Today I am gonna tell you about my experience of international open source community meet up. It was Jan 15, when I received email from the organizer that my proposal for the Fossasia 2014 is accepted and I can attend the event. It was Hakuna matata moment for me.
The event was scheduled on Feb 28, a three days event with various tracks on Mobile technologies, Databases, Operating systems etc. I was so excited to meet the fellow FOSS community members. And the day came, It was 27th Feb when I flew from the Ahmedabad to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. It was connecting flight via Delhi and Bangkok in return as well. Long journey with full of excitements :) :)
So let me tell you something about the event.
What is Fossasia?
FOSSASIA works together with Open Source projects in Asia and around the world and develops Free and Open Source software for social change.FOSSASIA 2014 is an exciting Open Technology event for developers, students, and start ups using open source to build up their businesses. It is a unique opportunity to share the latest innovations in open source technologies and meet contributors and potential partners. It brings the knowledge of Free and Open source software under one roof and encourage more and more people to become a part of such great initiative. FOSS community members from all over the world comes together to meet, greet and code. You can find more details about the event at http://fossasia.org/
Where it was held?
Fossasia 2014 was held at the held at the the new campus of the prestigious Norton University in Phnom Penh Cambodia. Phnom Penh is a heart of Cambodia Located on the banks of the Tonlé Sap and Mekong River.
The 3 days of pure knowledge sharing
The main purpose of such events is to share knowledge from the different corners of the world. Fossasia was also having experts from all over the glob to enlighten the event with their knowledge. 71 International speakers, along with 15 local speakers shared totaling of 121 talks and hands-on sessions. The event was divided into various tracks, running 8 tracks per day for 3 days. I have also delivered a talk on “Introduction to Apache Cassandra”.
Experience@Fossasia
During event I met with people from various open source organizations like Fedora, Mozilla, Wikimedia, Gnome etc. Amazing people, working seamlessly to make innovative things happen. Also met some entrepreneurs and businessmen from Cambodia working to improve the lives and conditions of those living in poverty. It was great to know about how they use technologies to tackle such issues. Attended sessions from various tracks and got introduced with many amazing things.
Also we got opportunity to have lunch with Cat Allmen (Program Manager - Outreach, Open Source Programs Office at Google, Inc) and share our open source contribution experience with her. Got to know how they manages to reach to such a big community and how it feels being a part of such initiative.
Fun@Cambodia
Apart from the event, we also had some fun staying few more days at Cambodia and roaming around the places. We enjoyed the night life of Cambodia (No, Not that much :P ). Also visited places like The Royal palace, Silver Pagoda, Wat Phnom and obviously the Central market.
After Phnom Penh, we headed towards the Sihanoukville, the port city of Cambodia and a popular tourist destination for beaches. You will find many beaches in Sihanoukville. We preferred to stay at Serendipity Beach.
After spending a night at Sihanoukville, we continued our journey towards the Koh Rong island in the morning. Koh Rong is paradise — a few bungalow operations, perfect beaches, and jungle.
The Long Beach
we decided to experience some trekking through the island. The hike was not long, but quite strenuous as we had to negotiate dense jungle and steep slopes strewn with boulders. But the beach waiting for us was somehow even more beautiful than the others.
Final Words
It was great fun. Thanks to the FOSSASIA organizers, specially to Mario Behling for giving me such a great opportunity. Stay tuned for more awesome stuffs here. Don’t forget to express your feelings in comments. :) :)