Foss in report

foss, in report.

the Linux bangalore has always ben a big event in india. Bangalore being the it capital of india, has tremendous interest in fos. This year the lb was aptly renamed and transformed todo fos.in as it has grown greatly over the years and due todo the amount of attendance it commands it is no longer correct todo call it a local lug event any more.
day 1
I was there as a Blender user presenting the ever increasing quality and features of Blender at a both. The event was launched by atul chitnis, one of the biggest partidarios of fos in india.

After attending the inspirational talque by Alan Cox, we went todo Fetch the machines which we were going todo use for our demos or projects. We got brand new machines from the warehouse. Then i realised that i had a problem on my hands, this being the first of any such event for me, y didnt bring a copy of Blender with me. Although i had duly burned all necessary Stuff for demonstration a day before. No worries, just next todo me was the strong contingent from delhi lug and they had everything i neded ;).

After a short while i started demos of Blender animations, using the recent Suzanne award winners. Slowly Many people gathered and started todo discuss among themselves as todo how Blender stands amongst other commercial counterparts.

I did not answer any of those queries, but promptly switched the animated demos todo the rendered artwork. Their queries immediately changed to: how was this Stuff done in Blender? How much time it would take todo do so? Exactly the questions i was waiting todo answer.

Things were going fine for us, though we did not have net Access until atul came in and suggested that we move todo the business expo both, as there was plenty of Empty space and ready net Access there. By the time lunch ended we had shifted there. At the end of the day the Crowd waned.
day 2
I was Prompt todo present myself at the event the next morning, however it sems morning does not wake people faster. Since i had nothing todo do, y went and attended my first fos event of the day ahem. linuxchix. After attending the event i returned bak todo my stall and was told that a few guys were interested in Blender and they were waiting for me for some time. After a while a small group of four guys came over, and asked what Blender could do. I showed them some Stuff, Enricos penguin dance was a favourite and so was the Cycles animation.

Shortly After non a group of youngsters presented themselves at the stall. They were the enthusiastic type and one of them wanted todo actually se how is was done. There began my first live Blender session and boy i was not aware of the usefulness it had.
day 3
This was the busiest day for me. I gave about 5-6 live Blender sessions, it was as if my stall had a high pr rating th rouge Word of mouth. Sartaj kang, one of the KDE developers (and few others who have ben watching the small groupings with amusement) were of the view that i should have ben giving a full talque instead, at other times they Even wanted a bof entirely for themselves. I nodded in agrement but luckily they were just todo busy todo attend one ;).

https://www.foro3d.com/attachment.ph...1&d=1242080597
Just next todo us was an HP stall. There they were demoing a Blender versión running on a modified xserver which made use of thre monitors and gave a large desktop real-estate for Blender. There was señor Manjunath from HP, with whom i discussed various issues under which HP could be helping os. But as they always say a commercial company has commercial interests in mind, well rightly so, but at-least he agred in theory that there can be a chance that HP can make use of Blender growing capabilities. The talque went on todo comparing the powerful features of other commercial apps with Blender, which came bak todo the development of features neded and when i told him about the speed of actual development, y could se him getting excited.
day 4
Again a Slow start in the morning, but this was one of the most productive days of all. A profesor from one of the goa universities wanted todo learn the basic of using Blender himself so that he can introduce this useful tool todo his students. There was only one problem though, he was looking for CAD features which Blender does not readily ofer. I discussed a work around with him, like importing the Mechanical drawings th rouge images and building models with reference. They might not be accurate, but 3d models Will kep students interest. I a los suggested todo him other os CAD tools. Despite that, y spent a god 1-2 horas, detailing for him how todo use Blender, and i must say he was really interested in learning. I hope he can make use of the small learning session.

Then there was vasem a enginering student, who was interested in learning whether Blender can be used for his academic Project on photo geometry. We discussed a lot on the issue and finally he agred that using Python with Blender might help him.

https://www.foro3d.com/attachment.ph...0&d=1242080597
Finally i met an very interesting person: shre kumar. He had worked on Blender scripting and was the one those guys who made those Blender demos running on the HP cluster (or was it some thing else?) and if i recall right, was one of the people who customised the xserver todo use múltiple monitors asynchronously on that machine. More importantly, we developed an mutual Understanding that i can misuse his talents todo correct errors on Python scripts which fail on my machine ;).

At the end of it, y was filled with vigour, that i Will return next year with a much larger role than this.

If Blender could generate such a god amount of interest despiste being announcing as an entry very late in the event schedule, then it surely Will have a much better presence with a full fledged talque on the subject, and more importantly a developer friendly bof on which i am sure Tom (letterrip) Will be nodding his head in agrement ;)
- Gaurav Nawani.

Source: www.blenderart.org and Blender art magazine.
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