# Notes from Volunteering - IndiaFOSS 2026 **URL:** \ **Category:** IndiaFOSS Conference\ **Created:** [1 October 2026 12:23 UTC](https://forum.fossunited.org/t/notes-from-volunteering-indiafoss-2026/9373 "2026-10-01T12:23:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ansh](https://forum.fossunited.org/user_avatar/forum.fossunited.org/ansh/32/1423_2.png) [@ansh](https://forum.fossunited.org/u/ansh)\ **Post date:** [1 October 2026 12:23 UTC](https://forum.fossunited.org/t/notes-from-volunteering-indiafoss-2026/9373/1 "2026-10-01T12:23:35Z")
We welcome all IndiaFOSS volunteers to write about their experience volunteering at the festival (both remotely and on-ground). This documentation is very crucial to event planning. It helps future volunteers understand their responsibility better and also fix the mistakes we made this year! ---
**Author:** ![ansh](https://forum.fossunited.org/user_avatar/forum.fossunited.org/ansh/32/1423_2.png) [@ansh](https://forum.fossunited.org/u/ansh)\ **Post date:** [1 October 2026 14:19 UTC](https://forum.fossunited.org/t/notes-from-volunteering-indiafoss-2026/9373/2 "2026-10-01T14:19:59Z")
## Booths at IndiaFOSS 2026 > **[IndiaFOSS 2026 Booths](https://fossunited.org/indiafoss/2026/booths)** > > Discover new projects, meet contributors, or connect over open technologies, the booths are a vibrant space for conversations and collaboration. Booths have become an important part of the IndiaFOSS festival, and participants spend a lot (if not most) of their time at the community expo. Showcasing projects and communities also have a lot of fun at the expo, and the number of applications has only increased in the last 3 years. We did a lot of experiments with booths this time - - Single day booths - 10+ booths showcased for one of the days of the event - Shared booths - Multiple projects shared a single table - SOCH + BCI, Chitra and Sanka, Sanchaya and Servants of knowledge We also put a lot of thought into booth outreach this time. IndiaFOSS has transitioned from a FOSS conference to a “Digital Commons Festival”, and the community showcase this year was a good signal for this. We categorized (and placed) the booths thematically, and here are some numbers - - Hardware - 10 - Education and Community - 11 - Devtools, Infra, Applications - 8 - Linux/OS - 6 - Privacy - 5 - Knowledge Commons - 14 - Civil Society - 17 Notably, more than 40% of the booths belong to the Knowledge Commons and Civil Society categories. We want IndiaFOSS, the “digital commons festival” to act as a big tent for the entire ecosystem, enabling these orgs and communities to interact with the FOSS community and - - Talk about their use of FOSS/technology to create impact - Create a shelf of problems that aspiring technologists can work on We are very happy with the reception that the community showcase is receiving, and only want to expand it next year. That said, a few things went wrong - - We did not map out the first floor area in advance. While we knew which “category” of booths goes where, individually mapping them would’ve taken only an additional half an hour, but saved a lot of last minute time and trouble for both the volunteers and booth managers. - The showcase area was empty for some parts of both days. We have a LOT of participants at IndiaFOSS, and the community showcase makes for a good opportunity to hold crowds during peak hours (invited talks/panels, lunch breaks). - We noticed some booths were left unattended for extended periods of time. - It’s unfortunate that the Hardware community always ends up unhappy with placement. Hardware is “visual” and needs better placement. Last year, we brought them to the ground floor outside Audi 3 to give them more space. They felt that area was secluded and did not get enough eyeballs. This year, we put them in a bigger room on the ground floor to curate a “hardware showcase room”, but ended up putting them in a box, which was not noticeable to many people, and also got cramped. I think it is best to put the hardware booths upstairs next time. - Issues with last minute communication, ticketing, TVs, Wifi, etc. We did better this year on these fronts but there is always scope for improvement. I had a long chat with Richi, one of the organisers of [FOSDEM]( [FOSDEM 2027](https://fosdem.org/2027/) ). FOSDEM has almost 100 stands at the event, and suffer the same space problems as we do. They have creative ways to curating and placing stands, and also ensuring they are staffed for the entirety of the event. The IndiaFOSS community showcase aims to be even broader than FOSDEM (in the sense we want “non technical” communities to feel at home here), so we want to ensure more projects get to showcase in future years. I have a few ideas for this (yet to be discussed with the team) - - Very few booths will get to showcase on both days. If they do, they need to have a minimum of 4 booth managers who rotate over the course of the event). - Communities that do not have enough person power to manage their booths should apply for single day and/or shared booths. This also increases their chances of selection (we had to accept more than half the applications this year and this will only get harder with time). - Leaving the booth unattended should strictly not be an option. FOSDEM makes it very clear that unattended booths will not be selected in future years. At our end, we should make space for faster food and coffee access, more water stations etc. for booth managers if we want to mandate this. - I want to use the glass area (usually used for FnB) for showcases - this is of course a bigger logistical question that needs more discussion. Until we are able to move to a bigger venue, these feel like reasonable guidelines to ensure a bigger and better community showcase that accounts for the constraints we operate in. If you showcased this year, please feel free to reach out to [booths.indiafoss@fossunited.org](mailto:booths.indiafoss@fossunited.org) with feedback, or post [here]([IndiaFOSS 2026 - Feedback - #23 by Shree\_Kumar](https://forum.fossunited.org/t/indiafoss-2026-feedback/9368/23)) ---
**Author:** ![ansh](https://forum.fossunited.org/user_avatar/forum.fossunited.org/ansh/32/1423_2.png) [@ansh](https://forum.fossunited.org/u/ansh)\ **Post date:** [1 October 2026 14:21 UTC](https://forum.fossunited.org/t/notes-from-volunteering-indiafoss-2026/9373/3 "2026-10-01T14:21:15Z")
> [@IndiaFOSS 2026 - Feedback](https://forum.fossunited.org/t/indiafoss-2026-feedback/9368/18): > > 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 a…