GNUnify 2010 – My view

GNUnify is an annual gathering of the techies and this year it was held on Feb 19th and 20th 2010.. It is organised by the students of the Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research (SICSR) in association with the Pune GNU/Linux Users Group (PLUG) to provide a platform for exchange of ideas knowledge among the industry professionals, students and academia.

Aditya and I attended the two day event as speakers.

The Good

The event on the whole was good. One thing we particularly liked was the hospitality of the entire gnuNify team. They picked up every speaker from respective arrival locations and provided excellent stay. It didn’t matter whether the speaker is arriving late night or early morning, they made sure that every speaker is welcomed on his/her arrival.

The other good part of the event were the tracks for the talks. This time they introduced a new track, Scientific Computing, for all those budding scientists out there. Other tracks included Software Development, System Administration, Foss in Education and Embedded Systems. The event witnessed speakers from a vast variety of domains. All speakers were experts in their respective fields and the event was a perfect blend of all kind of technologies.

The venue itself was fabulous. All halls were equipped with everything needed for a talk. The two bigger halls had video coverage as well and we were told that the talk were telecast live to some affiliated colleges in other parts of India.

Lastly, any conference cannot be called as good if the food provided is bad. In gnuNify’s case the food was excellent. The party they hosted at the night of 19th Feb was particularly marvelous with excellent food.

Not so good

There were too many simultaneous tracks going on (at times 8). Because of so many simultaneous talks, the audience got divided. Delegates were confused as to which talk to attend as they had too many good choices.

Bad

The level of audience was not what we expected. With the kind of talks/workshops selected, we expected that more professionals/advanced users will be attending the conference, but most of them were students who were new to the technology they were listening to. As a result, talks used to start with a full house and end with just about 20% of original.

There was really nothing ugly at the gnuNify and the event overall was a success story. Looking forward to attend more gnuNify editions in the coming years.