FOSS.IN 2005 starts today

FOSS.IN is India's largest Free & Open Source Software (FOSS) event. It attracts a lot of participants from India and from rest of the world. This is the natural successor to the enormously successful Linux Bangalore conference, and it covers many additional topics related to FOSS, like *BSD, community, advocacy, FOSS in education, copyrights and patents, etc.

This year, it becomes more significant, as the Govt. of India would be the "Principal Sponsor" of the event, apart from the sponsorship from various corporates like Intel, Google, Sun and HP. The venue has been changed to Palace ground considering the increased number of participation.

The event also boasts of a large number of distinguished speakers ranging from Alan Cox (Linux kernel maintainer), Rasmus Lerdof (Mr. Php), Harald Welte (netfilters/iptables), Zaheda Bhorat (Head of Open Source, Google) and a lots of other *star* Indian and foreign speakers.

Prasad and myself had proposed two topics. One of them, Cross Platform Programming Techniques was today. The schedule was slipped due the the morning talks getting extended. We had only about 50 participants for this talk. We felt that, any topics without a linux word in that attract less crowd. I gave the presenaton alone since the time given was only 40 minutes.

tuesdays with Morrie

"People would come visit, friends, associates, but it is not the same as having someone who will not leave. It is not the same as having some one whom you know has an eye on you, is watching you the whole time."

- Prof. Morrie Schwartz about family

"If you want the experience of having complete responsibility for another human being, and to learn how to love and bond in the deepest way, then you should have children."

"When you learn how to die, you learn how to live."

A beutifully written book, I must say. Now is the time to reclaim yourself. Now is the time to see yourself again as who you really are, and thus, render yourself visible again.

We were gifted the book "tuesdays with Morrie" by our mentoring workshop team. It is about a professor and a student who re-unite with the professor after 16 years. Like every student, even Mitch promised to keep in touch with the professor when he was graduated. However, he caught up with his own life and forgot the old promises in the run of becoming rich and famous. The professor, who was aging, was terminally ill by that time. He had ALS ( amyotrophic lateral sclerosis ) a brutal, unforgiving illness of the neurological system.

Mitch decides to Visit the Professor after accidently seeing a TV program about the professor. Thus the class begun. Mitch visits the professor for next 14 weeks and they talk about one area in every tuesday; many topics were covered, including love, work, community, family, aging.... A funeral was held in lieu of graduation.

A touching story and the insight that the professor had is true for the stressful life even we follow. I would recommend that everyone reads this book.

Mentoring Workshop

I'm attending a mentoring workshop today and tomorrow. This is conducted by an external HR consulting firm called CORE MIND (Corporate Renaissance of Employees Maximization of Individual's Needs and Desires ). The title of the program is "MENTORING - An Invaluable Corporate Lifeline ! Unleash Power of Employee Transformation & Corporate Dynamism".

Perspective
Executives and Managers are feeling battered by the pressures mounting on them and need support, for surviving and growing. Mentoring ideally falls into place and has never been felt more essential. There is an imperative need to meet growing desires of employess to be guided in the work place. Their personal and functional competencies require enhancement. Growing organizations reap utmost benefits by leveraging Mentor - Protégé bonding. Mentoring processes enable mutual growth for Mentors and Protégés which result in overall Organizational Effectiveness, Cultural improvements and Customer delight.

"If every Leader / Manager in Corporate life served as a Mentor to Protégé as well as become a Protégé to a Mentor, we would be more successful and capable of transforming Organizations substantially faster than we do today"

Organization Transformation Model Through Mentoring Process

Voluntarism by and / or Identifcation of Protential Mentors
Integrating willing Mentors and desiring Protégés
Mentors and Protégés relish their journey of togetherness in life
Mentors and Protégés build relationships of mutual acceptance
Mentors enable Protégés in enhancing Personal and Performance Effectiveness
Mentors transform Protégés into emotionally engaged employees
Emotionally engaged employees create emotionally engaged customers
Emotionally engaged customers drive business growth, profits & shareholder value

There are many more to add here to get a perspective of this training program.
The training is conducted by G. Udayakumar, Director of CORE MIND who is a freelancer and excellent corporate trainer.

We were asked to choose a buddy in the beginning of the program. Coincedently, Anand Sinha became my buddy. Then we were asked to mix with another pair of buddies and laer with another set of such group. We were asked to come up with a name, slogan and a song for each team. Here are the teams we formed
1. Phoenix - "Fly High" ( I belong to this group)
2. Disha - "Hum Hein na? "
3. Gurukul - "Reach out"
4. Vanskape - "Passionately Pursuing Potential" ( They say that this name is formed by taking first letter of all members )
5. Enthu Cutlet - "You win, we win, we all win together"

Remaining part of the day was filled with various activities to remember and thus get an inner sight of various people who touched or made a difference in each one of our life.

A weekend in Veerajpet

We had a series of holidays in the first week of November. We decided to drive down to Veerajpet, a southern district, famous for coffee. The Chegappa couple has a house where they accommodate nature lovers with homely food and atmosphere. The Honey Valley estate is an ideal place to spend a couple of days for any nature lovers.

Though they warned us about climbing up with our scorpio, we decided to test the vehicle. We could manage even though we got stuck in one place. ( I don't recommend anyone else to take a chance if the muddy road that leads to Chengappa house is slushy )

We enjoyed the environment and decided to just roam around close to the resort in the first day. Second day, we trekked to Tadiyantanamol, one of the highest peak in western ghats. It was a 16 km trekk through multiple leach palaces. Axe deo was a real savor in this case. ( I found lots of blood and leach bite when I removed my shoe in the evening ). It started raining as we reached top and I should admit, the view from top is something that one should experience.

Checkout some of the photographs in our gallery

On return, we came back through Bhagamandala ( bhagandeswara temple), Talacauvery ( birth place of River Cauvery ), Abbe falls in Madikery and the Golden Temple in Kushal Nager.

Changes...Changes...Changes

It has been a hard time in office for last two weeks. There are lots of changes happening. Leadership changes, team changes. As managers are given training to implement changes, ICs should be given training to accept changes, I think.

Anyway I have to concentrate few things in work front and personal. Foss is coming up and I have a teaching assignment. The first cut of slides are submitted and we are waiting for the next milestone.