FUDCon:Bid for Pune 2015

Event Details

Time & Place

Time: 26 - 28 June 2015

Venue: MIT College of Engineering, Pune, India

About Pune

"Bajirao Peshwa" by Amit20081980 - Own work. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Pune is a vibrant cultural city in the state of Maharashtra, India. It is located about 150 km east-south of Mumbai, the financial capital of India. Pune has a great distinction of being at the forefront in preserving and giving due prominance to the indigenous Maharashtrian culture, theatre, music, education and arts. Pune is known as the Oxford of the East for its rich educational heritage and variety of educational opportunities offered today.

FUDCon Pune

FUDCon Pune 2011. Photo credit: Ankur Sinha

• India has one of the largest contributor and user bases for Fedora and Open Source in Asia. Both these factors make hosting a FUDCon in India highly compelling and advantageous from a fruitful community interaction as well as budget perspective.

• FUDCon Pune 2011 had over a 1000 attendees over three days. It was conducted with great precision and had 6 parallel tracks with technical talks and workshops. A few moments captured at FUDCon Pune 2011: https://www.flickr.com/photos/kushaldas/sets/72157628097141150/

• The FUDCon in Pune in 2015 will be organized by a few people with past experience from FUDCon Pune 2011, along with new faces with fresh perspectives. The team consists of long-standing Fedora community members that have participated in and organized various FOSS events over the years.

• India is one of Red Hat's largest engineering centers in the world. A lot of the engineers play a very active role in the Fedora and upstream communities.

Getting to Pune

From anywhere else in India

Travelling from elsewhere in India to Pune would cost up to $100 by air, train or road

From outside India

The closest international Airport to Pune is Mumbai, which is about 150 km away which can be covered as a road trip on the expressway by cab/bus or by train at regular intervals round the clock. Direct flights to and from Pune are operated by various airlines to the following destinations:

• Frankfurt
• Dubai
• Abu Dhabi
• Sharjah

Organizers will arrange for transportation between Mumbai airport and Pune.

Indian Visa application

You can get a Tourist, Business or Conference Visa to attend the FUDCon. An Indian visa is valid from the day it is issued, not from the day you arrive in the country.

The Electronic Travel Authorisation(ETA) facility became operational recently for citizens of over 43 eligible countries[5], including those who are eligible for visa on arrival.

Visa fee depends on the country of origin and nationality of the person applying for the visa. It ranges between 20 - 100 USD.

For further information on this, please check with local embassy office or Indian Visa Application center office or websites for information on applicable fee and payment methods.

1. https://indianvisaonline.gov.in/visa/
2. http://mea.gov.in/indian-missions-abroad.htm
3. https://indianvisaonline.gov.in/visa/tvoa.html
4. https://india.visahq.com/?_escaped_fragment_=india-Tourist-visa
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_policy_of_India

Estimated flight costs

Estimated round-trip costs from various locations to Mumbai:

Asia

From	Cost	Airline
Beijing	$500	Malaysian Airlines
Brisbane	$1100	Cathay Pacific
Hanoi	$400	Jet Airlines
Hong Kong	$600	Jet Airway
Jakarta	$450	Malindo Air
Kuala Lumpur	$380	Malindo Air
Manila	$680	Jet + philipine Airway
Phom Penh	$500	Jet + Thai + Bangkok Airlines
Singapore	$400	Malindo Air
Sydney	$1100	Cathay Pacific
Tokyo	$580	Air China

Europe

From	Cost	Airline
Amsterdam	$500	Turkish Airlines
Frankurt	$600	Turkish Airway
London	$610	Qatar Airways
Paris	$700	Swiss IntlAir
Prague	$650	British Airways
Vienna	$550	Turkish Airway

NA

From	Cost	Airline
Boston	$1500	Air Canada
New York	$1500	Air Canada
San Francisco	$1500	Air Canada
Toronto	$1000	Delta

Getting around

Auto-rickshaws and call-taxi services are abundant and available. The public bus service is not very good, but we will arrange for transportation for conference speakers and organizers.

Taxi services in Pune:

• Ola Cabs: +91 20 3355 3355
• Taxi For Sure: +91 20 6060 1010
• Easy Ride Cabs: +91 20 27 400 800
• Go Speed Cabs: +91 20 6400 6444
• Traveltime: +91 20 66 000 000
• Wings Radio cabs: +91 20 40100100
• Uber Cabs

Auto-Rickshaws:

• autowale.in: +91 20 6611 1111

Stay

Hotel	Location	Approx. Distance from venue	Approx. Price	Internet
Magnus Service Apartments	Kharadi	15km	$30	Yes
Hotel Lotus	Koregaon Park	10km	$36	Yes
Cocoon Hotel	Magarpatta City	15km	$61	Yes

Eat

Misal Pav. Source: Wikipedia

Pune boasts of a wide range of cuisines ranging from international food (like Italian, Chinese, South-east Asian) to various local dishes. Don't miss the famous misal-pav, vada-pav, puranpoli and a variety of other dishes while you are here! Pune caters to food suitable for all palates.

There are various restaurants and eateries near the conference venue as well as accomodation, which are hygenic, tasty and economical.

Weather

• Summers begin March to July. Though not as hot as Northern parts of India, the daytimes are very sunny with dry heat.
• Early mornings are pleasant and evenings after six, cool and breezy.
• Temperature: 23*c(min) to 35*c(max) [Approximate values]
• Rainfall: Expected (Monsoon starts end of June/Start of July)

About MIT College of Engineering (MITCOE)

Auditorium at MITCOE. Source: Wikipedia.org

MITCOE is among the top engineering colleges in India and in Pune. They have state of the art facilities, with a large well-equipped auditorium for the main track along with classrooms for parallel tracks. Most importantly though, the college faculty and students have active open source evangelists. MITCOE hosted a Free and Open Source Software event earlier this year called FOSSsumMIT, which was a great success.

Schedule and Budget

Tentative Schedule:

• Day 0: Welcome dinner for speakers
• Day 1: Registration, Keynote, talks, Dinner for speakers
• Day 2: Keynote, talks, FUDPub
• Day 3: Workshops, Lightning Talks, Hackfest

Budget:

• Venue: $0 (sponsored by the college)
• Materials, Swag and Food during the conference: $4,000
• FUDPub: $5,000
• Accommodation: $6,000 (4 days)
• Travel: $10,000 (roundtrip)

We have sponsors for the extra budget requirement.

Our Team

• 

  Amit Shah, Fedora Ambassador and QEMU/KVM developer

• 

  Huzaifa Sidhpurwala, Fedora security, provenpackager, infrastructure

• 

  Kushal Das, Fedora Ambassador and mentor, Fedora Cloud Engineer and PSF director.

• 

  M. R. Niranjan, Idm QE

• 

  P J P, Fedora Ambassador, provenpackager, Fedora security team and ndjbdns maintainer

• 

  Praveen Kumar, Fedora Ambassador and provenpackager

• 

  Pravin Satpute, Fedora Ambassador, provenpackager, l10n, i18n.

• 

  Rupali Talwatkar, Community outreach at Red Hat

• 

  Siddhesh Poyarekar, Fedora Ambassador and glibc maintainer

Points from bid discussions

• Positives
  • India has one of the largest contributor bases in APAC
  • > 500 students expected to attend the conference in addition to Fedora and upstream contributors
  • Flight costs from rest of APAC may be expensive but we don't need to fly in as many contributors
• Negatives
  • India has hosted 2 of the 4 FUDCons in APAC between 2005 to 2014
  • High contributor count should not mean that all APAC FUDCons happen in India