Namaste Everyone!

Hi everyone, it was that time of the year again when we had our beloved GNOME Asia happening.

Last year GNOME Asia happened in Kathmandu Nepal from December 1 - 3 and this time it happened in my country in Bengaluru from 6th to 8th.

Btw, a disclaimer - I was there on behalf of Ubuntu but the opinions over here are my own :)

Also, this one might not be that interesting due to well... reasons.

Day 0 (Because indexing starts with 0 ;))

Before departing from India... oh, I forgot this one was in India only haha.

This GNOME Asia had a lot of drama, with the local team requiring an NDA to sign which we got to know only hours before the event and we also got to know we couldn't host an Ubuntu release party there even when it was agreed to months and again a few weeks ago and even on the same day as well in advance... So yeah... it was no less than an India Daily soap episode, which is quite ironic lol.

But, in the end, I believe the GNOME team would have not known about it as well, and felt like local team problems.

Enough with the rant, it was not all bad, I got to meet some of my GNOMEies and Ubunties (is that even a word?) friends upon arriving, and man did we had a blast.

We hijacked a cafe and sat there till around 1 A.M. and laughed so hard we might have been termed Psychopaths by the watchers.

But what do we care, we were there for the sole purpose of having as much fun as we could.

After returning, I let my inner urge win and dived into the swimming pool on the hotel rooftop, at 2 A.M. in winter. Talk about the will to do anything ;)

Day 1

Upon proceeding to the venue we were asked for corporate ID cards as the event was in the Red Hat office inside a corporate park. We didn't know this and thus had to travel 2 more K.M. to the main entrance and get a visitor pass. Had to give an extra tip to the cab so that he wouldn't give me the look haha.

Upon entering the tech park, I got to witness why Bengaluru is often termed India's Silicon Valley. It was just filled with companies of every type and size so that was a sight to behold.

The talk I loved that day was "Build A GNOME Community? Yes You Can." by Aaditya Singh, full of insights and fun, we term each other as Bhai (Hindi for Brother) so it was fun to attend his talk.

This time I wasn't able to attend many of the talks as I now had the responsibility to explore a new venue for our release party.

Later I and my friends took a detour to find the new venue, and we did it quite quickly about 400 metres away from the office.

This venue had everything we needed, a great environment, the right "vibe", and tons of freedom, which we FOSS lovers of course love and cherish.

It also gave us the freedom to no longer be restricted to event end, but to shift it up to the Lunch break.

At night me, Fenris and Syazwan went to "The Rameshwaram Cafe" which is very famous in Bengaluru, and rightly so, the taste was really good and for the fame not that expensive either.

Fenris didn't eat much as he still has to sober up to Indian dishes xD.

Day 2

The first talk was by Syazwan and boy did I have to rush to the venue to attend it.

Waking up early is not easy for me hehe but his talks are always so funny, engaging and insightful that you just can't miss attending it live.

After a few talks came my time to present on the topic “Linux in India: A perspective of how it is and what we can do to improve it.”

Where we discussed all the challenges faced by us in boosting the market share of Linux and open source in India and what measures we could take to improve the situation.

We also glimpsed over the state of Ubuntu India LoCo and the actions we are taking to reboot it, with multiple events like the one we just conducted.

My talk can be viewed at - YouTube - Linux in India: A perspective of how it is and what we can do to improve it.

And that was quite fun, I loved the awesome feedback I got and it is just amazing to see people loving your content. We then quickly rushed to the venue of the party, track 1 was already there and with us, we took track 2 peeps as well.

To celebrate we cut cake and gave out some Ubuntu flavours stickers, Ubuntu 24.10 Oracular Oriole stickers and UbuCon Asia 2024 stickers followed by a delicious mix of vegetarian and non-vegetarian pizzas.

Despite the short duration of just one hour during lunch, the event created a warm and welcoming space for attendees, encapsulating Ubuntu’s philosophy: “Making technology human” and “Linux for human beings.”

The event was then again followed by GNOME Asia proceedings.

At night we all Ubunties and GNOMEies and Debian grouped for Biryani dinner. We first hijacked the Biryani place and then moved on to hijacking another Cafe. The best thing was that none of them kicked us out, I seriously believed they would considering our activities lol. I for the first time played Jenga and we had a lot of jokes which I can't say in public for good reasons.

At that place, the GNOME CoC wasn't considered haha.

Day 3

Day 3 was a social visit, the UbuCon Asia 2025 organising team members conducted our own day trip, exploring the Technology Museum, Beautiful Cubbon Park, and the magnificent Vidhana Soudha of Karnataka.

I met my friend Aman for the first time since GNOME Asia Malaysia which was Awesome! And I also met my Outreachy mentee in person, which was just beautiful.

The 3-day event was made extremely joyful due to meeting old friends and colleagues. It reminded me of why we have such events so that we can group the community more than ever and celebrate the very ethos of FOSS.

As many of us got tired and some had flights, the day trip didn't last long, but it was nice.

At night I had one of my best coffees ever and tried "Plain Dosa with Mushroom curry" a weird but incredibly tasty combo.

End

Special thanks to Canonical for their CDA funding, which made it possible for me to attend in person and handle all arrangements on very short notice. :smiley:

Looking forward to meeting many of them again at GUADEC or GNOME Asia 2025 :D