Kinshuk Sunil

0626 Hrs. Get a call from home. Rise and shine sleepyhead. Thomas is coming over too. He is a fellow camper from chennai; he needs a place to keep his luggage and to take a bath. I need some company; I invite him over.

He is there by 8AM, by the time I was fresh and ready. We start at 8:20 for the venue. I am the organizer for chrissake! I have to be there early, get things arranged and organized. But first - Breakfast!

Me and Thomas head over to the Kabini Canteen for a quick breakfast while discussing FOSS. It feels so great to be talking like you really know what you are talking about, even if you don’t. Post breakfast, Thomas and I start on our mission to find and reach the venue. I was to experience the vastness of the IISc campus, now. 40 minutes and 15 guides later, we reach the CEDT Building. Welcome to OSScamp Bengaluru!

A lot of people are finding it difficult to find the venue. After 2 hours, around 20 campers are there. Another 13 are connected with me on phone, trying to find the venue but they are not in luck. I the meanwhile, I met Dr. Srinidhi who was one of the organizers of ICCBN 2008 and OSScamp Bengaluru. He is a very assuring and disorienting personality. Assuring as he is very friendly, jovial, helping, has-every-situation-under-control, sort of, and yet disorienting as he is authoritative and a power figure. I wouldn’t want to blunder with him around.

Incidentally, the only guys to arrive on time were the speakers and, of course, Thomas, and Viral. Khasim from Texas Instruments, Thejoranjan from MyToday, Abhishek from MyDunia and myself were to be at the helm of the affairs.

After having some trouble setting up the internet et al, we were good to go at 11:20. I introduced the concept of OSScamps, Bar Camps to the campers and what to expect out of the day. I also emphasized on how OSScamps, inspired by Bar Camps, aim at creating a platform for promoting FOSS Technologies and FOSS Projects from India through the planned chaos that unconferences use to encourage informal meets between geeks and knowledge sharing.

Somehow, the turnout was very disappointing at OSScamp Bengaluru. At OSScamp Delhi, we witness a general turnout ratio of 40% (registrations to campers). Considering 160 registrations for OSScamp Bengaluru, it comes to around 64; lets assume 60. Now, considering Bengaluru to be the FOSS Capital of India, and having a very active and strong FOSS community, I was hopeful for almost a 50% turnout. That would have been 80 campers. But only 25 turned up. About 16%. The Why completely escapes me.

Next, Abhishek Parolkar, from MyDunia Networks, took charge of the session and talked about ‘Developing SMS Applications with Ruby-SMPP’. With an aim to motivate the audience to look for the potential of SMS in India, he started with explaining why SMS technology has not been fully exploited yet, and how it is the right time for SMS based applications to evolve. He emphasised that unlike other nations, in India, mobile devices (handsets) don’t get discarded over time but simply pass on from one hand to another, hence SMSs have mass reach. He, further, covered basics of SMS based applications and shared his experiences with SMPP (Short Message Peer-to-Peer Protocol). Next, he demonstrated how easy it is to build scalable SMS gateways with (Open Source) Ruby-SMPP Library.

Thejovardhana, then, took the session under his control and discussed ‘Building a Large Scale Mobile Information Delivery Platform’ and shared his experiences with large scale deliveries for MyToday. He emphasized that due to the ubiquitous nature of SMS, it is the most popular medium for Mobile Services. Consequently, there are a number of issues on how to implement large scale delivery models - How service providers restrict application developers simply due to Business Interests and thus consumers are deprived of technically superior products, amongst others.

Just before lunch, Dr. Keith de Mendonca, Chief Technology Architect (Symbian), joined the unconference and held a brief open house session. He discussed the future of Mobile Technologies and the role India has to play in the future. He went on to mention that as much as 9 out of 35 units for the symbian OS are being developed at Bangalore; and, how consolidation of technology would render portability of applications from one mobile platform to other almost redundant.

Post Lunch, Syed Mohammed Khasim discussed Beagle Board with the campers and how it gives the user the ‘Power to innovate’. He emphasized on how to explore and execute your ideas on Beagle Board: an Ultra-Low Cost, High Performance, Low Power OMAP3530 based Platform. His talk also concentrated on the efforts Texas Instruments is making to forge a robust community around Beagle Board and how it is a superior technology for embedded devices.

With Khasim’s session, the day came to an end. The camp was a moderate success considering the quality of sessions and the interaction amongst fellow campers, despite the odd turnout. For me, it meant I had earned my ticket back home.