a day in my school, spreading message of open-ness

DAV Gandhi Nagar AISSE-2007 get-together, June 30 2011: Some things were to be done, seeking required privileges to give juniors a talk on Open Source. Principal S K Sinha, was welcoming, gave me the liberty of choosing, tum jab aoge, tab kara denge.

Tuesday July 5, 2011: It was already late when I woke up, and slides unprepared, but the talk had to be given, typical college lazy bug, some points were chalked and Images downloaded, all set to school!

OK fine, principal sir was leaving, had to talk to VP Mr B K Singh

• There was no such auditorium to support the strength of classes I requested [class IX and X], one hall which school had was turned into classroom(s).
• The talk could only be allowed if there is no test the following day, wtf..., I had not talked beforehand for this kindaa .... .

Frustrating, but finally permitted! phew, gates to OPEN SOURCE were OPEN, 2 periods were alloted, 45 minutes each, and now the problem was, I had to give talks to two different batches, all class X, no IX. I had to compromise with my talk duration.

Anyways, I was more than satisfied for it, at least the message could be spread to some, something which should have been known to them (by then). In a small places like Ranchi, we seldom come in touch with any such technologies (except core i processors, new propitiatory OSs, thanks to ads). Some kind of myth supporting, doing this is good, this is not good etc, etc. Talking about me, Open Source and Free Softwares was with me for the first time in 2009 sometime after I joined the college.

in our school library

The session was titled
Introduction to OPEN SOURCE and FREE Softwares, there I was assisted by Chinta. It all went well. Happy-happy ending!! [:)] was a bit doubtful how well my message would have penetrated those guys, I was in library all the time, library mam ( I forgot her name :P ) introduced me a student called Prakhar Prasad. Coming beyond my expectations, he proved to be a real FOSS guy, exploring since past three years, his area of interest is Network Security. FINALLY there was some feeling of achievement. His softpedia profile.

Comment for slides, they would be mailed directly to you.

While discussing installing linux based OSs in school's computers, I came across some inevitable problems coming out of CBSE hypocrisy. Norms are there to work on linux boxes but the copies with #include<iostream.h> are considered right. [my gcc compiler never accepted this].