The first workshop in June was by a friend of reserved-bit, Shakthi Kannan. Shakthi has been one of the leading faces of the FOSS movement in India for some years and we were very excited when he expressed interest in doing a workshop at reserved-bit. His book I want 2 do project tell me wat 2 do is a handbook every student and professional must own. It is a concise guide for people looking to contribute to the Open Source world. It is the answer to the question that is the title of the book, a question the author must have heard enough number of times in his life to motivate him to write a book.
Attending a workshop by an author of a book you enjoyed reading must always be a pleasure and this one was no less. Shakthi talked about everything from the history of the Free Software movement to personal benefits of contributing to source code to the specifics like coding standards and styles, effective programming environments, hardware and public communication in the FOSS world. He even talked about some very useful strategies to planning and organizing one’s work and ensuring personal success as well as success of the FOSS project.
The full day session ended with attendees creating mind maps for their projects and were very happy about having spent the day with the author. We were delighted to be facilitators of such a wonderful workshop and we hope to do this again some time in future.