GNUnify '10 or How I managed not to screw up my talk on Dorrie

Kushal Das just came out with his blog post on his Python Workshop at GNUnify '10 and I realised I hadn't published any on my experiences.

So here goes.

I sent in my proposal for GNUnify '10 on 5th of Feburary, which was apparently the last day. So when the first schedule came out, I wasn't listed and my proposal showed a "Pending" status, so I thought maybe I would visit as a delegate.

By some twist of fate the proposal suddenly got accepted, and since my talk was on Dorrie, I realised that meant I had to add some more features to it so that my talk is not the same as the one I gave at FOSS.IN/2009.

Unfortunately there was little time to do that and combined with my sudden realisation the day before GNUnify was to start, that it would start on Friday(the next day) and not Saturday, I found myself at the event without any slides or new features.

Day 1, GNUnify I could not do anything useful as my laptop was being used by Mr. Amit Shah, the KVM developer. I however attended both his talks and found them quite interesting. (Was wondering why KVM is never demonstrated as an example by professors teaching Computer Science students about Virtual Machines and how much interest that would gather from the classroom.)

That night and the next morning (Day 2), I spend trying to add proper spin building messages into the web interface and getting a "Download ISO" link up. Then I updated my slides.

Right before my talk Hiemanshu Sharma was talking about "Building your own Fedora Remix" and I thought that would be an apt introduction to the next talk (which was my talk on Dorrie), which dealt with a "Web interface for building your own Fedora Remix". Unfortunately, Hiemanshu's talk was predominantly lacklustre and lost quite a bit of the audience.

I went up next with my talk on Dorrie. This talk, as compared to one I delivered at FOSS.IN, was went pretty awesome. I was talking and not blabbering and managed to connect with whatever people were present in the audience.

Here is a picture of me waiting for the "Download ISO" link to turn up.(Courtesy Kushal Das)



You can download my slides from here.