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Rejy M Cyriac (rmc)

Engineering Program Manager - Technical

Red Hat, Inc.

Bangalore (India)

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FAS Name: rejymc

email: rejymc@fedoraproject.org

irc-nick: rejy @ FreeNode : fedora, fedora-qa, fedora-selinux, fedora-india, fedora-join



FUDCon Pune 2015 Trip Report


I reached the venue of FUDCon Pune 2015 the afternoon of the first day of the conference. It was being held at MIT College of Engineering, Pune. The venue was interesting in that it was a large campus with many colleges close together and under one management, MIT College of Engineering being one of them. Though I missed most of talks in the morning on the first day, the highlight of the first day for me was meeting a lot of people, seeing many old friends in person after a long time. My talk on SELinux was scheduled for the second day. So I had some time to move around, attend a few talks, and meet a lot of people.

Transportation was provided by the organizers from the venue to the hotel in the evening, and back in the morning. A large number of the speakers were staying at the same hotel. This was very convenient and comfortable, since the venue was a long way from the hotel, and we did not have to arrange for own transportation. This also helped us reach the conference on time in the morning.

My talk on SELinux was around mid-morning on the second day. On my way from the gate of the campus to the building where the talk was to be held, I had the misfortune to stopped midway by a prayer session at the campus during which everyone around and even vehicles were brought to a halt. This held me up by about 5-10 minutes, and so I practically had to run the rest of the way after the prayer session was done! After reaching the session room, I lost a few minutes more since the projector was so out of focus that nothing on a terminal screen could be read. Once everything was fixed, I started my talk about 10 minutes late. But thankfully, the organizers were kind enough to extend my session time to accommodate for most of the lost time.

The talk on SELinux was meant to instil in the audience the need for enabling security at computer systems through SELinux, and the basic principles that are fundamental for SELinux. These were conveyed with a lot of real life examples to make the concepts more understandable. The audience was very receptive to the talk. I made it a point to make the talk as interactive as possible, and the audience responded well by asking interesting questions and responding well to the queries that I put up to provoke thought. It is not easy provide all the basic knowledge on SELinux in a 40 minutes talk, and that was not my intention anyway. I believe that with my talk, I was able to provide the right foundation and light the spark of interest around SELinux among most of the audience, and guide them in the right direction to gain more knowledge on it and use SELinux. Overall, it was a good experience as a speaker at FUDCon Pune 2015.

The lunch provided for the speakers and volunteers at the conference had to be vegetarian due to strict restrictions on non-vegetarian food by the college authorities, and the food was not that great, just about okay. This was quite tragic for a non-vegetarian like me. But I survived through it. :)

After my talk was over, I could spend the rest of my time at FUDCon Pune 2015 attending talks on topics interesting to me and meeting lots of people. Meeting people interested in Fedora and technology is one of the best parts of being at FUDCon. The group photo session was fun too.

The speakers were provide with some extra goodies. I especially loved the Fedora umbrella that was part of it. The bag that held the goodies could have been better though. There were stickers, Fedora DVD and badges for everyone, but the badges were not so good in quality. Nevertheless, the Fedora logo on them made everything special!

The FUDCon organizers were kind enough to provide me with extra Fedora DVD, Fedora Badges, and Fedora Stickers to take back with me to Bangalore, so as to be used to promote Fedora at various meet-ups and events that come up there.