My personal Experience on Attending FSHM 3rd Organizational Conference

Introduction:

Hi, I am Divya Priya, EC member of Puduvai GLUG under FSHM but I am writing my experience of attending FSHM 3rd organizational conference on March 1, 2026 as a one of the general observers. I am gonna share about my views and opinion about the topics/issues along with the summarization of what every speakers said, the emotions and gratitude I felt while I was there with group of Tech/FOSS enthusiasts, social activists and people-oriented community. So hang in there. The sections of this blogs are the summarization of topics and issues by speakers and my opinions about on them (if it is Italic , then it is my opinion and view of the topic they discuss on the day), discussion of FOSS family and it's future goals, speech from special guest, EC election and conclusion.

Insights Given by Ragulkanth During Inaugural Speech:

There are plenty of speakers from different community with same motive gave us awareness and insights about Tech, Education, Privacy, Unemployment, and Indian society. so lets start from the first speaker Ragul, President of FSHM spoke about what is our motto behind running in our life and he explained why there is a tech movement conducted by FSHM is needed to the society, is the government using tech to benefit us or exploit us? And we are running in our life to become rich. since we born the question we hear is "are we gonna be rich or poor" but why it can't be, "are we gonna be in good side or evil side" and he said how society and government that backs society is greedy for power , money and fame so who is gonna call out the greediness of those people in power?? So That's why we are hear to discuss, self reflect on our actions in past and take resolution for the future of society.

During the pre-independence era, the computers, networks, and technology is started to grow on other countries in the world. So after we got our freedom from britishers, our people wanted our country to be developed, for that we started to adapt the computer technology in our country and IBM is the first company to rent their computers to us but now lets talk about current era do we really become developed one? Why we are still lagging? Recently in our surroundings, Aadhaar card is asked for verification of everything digital but we can be authorized using other ID too and using aadhaar card will lead to big data bank and it can be used in many ways that can be profitable to anyone they own it.

Ignorance of the government and important of numbers : According to stats, only 99% holds aadhaar card and 1% remains untouchable it may seems like small number but according to the population of India, 1% is 14.76 million people that's almost population of country named Burundi and it is literally amount of state in India. Imagine a state didn't even get a basic access to sustain as humans like food shelter network, etc. but our government didn't take any step to resolve it. So the numbers and stats of the news is very important we must look into it without being shallow.

Awareness About How New Education Policy Ruining our Students Career:

During congratulatory speech , Praveen from SFI spoke about today education situation in India and since Puducherry is based on central government we need to adapt to CBSE syllabus which keeps commerce, computer science as optional subject so the students who graduated from secondary school can't apply for college since they need those subject as a mandatory ones and our Thamizh language is kept as third language along with other overseas language is sickening since the priority are more for first and second language the thing is education is what keep our brain connected so if we didn't study our rich language how our youngsters gonna treasure our language? He wish that our community will stand against it.
There is a change in course duration for B.Sc and Arts degree to 4 years, initially it was 3 years so how people from strict and non educated background will complete the degree if it is 4 years long and not everyone afford to it. There is a credit based score card for the students so if the students continuously failing from start of the semester they will be blocked from pursuing their degree. It is felt like brutal to people who cant able to get quality education from start. So please if the rules are stricter make sure the education from government should be equally good. We need good and quality education from government.

Labour Laws & Organizing the IT Force by UNITE:

A member from UNITE spoke about harsh reality of job seekers and workers in IT industry. She mentioned that according to new labour codes, the working hours are increased from 8 to 12 hours and the pay they got is even low for surviving in their daily lives. Graduates from toxic and poor background hopes that their job can change their life but in reality it make even suffer and uncomfortable. When I started to talk about how toxic the work culture in india, the listener always said "yeah at the start of career it will be harsh if we gain experience will be fine" and I don't think we should romanticize and normalize the toxic work culture. She questioned whether those company care about us?? And they are exploiting Indians power for their own profit and she ended her speech with assurance of helping all job seekers and workers from UNITE. Thank you for your service I hope we will continue to raise our voice against it.

DNS and SearX by Aanisha - The President of SOTC and EC Member of FSHM:

Aanisha explained about DNS, browsers, and search engine. Apart from CS Background, no one really knows about DNS. So to be short DNS (Domain Name System) is used to translate the domain name which we type in the browser (Eg. fshm.org) to the IP address of the server. Because every website is stored in server and it has IP address. IP address is like identity to both users and server which web identify to. Aanisha strongly insisted about why we need privacy while we browsing through the internet and how browsers are stalking us to sell their ads for their own profit. she explained a term "browser fingerprinting" : where the browsers can collect the user data such as identity, their geo location and their interests etc and those were collected by tracking your activity and gathering small piece of data that you left from using particular website.
For those privacy concerns, she insisted us to shift from other browsers to firefox which is focused on privacy and security if you are concerned about privacy and use meta search engine for browsing. FSHM found the solution for that, we run our own meta search engine which will get most relevant sites from other search engine relevancy. So the bias percent is less and your IP address will be safe.

Difference Between Search Engine and Meta Search Engine:

Meta search engine : user request -> meta search engine -> collects all matching results from all search engine's db -> results -> response to user

Traditional search engine: user request -> search engine -> collects data from own database -> response to user

From the above diagram, MSE provides a secure layer for user while browsing on internet since meta search engine is crawler and collects data from all the search engine it does not reveal user identity. It collects all the data from other Search engine's db top result for search query leads to less biased in terms of information.

How to Add FSHM SearX Meta Search Engine to Your PC and Mobile:

Step 1: For Firefox PC, go to search bar and type :https://search.fshm.org/

step 2: click on the search bar and select Add search engine

step 3: Name it as FSHM SearX and click add engine button

step 4: go to settings and make it as default search engine

How to add FSHM SearX in your mobile phone:

step 1: open your firefox settings, In general, click Search option

step 2: click default search engine and click on the + Add search engine

step 3: In name bar , type FSHM searX and in search string URL, type:https://search.fshm.org/search?q= %s and click save.

India's Powerhouse - Sanjai from DYFI:

He thanked all our observers and delegates for attending conference. He said every other country was afraid of India due to high population of youngsters in our India and he also mentioned about AI in which I can co related with the youth of India and AI. I felt like our youngsters are responsible for boom of AI since we are high in population and in that population majority of students chose engineering especially CS path not only students but also working professional in almost every industry. They are one who heavily promote and uses AI on daily basis meanwhile other country people are busy protesting AI data centers, the Indian people love to welcome resource hunger data center and calling it as development rather than human and earth resources exploitation. So I hope we as community heavily need to rephrase the uses of AI don't get me wrong I love development of technology but What AI doing is really against human sustainability in long term. AI needed to be application where it needed rather than as chatbot or personal assistant. To the continuity, Sanjai spoke about Israel vs Iran war and how tech or big corporation funds to the war So he questioned big industry whether help people or exploit them to acquire power and in this digital era, minority aren't aware of the internet and tech by hearing this, the thing that raise from our thought is "is tech really for everyone?". At the end, he felt somehow relieved that FOSS exist for the people and he strongly registered that "tech is composed of hardwork of group in masses" and he end his speech with a motivational note of "We all are freedom fighters of Tech in current era".

Finance Report of FSHM by Arjun - Treasurer of FSHM:

The finance report was present to everyone by Arjun. he gave the report of expenses, savings, and loss or gain of money at the end. He also propose the upcoming budget of FSHM for upcoming years sparks sarcastic debate between our secretary Kamal and him. I felt disappointed by the loss we have from those expenses and it is normal for NGOs but I felt like we deserve some sort of financial win from the work we put so that it can be useful for future, leads to quality workshop, sessions and activities for everyone.

State of Organization by Kamalavelan -Secretary of FSHM :

Kamalavelan gave insights of Overall issues in Puducherry in terms of tech and education such as agenda of pushing people to rely on internet for everything such as online payment, I personally felt like I kinda forced to use UPI and I agree with him even we don't have enough money in hand for exchanging balance money when purchasing somethings and aadhaar is used for everything. he clearly said that aadhaar is used only when you are getting any benefits from government which is really new information for me because I thought aadhaar is for verifying ourselves but we can use it with any other ID cards. So he speculated that the government pushing normal people to use more internet which might lead to sell data for wealth which is eye opening for me.

He said that government is responsible for huge amount of unemployed grads from engineering stream which I strongly disagree with it and as someone who is unemployed I felt like each and every person is responsible for individuals being unemployed and the core is our parents... Parents force their kids to study either engineering or medicine instead of the degree they are passionated and the mistreatment from society is deeply rooted from our own home if the kid is unemployed, they portrait like the failure and pressuring them mentally hoping it can get the job but at the end it ruins that person mental health even harder, the instant gratification ruined people mind that they think even 3 months after graduation in stagnant to the career. The phase between getting your first job and graduating college is really needed to find out what work for them but people ask them "why you didn't get the job yet like it is kinda curse". From my point of view, we need proper representation, better treatment and mental health consulting for job aspirants. He spoke many more like industries in 2017 IT policy and their lack of responsibility in implementing it which dragging till present.

Next, he presented the work we put in past two years and the GLUGs that were formed under FSHM organization to spread awareness and encourage every youngsters to embrace FOSS in their daily lives. Puduvai GLUG which is main GLUG under FSHM and it's active weekly session for past two years and FOSScon 2024 which is first FOSS conference that was conducted Puducherry. SOTC which is the first GLUG that was officially formed under FSHM by Pondicherry University students and they carried out their responsibility very well and appreciated them for conducting longest Hackathon which is for 7 days and I am very glad that event was very successful. TUX GLUG (which is previously known as CRON GLUG) was initiated by Sirajuddeen on 2025 for Rajiv Gandhi College of Engineering and technology, As someone who studied in that college, I am glad that he started the GLUG and I hope it will educate to my fellow rgcetians and thank you to Jagadheesh who is currently president of Puduvai GLUG and he is the one who initiated CRON GLUG at 2020 which was very active and fiercy about FOSS. At the end, Kamal questioned us that " Internet is really needed or not?" which surprises me as an internet kid because I use to grow with it and I always thought it was progressive but his question made me think the necessity and overuse of internet. Apart from it, he also glad that students are confident in their skills and their ability to learn. The influence of AI in recent grads which underrates the learning of basic and called out the underestimation of learning basics by youngsters like "they can even sit for hours to learn AI which they can't understand in the name of certificate but wont even care about basics". And his speech end with the note of indicating delegates to prepare for discussion to improve the FOSS education to masses.

The Discussion of FOSS Family:

The representatives from every GLUG such as SOTC, TUX, Puduvai GLUG and CGLUG shared their achievements and their current activities, self reflects their mistakes and proposed solution and improvement for the GLUG to run better for everyone. Honestly, it was such as healthy and uplifting part for everyone who is working hard for the FOSS. I hope in the upcoming years, The goals we proposed can be achieved. An active participant, Rignesh asked few questions about aadhaar, education and current issues in return our President Ragul answered to his questions that indicates the healthy and mutual respect to each other. He also expressed that the FSHM inspires me a lot.

A Gentle Breeze in the Midst of Desert - Mr. Shrinivasan, from Tamil Computing as Special Guest:

haha don't get me wrong by the title but I really felt like this when our special guest make his speech about their tamil contributions on tech world because from the start of the conference, we discussed most of the social issues and it is definitely needed one. I think it is normal to feel emotionally drained from the issues we discussing while facing it in daily lives. So the Thamizh contribution they made and their history is really uplifting and motivating to our observers. We are all impressed by your work on KDE OS, OCRs and Thamizh keypad.
The key points I take from our special guest:

-" If you can't find the stuff you need, don't wait for others to do it start taking initiative"
- " Contribute more to FOSS and share it to others. It will motivate others and yourself to contribute more"
- " Use your own mother tongue in our devices you use, read your books, embrace your mother tongue and use it in your daily life"

EC Election:

Congratulations to all newly elected office bearers and EC members of FSHM. I hope your contributions and enthusiasm inspire many people to embrace FOSS.

Office Bearers
President: Noordine
Secretary: Kamalavelan
Treasurer: Arjun
Vice-President: Dinaesh
Vice-President: Sridhar
Joint Secretary: Damodharan
Joint Secretary: Aanisha

Executive Committee 
Balu D.
Ghanesh M. 
Jagadeesh M.
Maniraj K.
Prasanna V.
Ragulkanth G.
Sirajudeen 
Surendiran

Federated Seats for Cuddalore GLUG 
Anushree
Gowtham
Vijay

Conclusion:

At the end, we addressed and discussed social issues on tech, data privacy, education etc. which is really educating and eye opening for me. The hard work is done by FSHM and other FOSS movement were discussed and insights are shared all across our community. The new people, new energy, new goals, new attitude from regular members is truly inspiring and admirable to me. So, I hope and I wish everyone (including myself) will work hard but happy together within community to spread and educate FOSS to the masses.We ended our 3rd conference with new hope and happiness. I am very grateful and happy that I attend this conference. Thank you for reading :).