On Saturday afternoon Ajay confirmed me he’ll come for the OpenELEC demos at Infotech 2015 the next day. So, I hopped in to help too. Hmm, well, “help” might be a big word here. I was only around on Sunday with my laptop shooting random stuffs and chatting with a few people about Linux as an “everyday” alternative.

I had a nice chat with Riad from the National Computer Board. We also talked about some projects that are in loop where the Linux User Group of Mauritius would benefit from.

The day started shortly after 11h00 for me. Ajay had reached right at the moment when I entered the parking lot of Swami Vivekananda Int’l Convention Centre. The food court was half full as people were still coming in. However, it wasn’t that busy for a Sunday. I felt like previous editions had more people on the last day.

We got the gears ready and Ajay configured his media server to play some videos through the Raspberry Pi while Chris Gunnoo was as excited to demo his robots to the curious visitors.

OpenELEC garnered visitors attention

Ajay told me that the day before, after I left, a visitor was particularly interested with the OpenELEC demo. The fellow works as a cook and he was so amazed by the cooking channels that Ajay showed him, he bought a pendrive and asked for a live image that he could use at home. Ajay was happy to provide him one :)

Foodcourt refused to sell me Indian curry separately

Around 12h30 I went to have lunch. I bought sandwiches, french fries and a glass of “alouda”. Something interesting happened later in the evening though. I had left Infotech earlier then came back with my mom & auntie in the evening. Mom told me that I could find some vegetarian Indian curry if I’d like. I went there and decided to buy the “paneer curry” only. I asked the lady to sell only a portion of the curry in one of the plastic recipients but as she was going to do so a guy stopped her. I was curiously watching the scene and the guy who appeared to be like a “bossing around manager” tells her to tell me that they cannot sell the curry separately because they will be in short of plastic recipients for other customers. Huh! That was fun because the food-court was ³⁄₄ empty at 18h50. Infotech was due to end at 19h00. The lady was feeling awkward to tell me the reason why she can’t sell one curry only but I had witnessed the scene. I smiled at her and said, “it’s okay” and I left.

Well, that was something I wanted to share in my blog post wondering if other people might have experienced similar situations at the Indian food section of the food-court.

Anyway, back to my story, we’re still around 12h30, I grab my sandwiches, french fries, alouda and reach for a table. All tables were occupied. I asked a gentleman if I could share his table, he politely said I could. I was eating and half-way lost in my thoughts when a guy approached and greeted me. Oh, he apologized for disturbing while I’m eating, that’s courtesy :) That was Suyash Sumaroo from Codevigor Ltd. He shared a stand with Ebène Accelerator fellows in the main hall where he showcased his online service document.mu. We talked about his application and had a quick chat about entrepreneurship and the struggle of start-ups in Mauritius.

When I came back to the LUGM stand I found a mini crowd peeking over the Raspberry Pi.

Ajay handled like a maestro. I answered a couple of questions people asked about the RPi, its price, how it is programmed, does it come “naked” as in without a casing etc. Then some familiar faces popped in. They were folks from the University of Mauritius Computer Club.

Later I met Sadhveer and I was glad to hear that her little sister is a Linux user too :)

Infotech 2015 ended on a good note that the National Computer Board has some promising avenues for future collaboration with the Linux User Group of Mauritius.