Sadly, there is nothing objective about what you are saying. Objective means based on facts. And what are facts ? Data right ?? I’ve stuck to data and will continue to stick to that when it’s available.
I’ve had one speaker reaching out saying this:
First of all, I would like to thank everyone responsible for hosting such a fabulous event and allowing me to talk independently on stage for the first time ever. It was a great experience!
So here is a suggestion: All the data is available. Analyze it and then make your point. You can download CSVs for talk proposals both for IndiaFOSS and Communi-Con. CSVs won’t include names of proposers, but I’m guessing you can easily get those (an AI example) Please find who applied for communi-con, had they applied also for IndiaFOSS, did they give a talk at both places are not, etc, are they a “popular” speaker, sponsor, etc etc. With data, see which of your fears have actually come true, and which of them are firmly your imagination. And don’t keep that data with yourself, enlighten us too.
Reminds me - I haven’t released the voting data yet. Will do so when I get time. Perhaps tomorrow.
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No, the objective of communi-con was not to give a “chance” to people. It is to select interesting topics based on audience interest.
How much time did you spend voting btw ? I’ve been wondering about fair voting - and to be close to fair we could just give 2-5 minutes to the audience to vote on the spot. Maybe even hide speaker names. Least bias, and no external influence.
Did you hear my Communi-Con talk ? GB reflections talk ? Please take 15 minutes and listen to both.
The only way at this point for FOSS United to be more “inclusive” is by getting out of NIMHANS and going to a university. Reasons are venue capacity, and cost of logistics. The facts are simple: FOSS.IN/2005 held 20 years ago had more attendance than IndiaFOSS in 2026 ! The economy has boomed, IT is everywhere, and FOSS is powering 90% of it, but the conference has remained a dwarf in absolute terms 
The conference needs more devrooms, more workshops, more BoFs, more Communi-Cons! For that we need way more space - and more important space on demand. Peak demand is close to conference dates 
This kind of thinking is the result of not scaling capacity to meet demand - we have hit venue capacity 2 times in a row. We are all playing a zero sum game without understanding that we are doing so. And that’s a problem nobody seems to “get”.
If IndiaFOSS goes to a university, we can scale 2-4x (5k-10k) easily over the next 2 years. The objective of that is to have all of the FOSS world (at-least from India) present physically and finding collaboration opportunities. Yes, that includes more “corpos” too This will give many more perspective, and more opportunities - including impromptu opportunities. Imagine how cool that would be… We can achieve all that for cheap btw - by taking food out of ticket cost, and moving to a university.
I understand your pain, and the only way to fix it is by having a bigger conference. We need more volunteers to get in more of the FOSS world. Here is exactly what we need:
- volunteers to find communities that are not represented at IndiaFOSS. Figure out would prevent them from showing up and fix that. We are trying to get more systems tracks - more Linux kernel (0 talks in the general track!), more databases, more (see my slide on areas of FOSS)
- volunteers to reach out to people who run smaller communities, meetups. See if they want to run devrooms
- volunteers to reach out to “adjacent” communities whose primary identity is not FOSS. The art world, electronic world, mechanical world, civil world.
- ask project booths and devrooms to run killer workshops! there’s hardly any real building happening at the conference.
Here are some numbers: 20-32 devrooms. 50 workshops (1 each comes from devroom, and more from others)
The energy a conference generates is immense - and we are throwing it all away at the moment. So, we should kickstart FOSSHack 2027 when IndiaFOSS 2027 *starts*. Then leave it running for a month.
Here is the FOSSHack 2027 pitch for everyone:
- Don’t have the skills ? Learn them during the workshops.
- Don’t know how to do everything ? Find collaborators at the conference. Build a great team and go on to make the next best thing.
- Not getting great ideas? How about getting inspired by looking at everything that India has to offer! Improve any of them and we may get useful contributions.
This way we have more people (“creators”) at the conference, we build build better human networks, and achieve fantastic outcomes. @rahulporuri @Ashutosh_Pandey also tagging you here since you have a passion for this, and @Mohit_P_Tahiliani also for same reasons, as well as being the student champion