I’m preparing to travel to Bangalore for FOSS.IN, which is happening next week from the 25th to the 29th of November.

It’s looking very much like the deeply developer-focused event the organizers were hoping for. On the schedule is a mix of technical talks and workout sessions. I’ll be involved in the Kernel Quality Improvement Workout headed up by Christoph Hellwig, as well as giving a talk on Fedora Kiosk Mode. This will be expanded a little on the talk I gave at FOSS.MY due to extra time available.

I was going to talk about sVirt at the planned Fudcon, but the Fudcon was unfortunately cancelled. Fedora folk will still be there, though, and if anyone wants to talk about sVirt and get involved in some really cool and innovative hacking, catch up with me.

The main hall has been set aside for an entire day to host a Linux Kernel Hacker Gathering (LKHG), with sessions on Filesystems, Tracing, Power Management and Porting. It seems that this will be something like an open mini kernel summit, with participants to include Suparna Bhattacharya, Ananth N Mavinakayanahalli, Christoph Hellwig, Aneesh Kumar K V, Balbir Singh, Srikanth Srinivasan, Harald Welte, Srivatsa Vaddagiri, Amit Shah, myself, and Dipankar Sarma.

The final slot will be open for lightning talks from the audience, with the kernel hacker panel providing feedback, followed by an open Q&A session. This is somewhat based on the format of the LF symposium BoF day, and will be a great opportunity for people working on kernel projects to bounce their ideas off upstream kernel hackers. This includes people working on drivers and various kernel projects which are not currently upstream (i.e. work projects), who would like to get some advice on how to get their project upstreamed and how to work more effectively with the community.

A CfP will go out for the lightning talks soon, so if you want to participate, keep an eye out for that.

The organizers have made a video to promote and explain the conference:

And yes, you can hack on the roof of the building, or even hold talks: there’s an outdoor auditorium up there.

Currently, there’s over 900 delegates registered, which is a lot for a developer conference. (Linux Plumbers had 300, IIRC).

I think this promotional banner sums up my experience so far:

Not your typical Linux conference, by any means.