Last Saturday following some Infotech 2013 related discussions during MSCC meetup, I sent the team an email inquiring about the possibility of having a presentation slot for Linux & openSUSE Project. Monday morning I received a positive response and since then I’ve been in constant contact with the team via email & phone calls.

Jochen, Nirvan and I were going to present our topics (the same that we have prepared for Monday’s Linuxfest). Infotech’s website was updated with the presentation list 2 days ago. That gives a very short notice to people who could have been potential attendees to the talks. Besides I wonder if the Infotech team had been in contact with companies updating them about the various presentations in the conference schedule because when we reached the conference room, Symantec was doing a presentation with virtually no audience. That was kinda heart-breaking.

What could be the reason? Improper communication & planning of event… Even on the official website you need to dig around before you stumble upon the presentations list. It was a poor design & even worst maintained. Anyway, after the heart-breaking scene at the conference room, we crossed fingers & went to meet the NCB team with whom I had liaised earlier. Ahaaan … Heart breaks again. The stands were the most boring I ever saw. No one seemed to know real thing about open source, Linux or the philosophy of free software. None of the personnel could give us the right information why there isn’t an audience at the conference room. Are the announcements not done properly? What was happening? All you could see around was business happening! Infotech! Is it really educating people about technology … or just doing business as usual? If the latter, it’s rather a Tech Bazaar.

Anyway, we went back to the conference room. I initially wanted to go & do the announcement for the Linux conference that was scheduled but it seemed that only the ladies there should do it. Pathetic!

By the time I had to do the presentation, audience number had lowered. I guess some needed to catch the bus. Indeed, another bad timing issue. Photos, courtesy of Pawan & Nadim.

Well… Finally, we decided to just practice our presentations for Monday & have some fun. Yes! Awesome that was. I was happy to do the presentation & get response from folks. We were maybe around 10 people in the conference room. So, it was rather a peer-review of the slides. I also got some nice tips for Monday. Things that I should add & things that I shouldn’t say :P

To sum-up in a few words, Infotech Day 1 was a complete de-motivational experience. Never mind, I believe it’s a lack of experience on behalf of some.

Never back down… So, we gonna gear up again & see how it goes tomorrow.

Ohh… As we were leaving seemed like the day wasn’t bad enough. Car broke down! Actually, it was the battery that got drained due to headlamps remaining ON. Yup! I had a friend’s car today. I called up a mechanic friend who said he can come to solve the issue. While waiting for him, Nadim, Nirvan, Pawan, Pritvi & I went back to the foodcourt & had some snacks. He came up a while later with a spare battery & helped starting the car.

I then went to drop folks and continued chatting about usual geek stuffs.