Dear Baishampayan,
Here is a report of the events during the FSFI Foundation Day 2005, sent by Kiran Chandra.
Best Sasi
Report of the July 21 activity
A workshop with 125 participants was conducted on 24th and 25th of June 2005. The workshop decided to hold events marking the inaugural day of Free Software Foundation of India i.e 21st of July. It had been decided to organise meetings and display Swecha (a customised Knoppix Live CD similar to look and feel to Ubuntu with most of the Desktop and common applications translated to Telugu) in 21 villages, to form 21 GLUGs, come out with a journal with 21 articles and to organise public meetings in 4 places (Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam, Warangal and Thirupati) on 21st.
Swecha was displayed in 25 villages and 17 GLUGs were formed in the state. The total number of volunteers who worked in the entire activity was 73. The participation of the memebers was voluntary and infact they were rejuvenated when they went to the people.
Public meetings on July 21:
We got a good cooperation from the district administration in all the districts where we organised public events. Three public meetings were held in Mahaboobnagar, Medak and Guntur respectively. The district collectors of Mahaboobnagar and Medak instructed all the MRO's and MEO's to be present for the event. The Medak District Collector invited us to make Medak the ground for a first area for implementing our activities in all parts of his District and offerred to help monetarily as well. The District Collector of Mehaboobnagar offered us to convert 10 model schools which have 100 computers in total to Swecha (our distribution in Telugu). The DEO requested us to conduct a work shop for teachers and offered to extend the support of forming a group that will do translations into Telugu and Urdu. The response from the students and teachers in the schools which we visited was very good and they were comfortable with the Telugu interface.
Public events could not be organised in all the important places which we wanted to. We could organise a public meeting in Guntur and sessions in SV University and two private engineering colleges. A GLUG was formed in SVU with the department secretaries of Computer Science, ECE and EEE as the core members.
Display of swecha in 21 villages
We could get co-operation from different sections of the society. The school headmasters, the MPP of Ibrahimpatnam helped us in organising the events in and around Ibrahimpatnam. We could use the services of CPI(M) comrades in Thadepally, Guntur district. The villages selected were those near the colleges where we had the possibility of forming GLUGs. The GLUGs were formed and they activiely participated in making these events a success. The GLUGs convinced their managements to provide computers for the display in villages.
Y.Kiran Chandra