The FOSS Fair

To complement the FOSS Week events that happened as seminars and conferences where participation was by registration or invitation, we also organized a `FOSS Fair'. The name, and also that of FOSSchool, was coined by Suchetha. There were public demos at Crescat and Majestic City shopping complexes, and an install-fest and seminars at BMICH on the 10th and 11th. The dates were selected to coinside with the Software Freedom Day. Martin, Danese and Micheal were to leave soon, and other speakers went on a trip to Habarana and Sigiriya over the weekend. There was a dinner for all the sponsors and speakers at the Havlock Lodge, to which I dropped in for a couple of minutes to say goodbye to Martin, David (who was to leave on Sunday evening after the trip) and Danese, and drove straight to Narada Center to join others on the BMICH events. The install fest happened at the `Restaurant Longue' of the BMICH, which was behind the committee rooms. There were booths from some sponsors such as RedHat, Neat, Suntel, IBM and Intel. After helping transport some of the machines to the install fest, me and my brother went directly to the Committee Room C reserved us for the seminars. As the Colombo International Book Fair was happenning at the main BMICH, we managed to get a fair crowd. After a while, Bud also joined to `load-balance' the seminars. During Saturday night, we got hold of some the banners used at the other FOSS Fair events, printed some direction signs, and started very early on Sunday. We maneged to put up banners all over the place, and direction signs for people to easily find the seminars and install fest. The turnover was much better. Dr Nandalal also did a few presentations at the seminars. After winding up the events, I started the long drive with Suchetha and Sanjaya to join the FOSSSL speakers. The details of that trip will come as a seperate post.