SFDPY18 - The day of many firsts

The FSHM community comes together every year to advocate the use of open technologies to the public and talk about the socioeconomic concerns relating to the use of centralized & proprietary software.

The 7th Software Freedom Day celebrations for 2018 were held on 23/09/18 at Petit Seminaire, MG Road, Puducherry with both volunteers & visitors coming in from 08:00AM finally wrapping up at 07:00PM.

The collective monetary, intellectual and physical contributions from numerous people in the forms of donations, public outreach, legwork, management, brainstorming, stall hosting, advocacy made this event a great success.

The event was organized by a team of 35 people of various professional, educational, socioeconomic and geographical backgrounds.

Special participants for the event include Shivani Bhardwaj representing Hamara Linux & LinuxChix India and Baskar Selvaraj, a veteran FOSS advocate from Chennai.

The event saw an influx in the range of 200-300 people who varied in age, sex, education, geography including people from Chennai, Villupuram, Kumbakonam & Karaikal.

We also had the opportunity to use material sent to us by FSF Europe, all the way from Germany.

This year's stalls were an exquisite collection branching into various domains.

List of stalls -

1. Why FLOSS today?
2. Linux Distributions
3. Creative Commons & Wikimedia Projects
4. MIT App Inventor
5. Open Robotics Platform for Kids
6. Hamara Linux
7. Free Software for Schools & Colleges
8. Selfhosting nextcloud for privacy & security
9. Women in Technology
10. Free Your Droid
11. Mass Surveillance & India
12. Blender - 3D Art & Design
13. Generative Art using programming
14. F-Droid Apps
15. Free & Open Source Motorcycle (FOSMC)

Friends from VillupuramGLUG helped out with introducing Linux distributions and participating in public outreach.

This is the first time FSHM's SFD has seen stalls directly relating to mechanical / automobile engineering through the Free & Open Source Motorcycle (https://www.fictiv.com/blog/fosmc) stall and feminism / sociology via the Women in Technology stall.

Baskar gave a sneak peak of his experience of 20 years of advocating & using FOSS. He talked about the perils of proprietary software in education and how to change it. He called for a true Software Freedom Day celebration when the education system no longer uses or teaches proprietary software.

The organizing team had a chance to quench their thirst with buttermilk at 12:30PM followed by a lunch of an exquisite sambar rice (in the likes of a bisibella baat), with potato fry & tapioca (maravalli kizhangu) chips at 02:30PM.

This is also the first time we are handing out certificates for the volunteering team for their participation at an SFD and the special Advocacy Champion recognition to Arunekumar & Sindhuja for their dedicated efforts towards the advocacy of Free & Open Software / Hardware at their workplace.

This event was funded through the generous contributions of 17 donors with special efforts from Vikneswaran resulting in an accumulated fund pool of Rs. 11,001/-, out of of which Rs. 7,600/- (rounded off) was spent for organizing the event. The rest of the donated funds will be put to use towards snacks during weekly meetings & server costs for this blog and the upcoming wiki (https://wiki.fshm.in/) and membership portal.

List of donors :-

1. Bala
2. Bala Priya
3. Devasenan
4. Hari Priya
5. Kavine
6. Lalith
7. Mugil
8. Naveen
9. Priyadarsini Magnifique
10. Sairam
11. Sankaranand
12. Sarath
13. Shravana
14. Sindhuja
15. Snekha
16. Suriya
17. Vimal

A special thanks to the host, Petit Seminaire Hr. Sec. School, MG Road for their warm hospitality in accommodating our presence and miscellaneous requests.