[Hamara-devel] Fwd: Re: Promoting Hamara

[Raju D. Vindane]

On 03/01/2015 05:58 PM, Vikas Tara wrote
> Hi Raju
Hey Vik, Hi
>>>>>
>>>>> This year I will be Adding Hamara GNU/Linux to the List as well as 
>>>>> a BeagleBone Black.
>>>>> I'll also add the Raspberry pi 2(Given to me at HamaraConference) 
>>>>> to the booth this time.
>>>>>
>>>>> I'll keep some DVDs burned with Hamara and Debian, which I will 
>>>>> distribute with the people.
> How did you get on? Would love to hear people's feedback about hamara 
> linux
We had 4 different things at our booth. 2 SBC's and 2 Operating Systems. 
RPi2 & BBB, as well as Debian and Hamara.

A big *Thank you to the Hamara Design Team*. My request for some 
designed material for the booth was handled well by Hamara Design team. 
But Due to delay from my side informing the Design team of Hamara, not 
everything was happening on time. I informed the team late, the sent me 
the designs late. And I couldn't get the Hamara Flex printed for the booth.
But we learn from our experiences. I will get them printed soon. So I 
can use them for any other event next time.

I did kept the Hamara Flex design on an External monitor attached to one 
laptop. So people coming to the booth were seeing and asking about it. I 
was wearing the Hamara T-shirt there. Some people were curious about it. 
Some people who knew nothing about Linux asked "*What are the advantages 
you get using Hamara over Windows?*", I answered them well. I did a 
feature tour for people interested in Hamara.

I also told curios people about  our efforts on *Hamara Sugam*, and its 
availability on different SBCs. I explained the use cases where SBC's 
can be used by people. Like creating Low cost Computer labs in schools. 
I also made them aware of our plans on creating the networks for 
enabling communications in remote parts of the country.

Not everything goes smooth. I got into a *fierce discussion* with some 
person about Hamara. He was raising the question, "*Why are you guys 
doing the same thing again & again?* Instead of contributing to the main 
parent Projects." He was well aware with the GNU/Linux ecosystems. It 
was tough to talk with him, but I did handled this guy well. I assured 
him that we do take care of our Upstream and Downstream and will always 
do. We will not do what Canonical is doing with Ubuntu, taking 
everything from the community and returning back very little. And we are 
more focused on the needs and requirements of Indian users. At the end I 
managed him to try Hamara. He said that he will give a try to Hamara for 
sure.

We were also having Debian GNU/Linux on another system. We were getting 
good questions and Interest there as well. On two more systems We had 
the RPi2 and BBB as well. Still very few people know about Single Board 
Computers, and were amazed to see a full computer running from a credit 
card sized board.
The school kids from nearby goverment schools were amazed as well. I had 
gcompris and tux paint installed on the RPi2 so these kids can play with 
it. I kept the Big Buck Bunny video running up on one System. The 
schools kids enjoyed it well.

FYI, GMRT is the worlds largest Radio Telescopic centre. And a Science 
Day event happening there gets a footfall of over 20,000 people in 2 
days. But this year it happened only for the first day. *The second day 
was washed out due to heavy rains.* The booths are setup on grounds and 
it all was wet on the second day. The second day got cancelled and we 
had to wrap up there.

Overall the event was a good experience. We did commit some mistakes, 
but we'll learn from it and will not repeat them again. Present along 
with me there were 5 more people at our booth, who handled the people 
with the explanations  and resolved there queries. I *will* *post the 
photos from the event soon* on my Diaspora account 
(https://joindiaspora.com/u/rajudv ).

This experience will definitely help further in building up the Hamara 
GNU/Linux users and developers community and taking Hamara to more people.



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