Birds of a Feather sessions (or BoFs) at IndiaFOSS 2024 are informal gatherings for participants to discuss a particular topic without a pre-planned agenda. Themes for the same can be (but not limited to) FOSS Projects, FOSS in academia/govt/social sector, Open Hardware, Open Science, Open Data, Public Policy etc.
Guidelines
Duration: Each BoF Session will last for 60 mins.
Proposals: Propose a BoF session in this forum thread.
Deadline: The deadline for BoF proposals is July 31st,2024.
The proposer will serve as the moderator and initiate the session. Proposers who wish to participate in the discussion but not serve as a moderator should mention [Moderator Required] in the title of their proposal.
The moderator’s role is to ensure that the discussion is interactive and everyone in the audience gets a chance to share their thoughts while making sure the discussion stays on topic.
Unlike panels and talks, BoFs foster engaging conversations rather than formal presentations. Proposals should demonstrate a clear concept for theinteractive nature of the BoF.
In my personal experience 30 mins isn’t enough. 1 hour felt like the right amount of time in my personal experience at PyCon India in 2023. More than 1 hour isn’t necessary either because the individuals/group can take the conversation forward on the conference venue floor, outside the designated space for BoF sessions.
I would like to propose following topic for BoF session:
Title: Power up LLMs to be Factual Ninjas using Knowledge Graphs for RAGs [Moderator Required]
Abstract:
In the era of big data, large language models (LLMs) are becoming increasingly important for tasks like question answering, document analysis, and chatbot development. However, traditional LLMs often struggle with factual accuracy, reasoning, and handling complex information.
This BoF session will introduce and discuss GraphRAG, a novel technique that leverages the power of knowledge graphs to enhance LLMs. We will explore the limitations of traditional LLMs and the vector-only approach of RAG, and how GraphRAG bridges this gap by equipping LLMs with a deeper understanding of the world through enterprise data. This technique boosts their accuracy, reasoning abilities, and handling of complex information.
The session aims to foster an engaging conversation around the potential of GraphRAG, its real-world applications, and its benefits over vector-only approaches.
I am proposing the below Birds of a Feather (BoF) session at the IndiaFOSS 2024.
Title: Hitchhiker’s guide to building hardware
This session will be an open forum where participants can share their experiences, challenges, and growth hacks in building hardware especially in India. We’ll also cover a blueprint for getting started in hardware development. For people already building hardware you can share your journey and for people looking to get involved - this is an opportunity to learn from each other and gain valuable insights.
I am proposing another Birds of a Feather (BoF) session at the IndiaFOSS 2024.
Title: Building for production in Rust
This session will be focused on transitioning from learning Rust to building production-ready projects in Rust. This open forum invites participants to share their knowledge, discuss the patterns they use, and showcase the kind of projects they have built. Whether you’re a seasoned Rustacean or just starting out, this session aims to provide valuable insights into the practical applications of Rust in real-world scenarios.
Title: What do the modern day students expect from FOSS and the FOSS Community ?
This session is supposed to be a discussion or debate about the student community in India who are trying to understand and learn about Free Software and the Philosophy. FOSS is more about the philosophy of Freedom and not just about the Free Code. Students by far are more inclusively participating in most of the FOSS United events. But what do they expect from those events or activities planned by FOSS United ? Can be a discussion of questions to both the student community and FOSS United.
I think in our country, the spirit of cybersecurity is discouraged. Students who are capable and even interested are not given the right atmosphere to nurture. Myself being from a local college and then post graduated from NITW in Mtech(Cybersecurity) , I want to have a session that will allow others to
Comment how they view cybersecurity as of today
If interested, what prevents them from excelling
How they can get started in cybersecurity even as a casual researcher
Also want to discuss about cybersecurity and its meaning for everyone who is not actively involved in it but nobody is not affected by it.
Title: Generating accurate SBOMs with PackageURLs for software security and license compliance
Identifying all the FOSS (and other) software components present in software we use and consume, and communicate information about them in a standard way is extremely important for enhanced security by vulnerability mitigation, and complying with license terms. We could discuss various key challenges in package identification and uniquely identifiable packages though Package URLs (PURL), features and shortcomings of various tooling used today, and community initiatives to bridge gaps in this field.
Title: Hardware Freedom, and how we can do far better at it
The FOSS movement has proliferated to almost all parts of the software world. And the benefits of the same are widespread. Hardware in all its generality, on the other hand, doesn’t share the same fortune. Despite the impressiveness of the efforts indie open-hardware devs have made, it’s still far from making widespread impact. The design and manufacture of widely-used hardware, especially computational substrates and peripheries, are still largely constrained to the hands of a limited few entities.
I propose a discussion on the drawbacks of the state of hardware and its monopolies today, and what it’d take for its liberation, alongside the barriers en-route the same.
Hallo everyone! I absolutely LOVE the two proposed hardware BOFs already, will participate in “Hitchhiker’s guide to building hardware” and “Hardware Freedom, and how we can do far better at it” if they go through!
I want to propose this:
Title: How does AI make you feel?
An open discussion that dives into how AI and generative models are reshaping the way we interact, create, and interpret information. While AI tools can be incredibly useful, they’ve also stirred a wide range of emotions, from existential dread to sheer joy.
A lot of the conversation around AI focuses on its capabilities (engineer’s bias?), but what about the human side of the equation? How are these tools impacting our daily lives, our work, and our sense of self? This session is about exploring those personal experiences and feelings.
I want to discuss: what tools you use, have you experienced strong emotions related to AI, have you had feelings of job displacement, do you have privacy concerns, are there any ethical considerations that you’ve thought about and finally, developments you’re looking forward to/dreading.
Title: Does source available / Fair source software gives value to the community?
Elastic, Redis, Mongo, Sentry and a whole bunch of software projects that started off with FOSS licenses, have transitioned to “source available” or “non-commercial” licenses. Recently this was framed as Fair source (https://fair.io/). Has the world changed in how we ethically feel about software? Or is it just the commercial interest is now significantly higher that it was prior? Do such licenses make concrete promises (eg: 4 freedoms) in a way that FOSS licenses do?
I believe this would be interesting topic for many license geeks.
I would like to propose a BoF on managing the security aspects of FOSS.
Title: Security aspects/challenges in the development, distribution, and deployment of FOSS
This BoF plans to build upon a talk I am giving titled “XZ Utils Backdoor: What it is and What it means for the FOSS Community?”. This talk will discuss the recent vulnerability (CVE-2024-3094) found in the XZ code that has been attributed to a malicious actor.
The BoF will go further and discuss the broader security landscape around the development, distribution, and deployment of FOSS - highlighted by the CVE.
The session would hopefully kick-off a continuing and serious discussion around the security of FOSS, both software and systems where participants can pitch in their thoughts on how the community could potentially mitigate future security challenges of FOSS, especially in a rapidly digitising world. These solutions may include not only tools, secure coding practices, but also policies, education, training etc. Post the BoF, the partcipants could form a discussion group where one could trade ideas and disseminate them to the wider community.
Date/Time: If scheduled, I would prefer that the BoF follow after my talk on the XZ vulnerability.