FSMK at Open Day in IISc

With one week left for the State Level Convention for Academicians on Free Software in Research and Teaching, the campaigning for the same has been happening profusely. During our stint of campaigning in the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Free Software Movement - Karnataka (FSMK) was approached by the organizers of The Open Day at IISc to put a Free Software Stall and also to handle three sessions in the Computer Science and Automation Dept of IISc.

"I love Free Software"-A vox populi

Within a week's time, we were all ready and did have amazing experience being part of the Open Day. Hundreds of students and researchers were at the venue. This granted us an excellent opportunity to spread the word of Free Software to the ones who knew little of it, and to seek collaboration with the already Free Software inclined people.

The FSMK stall was a big success, with our volunteers incessantly interacting with the interested crowd, handing out stickers and images of the abundant Free and Open Source Software, inclusive of the GNU/Linux Operating systems. Building contacts with many more people has been the biggest plus of this stall, apart from the native evangelism of our team.

There were also three specific sessions which were handled by FSMK activists:
Programming and debugging using GCC/GDB by Balaji Kutty; In which the speaker manifested the simplicity and efficacy of the GCC and GDB programming utilities.

Java based Application development for Android platform by Saket Srivatsav; In this session the speaker elucidated the fact that Android isn't FOSS, and also demonstrated a live application building using Java for Android.
Spin your own GNU/Linux distro by Bhuvan; In this session the speaker got the audience acquainted with live-helper in Debian, which is used to customize and make our own GNU/Linux distributions.

While all these sessions were well received, we did have extra fun at the Open Day itself, visiting other Departments.
Conclusively, FSMK did have a great time being part of the Open Day at IISc, and is looking forward to more such occasions to Spread Freedom in the Digital domain.