Participating at PLUG’s mashup camp in October was an exciting opportunity for me to be among friends and Pluggies again.The PLUG Mash organized by the Pune Linux User’s Group and its friends and supporters was a resounding success. The 2-day camp had a combination of formal talks as well as a hack-a-thon for FOSS hackers to gather together and code. Major sponsors including Thoughtworks and Zmanda did an outstanding job of participating in the sessions. I found the talks by various open source contributors – Chris Stevenson (of Thoughtworks), Ramki (of Red Hat), Friji (of Radio Schizoid), Satish (of Red Hat), Valsa (of Intel), KK George (of Zmanda), Niyam (creative guru), and Karunakar (of Indlinux.org) – led to a valuable discussion of how developers, users and FOSS advocates are doing their part in making open source contributions possible from India. I presented about the Open Source Initiative (OSI) and its global initiatives and enjoyed the discussion thereafter about how OSI could become more pertinent in India’s ecosystem.

Many thanks to my friends for putting in a lot of hard work, for being such fantastic hosts and making this 2-day camp in Pune memorable and successful for me. The great conversations, wonderful food, and the “coffee” added just the right touch. And reminded me of what makes Pune’s community so enjoyable to be part of.