Hai friends,
Its gives me immense pleasure to being part of the kanchilug. 🙂
I am just thinking how I initiated the kanchilug.
That was one shiny Sunday morning…
My elder brother Shrinivasan.T and myself were washing cloths around 8’O clock.
Most of the discussion about many things technical, ideas, stupid thoughts, feelings, comedy,
joyful, comments, arguments, fights and more among we three brothers (Shrini, Arul, Suresh),
always fell on every Sunday mornings during washing cloths.
Same thing happened on that Sunday.
Shrini told me, Why dont we initiate one Lug (Linux User Group) in our Kanchipuram ?
Why dont you initiate Lug in your College ?
Why dont you take the responsibility for this.
I was in boring mood at that time… I replied him, what … Is that possible…
We dont have Computer, We dont have Internet facility, We dont have place, and more over
We dont have people to conduct and attend the lug meetup here…… Oh!
He said, ‘So what ?’
Me replied, ‘Hmmmm…. hmmmm…’
Again, ‘ I will think about that …’
From the next day onwards, I was thinking about lug start up in college and kanchi.
But didnt think seriously. Just think one or two times in that week.
The next Sunday morning, Shrini asked me ‘What happen to lug plan?’
I was just smiled in shy manner. i.e. Not started yet…
One more Sunday went with my smiled in the same manner…
But I seriously started to think about the strategy of initiating lugs in college and kanchi.
Then I came to conclusion within few days that initiating lug inside college makes pain by
unsupported by the staff and inconvenient time to students….
So I hold that college lug plan.
And dreamed about initiating lug in kanchipuram.
Myself came up with some ideas like,
* ok, the place is temple
* Computer : Is this necessary to conduct the lug . No. Not at all.
* Internet : Here we dont have computer itself. Then what the purpose of Internet.
* People : Let me start to make calls to my 4 friends( Dhastha, Rajkumar, Venkat, Mohan )
those who studying MCA in and around Kanchipuram.
Yup. Fixed the date and venue (Egambaranathar Temple).
I told all of these to my bro shrini. He encouraged me a lot.
I requested him to lug and give talk. But he refused and replied, ‘you itself give talk’.
Oops. I dont know anything. Ok. What to do. I recollected the concept of the foss and GPL.
Then shrini and myself discussed, how kanchilug should be differ from the ilugc (Chennai Lug).
ILUGC is maintain its status like those who are chennai students (not to support people those who
dont know, what is computer and programming, since it doenst have time to teach everything to
everybody to every monthly meetup) .
Then we decided, kanchilug should be help to people those who dont know much knowledge about
computer, programming. And I was thinking, why cant we conduct meetup every week Sunday.
Why not.!.
Yup!
KanchiLug Begins:
http://kanchilug.wordpress.com/2009/05/09/kanchilug-rocks-begin/
KanchiLug Weekly Meetup 001:
http://kanchilug.wordpress.com/2009/05/09/klug-intro-talk/
KanchiLug Weekly Meetup 100:
http://kanchilug.wordpress.com/2011/08/09/100th-weekly-meet-celebration-of-kanchilug/
Started to post blog, created mailing list. People are encouraged us in kanchilug mailing list.
http://www.freelists.org/list/kanchilug
Many weeks passed away with many talks in kanchilug.
But Shrini didnt visited the kanchilug meetup yet.
After few moths he asked me like, ‘Shall we buy domain for kanchilug ?’
But within few minutes, he came to decision, ‘No, We will never buy domain name and space by paying money for kanchilug’.
Kanchilug should be role model to other lugs that to startup and maintaining lug, people no need to spend money at all,
Since we have free accounts in wordpress.com and freelists.org.
Not only for kanchilug, for each and every person started to create their own blog.
And still we are encouraging newbies of kanchilug to create and posts about what they are learning in their personal/technical blog.
Days were rolling !
Shrini visited kanchilug and started to gave some talks often.
He invited his technical friends those who living in kanchi to give talks in kanchi lug meetup.
Also he gave us few new ideas, how to help linux users by …
1)
Sending OAOD (One Application One Day) to all the linux users mailing list in India. i.e Linux had thousands of applications.
Explain very shortly about one application a day and send to mailing list.
Dhasthagheer takes this role by volunteer. He sending OAOD mails to almost all the lug mailing list in India (Including ILUGC, DelhiLug, KanchiLug…) and posting the same thing in separate blog. Here it is http://dowithlinux.wordpress.com/
2)
Then we was thinking about how to help those who dont have Internet connection in their home. Then we got an idea and started to implemented it.
i.e. Sending One Day One Command (ODOC) via sms.
Myself started to do this. Announced this in all the mailing list in India, and got subscriptions to this sms more than 300 people from around Tamilnadu, Delhi, Bangalore, Kerala, Mumbai… Also started to post blog those linux commands here http://1day1cmd.wordpress.com/
To simplify our work, Mr.Raja Subramaniyan from ILUGC presented one sms protocol dongle (Hawai 500). Thanks to him.
After few months, I bought our own sms dongle by myself for the purpose of KanchiLug.
Later the same work has been transferred to BalaKrishnan and Praveen Kumar (currently).
3)
Already shrini was posing “FOSS News” to few mailing lists( including fossnews, ILUGC, KanchiLug ). Then Yassir Arafath takes that role and doing the same thing.
4)
Suresh started to send “Gnu/Linux Cool Tips” mail to all the lug mailing lists and post blog here http://gnutips.wordpress.com/ .
2009 activities :
http://kanchilug.wordpress.com/2009-activities/
2010 activities :
http://kanchilug.wordpress.com/2011/01/02/review-2010-goals-achievements/
We kanchilug people translated ubuntu manual into tamil and released.
http://kanchilug.wordpress.com/2010/03/21/translating-ubuntu-manual-into-tamil/
http://kanchilug.wordpress.com/2010/06/11/alpha-version-of-ubuntu-manual-in-tamil-released/
2011 goals :
http://kanchilug.wordpress.com/2011/01/02/2011-goals/
Kanchilug Locations :
Initially we conducted kanchilug meetups in temples.
Then we moved to Siva Kalvi Nilayam, Madam Street, KPM for few months. We thank Mr.Saravana Aarumugam to permitted us.
Then we moved to Dhasthagheer’s home. We thank his parents to treat us in friendly manner to conduct weekly meetup in their home.
Finally now we are conducting weekly meetups in Sri Narayana Guru Matriculation School, KPM. We thank Head Master Mr.Julian gave us
his permission to conduct weekly meetup for free of cost by taking his own risk.
People’s achievements :
Here I want to point outs few kanchilug members those whoever utilized kanchilug meetups.
Dhasthagheer joined in Indian Institute of Technology Bombay as Project Staff to do visualization in Open Source Languages.
http://dhastha.wordpress.com/
Praveen Kumar joined in Indian Institute of Technology Bombay as Project Staff to do Spoken-Tutorial video editing using Open Source tools.
http://grifinder.wordpress.com/
Selvamani joined in one chennai based software development company using Open Source Languages.
http://infobees.wordpress.com/
Do you want to know about my career status ? See my signature in this blog post. 🙂
Here why I am pointing out these people means, they were/are using kanchilug meetups and its circumferences to improve their own skills.
By this way only they got high-lighted / identified / recognized by the Industry people.
Dhastha & Praveen got jobs in IIT-B. That is not big thing.
The only high-lighted person is Selvamani. Because,….
when we started kanchilug, he also joined with us. At that time he was working in one BPO company in Chennai.
He done his B.Sc (CS) in 2007. He coudnt go to IT company as programmer / developer.
He utilized the kanchilug by involving more activities and learned all the foss languages by his own interest .
( In kanchilug we learned Perl, Php languages by , Raman.P (ILUGC) and Ravi Jaya (ILUGC), Selvamani and Arulalan )
Atlast 6 months back, he got offer letters as developer from two IT companies Chennai, Coimbatore. Now he is working in chennai based company.
I feel, this is real achievement. He deserve it because he utilized it. People recognized him even though he worked in BPO for three years and had gap in years after his B.Sc (CS) completion. Thanks to them.
Few more words :
I want to convey to the new kanchilug members that you people also can achieve what ever you want.
Scratch your own itch ( Famous foss philosophy ). Whatever you want to be in surroundings, make change it.
Thanks to :
We thanks Shrinivasan to being back bone of kanchilug. And to my kanchilug friends those who being part of kanchilug from the beginning.
To ILUGC geek people those who guiding / helping us from the beginning. Finally we thanks to my mom & dad and Dhatha’s mom & dad
for being friendly by baring all of our sweetest tortures.
Thanks & Regards,
Arulalan.T
Project Associate
Centre for Atmospheric Sciences
Indian Institute of Technology Delhi
My Experiments In Gnu/Linux ! : https://tuxcoder.wordpress.com
Kanchi Linux User Group Rocks ! : http://kanchilug.wordpress.com
Tux Coder 