The past weekend marked the culmination of months of effort, to organise and execute the fourth largest FOSS community event in India: FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) Meet @ NITC 2007. Being a part of the coreTeam, I was there.. all the slogging, all the sleepless nights, and all the excitement. The event featured more than 40 speakers from across the country, speaking on such varied topics as 'FOSS in Life: How to get a girlfriend through FOSS' to 'Read copy update mutual exclusion locking in Linux' (??) .. Featured were heavyweights such as Atul Chitnis (VP, Geodesic) (no pun intended) and Dr. CN Krishnan, Project Manager, NRCFOSS, Anna University, Chennai.

All in all, it ended up being not just an expression of the open source software community, but of the much more general community who believe that all information, whether programs, science, technology or knowledge must be made free and available to all. To that end, we had a workshop on wiki editing, and unconferences by the most powerful names in blogging in India, Kiruba Shankar, and Kiran Jace.

Above everything, it was a fun-filled atmosphere, where each person who attended the event felt that he/she could achieve anything. Just watching these amazing people, and what they have been able to accomplish so far, is truly inspiring.

For details of the individual talks, speakers and schedule, visit http://foss.nitc.ac.in/