
My Experience at Linux Conference.
(Open Source Summit and Embedded Linux Conference, Europe 2019)
My summers were going amazing, I was a Google Summer of Code 2019 Student at RTEMS, I underwent surgery for my Kidney stones :P , I was working on the project I was in love with. But I was never ready for the surprises I was going to get.
I came to know about Open Source Summit and Embedded Linux Conference, Europe 2019 via LinkedIn and then explored about it in detail from their site. The conference was made for me to attend, as my area of interest belongs to the same domain. Moreover, my GSoC project was also related to the embedded systems.
I was exploring about it when I came to know about their diversity program initiative. Being an Open Source contributor and a College Student, I was eligible for the scholarship and hence applied for it. It was a very proud and happy moment for me when I received their mail. Linux Foundation considered me good enough to give me 100% registration scholarship.

I don’t know how to describe what I was feeling that time. It was mix of shock, happiness, amazement, etc. Still, attending it was impossible for me as the conference was in Europe and I had no funds to go there. The only option for me was to ask for Travel Grant. Thereafter, I completed all the formalities related to it and was now waiting for their reply.
Days were passing by and I was growing anxious. So, I mailed them, I got a bit relieved when they replied informing me that there is a delay because of large number of applications this time. Finally after 3 weeks I got their reply and guess what? I was able to grab sponsorship.

So my summer just got its Jet-Pack. I got my Visa, flights, hotels and all done. But life always demands adventure :P . Conference was in the end of October, and after summers my new semester was about to start, hence I had to give my T1 and T2 exams in college before the Europe trip.
Oooo…..Europe Trip — It sounds like Joey’s magical Story.
Finally T2 exams were over but guess what? On the day of my last paper only I had to catch my flight, so I was in rush. Also, it was a festival day in my country……traffic jams. For once I got worried if I will be able to catch my flight. But things got untangled somehow.
And then here I was, in Lyon. Such a beautiful city. We registered ourselves at the convention center and received our ID cards.


There were several events, talks, networking sessions, mentor-ship sessions going on. It was impossible to attend them all as many of the events were running in parallel. But I would love to tell about the ones which were special to me.
The “Better Together Diversity Social” Event
The first event of this conference. It was like an add-on session and a wonderful opportunity for us.

It was an opportunity for people from different technical and educational backgrounds to come, communicate, network and get to know each other. We were served with snack and drink. I met with many wonderful people, got connected to them on LinkedIn, exchanged e-mail. It was a great evening. Then, from the next day, conference commenced.
The Conference

Each day used to start with Keynote Sessions in the amphitheater. And they used to be the best in whole day. Seeing the tech experts from GitHub, Google, Linux foundation, IBM, Microsoft and various Open Source Tech Giants was like a dream. I felt like a huge amount of knowledge was broadcasted there. This was the time when I got to know about some inner depths of these organizations. I came to know about various technologies.
In Conversation with Linus Torvalds

The second day started with a one to one talk with Linus Torvalds. He told about current situation of Linux Kernel and where the community is heading to. He talked about Git and his other works. The main thing he focused was about security and hyper-threading. Seeing the legend sitting in front of me gave me a feeling, that I am in dream, for a moment.


At the end of the session, I got lucky enough to shake hands with him. We clicked a picture together and also I got his autograph :D .
Keynote Session of Erica Brescia
COO of GitHub

I was amazed by the facts presented by Erica. What is an Open Source Developer? What is the power of Open Source? How Open Source gave first ever image of a black hole? If I am making a personal project, am I the only contributor in it? What is the average workforce behind every open source project?
The way she presented everything gave insider knowledge about how Open Source works. She proceeded by displaying some GitHub reports.

Since the 2019 reports were not released yet, she presented reports of 2018 to explain some of her points. The proud moment for me was to see my country, India at 3rd position in world ranking of Open Source Contributions.

At the end of the session, me and my friends went to meet her. She greeted us warmly. We had a quick talk and we invited her to India to which she responded positively as she was already planning to come for some official work.
One to One Meetings

One of the best things of this event was networking. And they made it more easy by giving us an option to plan meeting via their networking app.
We were suppose to build our profile and mention our area of interests. Then others do same. And we could see each other’s profile and plan a one to one meeting accordingly. There was a dedicated slot in the daily schedule for this purpose.
Although networking could be done spontaneously by any means, but this one to one meeting provided a good structure to talk to experts, get some mentor-ship, get career advice, get work opportunities, or get knowledge about new technologies, etc. Think about fixing a meeting with CEO of some open source organization. I was able to do so.
A Picture with “Father of Linux and Father of Linus”
The credit of this caption goes to my friend, Mritunjay Sharma. He is an awesome writer.

Though I already got a picture with him in amphitheater after his keynote session, but I got a chance to meet him again. This time my friends were also there with me, so we agreed for a group photo. The man in a brown jacket, taking a walk with Mr Linus Torvalds offered us to click our picture.
After clicking the picture he said, “Now you can mention in the caption that the father of Linus Torvalds clicked your picture.”
It was a quick amusement which was visible on our faces. It was a proud moment for his father too that his son is a hero, an idol for us. You rarely get an opportunity of meeting one Torvalds and here we got two, that too a father-son duo. Getting a picture with him was an obvious act which we did.

Sponsor Showcase

Here every sponsor of this conference was present. They were sharing information about their new technologies, giving demos, displaying their projects and distributing swags :P . I got six T-Shirts of different open source organizations.
Tech-Giants like Intel, IBM, Red-Hat were also there showcasing their new technologies. Not just this much, people were growing their networks here too, talking with people finding job opportunities. Even I got know about many internships of my domain to which I am eligible.
Office Hours

This was the heaven of Conference. During Office Hours, one could find experts of various field and can have a one to one or a group meeting/discussion.
This is different from one-to-one meeting as in that, the meeting has to be fixed and should be accepted by both parties. But here, experts are sitting on one of the chair around round table waiting for curious learners like me to enlighten them.

I had a short discussion with Linux Fellow Greg Kroah-Hartman.
Greg Kroah- Hartman (Linux kernel maintainer for the -stable branch, the staging subsystem, USB, driver core, debugfs, kref, kobject, and the sysfs kernel subsystems, Userspace I/O, and TTY layer).
Wikipedia contributors. (2019, November 1). Greg Kroah-Hartman. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 22:48, November 4, 2019, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Greg_Kroah-Hartman&oldid=923982050
I also had a discussion with third Linux Fellow Shuah Khan. She guided me for Linux Mentor-ship Programs and other things.
Office hours were very good for people who had doubts regarding any talks they attended, or if they need some career advice etc.
Speed Networking and Mentoring

This was another amazing session. It was conducted in 3 rounds. Three topics were selected for discussion, Career, Technology and Community.
There were round tables and one table addressed only one of the tree topics. So, people interested in networking and mentoring about Career can sit around table which has placard with “Career” written on it.

Then in round one, mentors were allotted for each table. We had a nice talk, got some advises, learned something new, exchanged our email IDs.
For second round, we were supposed to sit around the same table and mentors would switch tables. And for third round the vice versa. Each round was for 15 minutes. I didn’t wanted this session to get over.
I was enjoying listening to other people, they were sharing their views, experiences, thoughts etc. At the end I felt enlightened.
Reception

The venue for reception was a out of the box thing for me. It was on a boat. Music was on, drinks were on and snacks were on.

The air was cool, river was silent and one could feel the breeze on his/her face. It was the end of the conference.

It was sad that the conference was at end but the party took all sad vibes away. We gave farewell to our friends, promised to stay in touch and of course, send our images if they have in their phone.
The conference took my experience with open source to a whole new level. I haven’t described everything in this blog because I can’t. The words won’t be enough. It is a phase to be experienced. And it is of lots of worth.
Let’s get connected
For any queries, ping me on LinkedIn or Facebook.
- My LinkedIn Profile- https://www.linkedin.com/in/varodek/
- My Facebook Profile- https://www.facebook.com/vaibhav.gupta.1004837
- My Twitter account- https://twitter.com/varodek
- My Medium Profile- https://medium.com/@varodek
If you find this blog good, please click the 👏 button and share to help others find it! Feel free to leave a comment 💬 below :).
