FOSSSL 2006

Last year, we organized a successful week of FOSS activities, and we decided to make it an annual event. This year, we named the whole week to be `FOSSSL 2006', as opposed to FOSSSL being one of the events during the 2005 FOSS Week. The events of the week were FossCode, FOSSSchool, ApacheCon, FOSSEnterprise and Geekout. FOSSCode was organized in a similar manner to Google Summer of Code. I was mentoring Mahangu's project for Taprobane. Five more students took part implementing various projects. FOSSSchool, held at the University of Moratuwa, was for introducing FOSS to students. Morning session was for schools and the evening session for university students. I did an introductory session in each. Interestingly, I had to make the one in the evening more `serious' as the students already had a good understanding of what FOSS is. Ken Coar had already arrived, but as a bomb off targetting a Pakistani diplomat, we suggested him to stay at the hotel. However, all the other speakers turned up as planned. The ApacheCon was the first of its kind in Asia. The participation was over expectations. A `Hackerthon' also was held along the conference. The last confernce-like event was the FOSSEnterprice held at WatersEdge. The sessions were moderated, 15 minutes each, and a panel discussion followed each 3 sessions. I followed James Clark on FOSS evaluation, and Bud was the other panelist in our group moderated by Ken Coar. On Friday evening, we left Colombo for the Geekout. I will post seperately on that. :-)