strange symphonies

7th AsiaOSS: CodeFest Wrapup

You may notice that by the end of the long read, the quality, and details starts to drop. I was getting lazy, and was tired. Well either way here is a wrapup of the CodeFest for non-participants to see how it was like and perhaps attend a future one. I may write up one for the Symposium, but no guarantees. Anyways, enjoy.

At the crack of dawn, the day began like any other day. Up bright and early, participants of the 7th AsiaOSS CodeFest prepared themselves for a long coding session, racking up over thirty hours of intense action.

Registration started early in the morning ( 8:30 am ), with people being led into the meeting room, where everyone could setup their machines for the event, and introduce themselves to one another. One by one the audience would trickle into the meeting room. The attendees came from all over the place, students from International Islamic University ( IIU ) and Universiti Teknologi Mara ( UITM ), employees of OSCC, MIMOS, and CICC, people from Japan, and members of the MyOSS Community. The meeting room was already arranged for the coding event, with power cables neatly lined up along the floor and tables laid out in an orderly fashion. The place was truly prepared and ready for facilitating the large number of participants.

Our refreshments were placed outside, with both tea and coffee, and some edible treats for the everyone to munch down. Comfortable sofas and seats were also nearby, so that weary and tired people can take a break from the task at hand. The seats would provide even more use than expected.

By 9:30 am the crowd was wild and bustling, and everyone had gotten comfortable into their seats ready to start. Laptops, computers, and monitors were all fired up, with CAT5 cables and a wireless router to help share the knowledge fused into the event. It was truly a geeks dream to see all that hardware there.

The opening ceremony began at 9:45 with an introduction from Afrezal from the sponsoring company MIMOS. Proper introductions were carried out, and a gracious acknowledgment to the attendees flying from Japan to participate in such an event. Astonishingly enough, several members were female, and were commended for attending. After the opening speech, each audience member began introducing themselves, first with their names, and what they would like to achieve by the end of the code fest.

Before the event began, casual discussions with the Japanese brought up the fact that, the event was had a good number of people, which is a good sign. It actually shows that we aren’t doing as bad it looks.

Thus the event began. Everyone was fired up, and ready to get to work. A brainstorming session was pursued by Niibe Yukata to ensure that the people all had goals and objectives for the duration of the CodeFest. Also this would help everyone to understand what everyone else was doing, and see how they can help each other. Similarly Niibe proposed several ideas, such as posting up a wiki for promoting the values of sharing knowledge, and to help organize the many ideas everyone had. The second idea was to create an IRC channel ( #asiaoss @ irc.freenode.net ) to quickly discuss and pass ideas around the large attendance.

It helped to quicken the flow of ideas, as people can track the log and view what interesting topics have come around. Both of these are ideas would invovle the usage of present Free and Open Source Software to make it happen.

During the proposal of ideas, there was a heavy emphasis on the usage of LiveCDs. Though there was an emphasis on LiveCDs, the targeted areas were quite different, as each one would be providing a solution to different problems. Target areas included security, localization, both Malay and Arabic, a Computer Science University Oriented LiveCD, and a Xen Live CD. Other topics included localization but of other popular programs such as Open Office.org, and creating a Mono RSS reader.

With the backend wiki and communication channel set in place, the network up and running, power running through the copper veins of MIMOS, and final goals set everyone, was all prepared.

The start of the event began slow, as the goals still had to have their scopes defined. So project leaders were chosen, strategies formed, and objectives set.

Not to long after everyone was fired up, Kenji Kitagawa had the first presentation on “Re-Mastering for Knoppix�?. For the event, it provided everyone with a great introduction into Live CDs, and helped to rebolster peoples goals. Though when Kenji got on stage, and attempted to present his slides, he did run into a few problems, and started displaying symptoms of nervousness. Luckily enough Kenji was able to get everything working, and pulled it off with a breeze. During his slides, he brought up a good point, particularly that it is important to have passion.

By now everyone was heated up and already began the hands on work with their projects, and nothing could stop them, not even lunch. After Afrezal made the call for lunch ( 1:00pm ), everyone continued hacking away on their computers disregarding Afrezal’s announcement. This truly demonstrated the passion that the people had within them for the task at hand. After a second announcement, the audience started moving towards the lunch hall.

Lunch was served with a variety of meats and vegetables, and complements the typical Malaysian lunch. Discussions concerning the projects, and how to implement certain features were continued during the lunch session. During the Lunch session the guests from Japan captivated the Malaysian attendees with suggestions, advice, and other discussions.

Once the luncheon was served, people started trickling back to their seats ( 2:15pm ) to continue back to their work, and implement all the ideas that were discussed.

Progress once again started off slowly as people had to let the food digest. But once completely digested, activity continued to the levels prior to lunch. Out of nowhere a camera crew stepped in to take video footage of the CodeFest.

Since the proposal of the wiki, and irc channels, they have been used effectively. The wiki pages had been updated frequently and displayed the progress of the projects.

After an extended period of time, a coffee break was announced to let some people cool down, and give them some breathing time. This provided a great opportunity for the CEO of MIMOS to thank all the people for attending and by giving everyone a 7th AsiaOSS Symposium CodeFest T-Shirt, now a collectors item!

From here on out, development of the projects continued until dinner ( 7pm ). The dinner session was quite similar to the lunch session, with the sharing of ideas.

Once dinner had finished ( 8:00pm ), and after some good solid hours of development, a lot of progress with the projects can be seen. Once again food/ideas had to settle before continuing. A participant from Korea had also just arrived and began his work.

Once nine o’clock hit, a lot of people started, dissappearing, and calling it a night. One by one people would leave, and development would slow down. Though there still continued to be efforts to finish up the project through the night.

You can really see the power of the people, and the knowledge sharing that is going on. Everyone is helping everyone else, and this is demonstrated well by Niibe Yutaka as he would continuously help other people, and provide suggestions for improvement. The AsiaOSS IRC channel had people not physically present in the event joining in for conversation. This included members from MyOSS community.

Another great example, is that even by 11:00pm at night, several new attendees wanted to come and see how the CodeFest was coming along. Even these few people were able to bring help through, coding, advice, or just companionship for the coders.

By 3am, a lot of the people who decided to stay over had gone to sleep, and only a handful of people were wide awake, still continuing their work. People had decided to sleep on the chairs, blanketed by their jackets.

As the hour hand continued till dawn, more and more people called it quits, and started to go to sleep. Some decided to use the sofas outside as a replacement for the comforts of their beds.

The noise and ruckus in the recreation area started around 7am, waking up several of the sleeping hackers. By 9am, the food had arrived, and people have already started having breakfast. As more and more people return to the battleground, you can tell who were the weary soldiers staying awake through the night, and who had a good nights sleep with the enthusiasm they carried with them into the room.

Not too long after Niibe Yutaka began his presentation on Linux Kernel Development, helping provide insight for everyone into how to get your hands dirty in with the Linux source code, and how he got into it. Also details which files hes maintaining, and people went to inspect those files. His talk was inspirational, and afterwards Niibe demonstrated to everyone how he hacks on the kernel. Everyone was memorized by his work and you could easily tell how they were captivated by Niibe’s work.

Niibe Yutaka: “Hacking around the kernel is very enjoyable�?

After Niibe’s presentation it was announced that the CodeFest will end early due to preparations that need to take place at Nikko hotel prior to the commencement of the Symposium. Some of the projects had reached completion. Other still had a lot of things to do. But nonetheless the event would come to a close.

Lunch was just around the corner, but before that, group pictures had to be taken. These were taken in front of the MIMOS building with the CodeFest banner being held by the participants.

With lunch over, the event started to draw to a close. Agnes finished the day by giving the attendees a certification of participation in the CodeFest event. People were told to update their wiki pages appropriately so that the information can be shared amongst fellow peers internationally in the spirit of open source. Hustle and bustle continued as people began the work of packing up their machines, and distributing their completed LiveCDs to Rizal. The event ended quickly as it begun, but I was slightly grateful, as it meant I could go home and sleep early.

Happy Hacking everyone.