management

  • Even though, volunteers were on-boarded earlier than usual, we still have work to do here. We can involve them with more tasks so the full time team isn’t collecting sleep debt from weeks before the event.
  • The floating volunteer list was shared with the full team but only Vrinda, Aditeya and I were aware or using it. The wider team had to ask us who was free or most times assume that the volunteers were nowhere to be found. We also never told them that a document with floating volunteers existed.
  • The briefing was moved to earlier on the day 0 but that change was communicated only a few days in advance. We could have checked with the vendors earlier and made a better decision. While we did end up sending everyone home by 8:30 pm, we can do a better job here.
  • Finding accommodation for volunteers is always a heavy task for the logistics team. The upside is that volunteers stay together, close to the venue. This also comes with the risk of them sharing rooms with strangers which ideally is how hostels and dorms work but not the right setup for teenagers that are traveling to a different city for the first time. If possible, we should consider letting volunteers book their own stay, with reimbursement up to a pre-decided limit.
  • Budget for free tea/coffee for volunteers at the paid beverages booth.
  • We decided on Emcees less than 5 days before the conference. This has been a thing on our list that people have paid least attention too. We look for someone with FOSS United experience, technical knowledge and good at engaging with an audience but forget to keep tabs on suitable people that we meet throughout the year.

Team coordination

  • We need every team of the program committee including full time staff to have a publicly visible tracker/checklist of their work. Towards the end, we ended up with things that had no owners and no deadlines on. This list should also be different from the full time task tracker and should be maintained by the head of a subgroup. Example - design has a checklist/tracker that was maintained by Jeswin and was publicly accessible.
  • We planned a community booth for swag and snacks. Most of us told attendees about it one-to-one, but it was never set up officially and never communicated to people.
  • We planned for the main conference days but missed workshop day logistics, such as drinking water. We fixed it with instant delivery of 10L water cans and dispensers but this should be part of the overall F&B budget and checklist of the conference.
  • Several people bought event supplies without a shared list and we ended up with too many of the same item. We should ideally have one person do this. Example - we ended up with too many handwash bottles this time.

Venue and attendee experience

  • Workshop room mapping email was sent the morning of Day 0. There was also a confusion on who owns it. While the overall management team should have caught this, we need to make it part of the process that the outreach/content team owns sending emails that they draft unless otherwise communicated.
  • Plan for device charging stations for attendees. For a tech conference, this is as basic as water stations.
  • Put up a map of the food lines/booths. People did not know there were more lines than the one they saw. A map helps them spread out on their own.
  • If we stay at the same size, remove the food line from the German tent. It sits where people queue, and serving or showcasing food tables along the queue is additional hassle to deal with.
  • TV remotes were a treasure hunt again. Either ensure one remote per TV or add a strict penalty for the vendor.
  • Use the names that the venue has already labelled.. Call the auditoriums “Audis”, not “Halls” and the “Board Room” not “Room 1”. Mixed names caused confusion.

Forms and data

  • Collect T-shirt size, social media handles and phone number in the first form we send, whether it is for volunteering or the CFP. We did too many follow-ups in the last few weeks, and many would have been ignored.
  • Make speaker phone numbers a required field. As always, we did not know where some speakers were and had to pull in full-time staff to find them. This fortunately did not end up delaying the conference but still isn’t the best experience for volunteers.

Other thoughts/Updates:

  • Devrooms have been a win for the conference. Devrooms have resulted in more communities getting involved, new people attending IndiaFOSS and and a lot more variety in terms of content. I have a feeling we should do more devrooms and just a few invited/main track talks. Main tracks should become a smaller component of the program.
  • We need a FAQ doc for volunteers which briefs people about ‘Things you need to know as an Attendee/Volunteer’

Adding these here while it’s fresh in my mind. I’ll come back to add/edit as I am reminded.

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Notes from Volunteering - IndiaFOSS 2026
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It seems I failed to convey properly. My point is simple: Inclusive is really great, but also do consider how people don’t repeat in all the silos which might give everyone a right opportunity.

I’m more than happy for the event. But wanted to share these thoughts.

And in the depth of this please don’t forget the more important point I sent originally about sitting area for lunch.

Would love if someone looks at it in a different view and get the gist of what I was conveying.

Thank You

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You had complained about the email, misleading wordings, etc - and I had assumed - incorrectly - that you did NOT submit a talk. But now I see you did.

Your argument is now looking like a case of sour grapes. Your talk proposal for CommuniCon got 38 votes. Not bad at all, and is in fact an eye opener for me. I should have also typed “vote for me, please please please” in my session description (those reading this and wondering if this is in bad taste, lookup the earlier linked talk proposal - that seems to work!).

But your talk is at the 10th position in the voting - and possibly couldn’t have made it. Doesn’t mean you didn’t do well. Just a few votes more and you could have had the stage. How about looking at the bright side of things… rather than complaining about all sorts of things under the sun ?

We do take generic feedback, but a specific argument that applies only for yourself cannot be considered a case for representative action. If other folks felt Communi-Con was unfair, then I’ll surely give your points more weight.

Other volunteers should respond to this aspect.

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That’s a pretty old cliche of narrative shift. Ur assumptions can’t be a base for the accusation of biased views.

Since u are diverging, here’s a short summary :

Infact I was being very objective, I never said anything about my proposal. All I asked is if Communicon email mentioned about given a chance in the PS section and then popular stalls who already got 2 days of space also applies, then communicon is about what? Yet another voting based aggregation.

And then u said it’s not okay to exclude some coz Voting is fair and it’s upto the people.

That sounded fair and I asked so why not open voting for all talks, workshops, stalls coz that sounded familiar to the inclusive fairness u mentioned.

The point is simple, why don’t we allow a same person to give in halls and devroom. Why don’t we make someone give 1+ talks in the same track?

That’s exactly what I felt with communicon. A suggestion if communicon’s real aim is to give a chance for those who missed previous stuffs.

Not expecting u to go through some subjective pov on this. Please adhere to the objective pov as that’s what I’m trying to say. Pulling that didn’t help with any point I stated.

Imagine communicon having same topics as talks, workshops, stalls. That’s not inclusive by design. The inclusive I’m aiming is not just everyone, it’s about variety of people. Exactly the reason why we have devrooms and no same talks in devroom as in other main tracks.

I hope this time it clarifies the level of inclusivity I’m talking about.

.