Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE), Faculty of Engineering and Technology, Manav Rachna International University, had organized a four-day GNOME.Asia Summit 2016, during April 21-24, 2016, held at its MRIU campus, Faridabad. This event aimed to promote GNOME technology based on Open Source Software among different segments and grow GNOME communities in Asia. It was a four-day event constituting of a one-day workshop, two-day Conference, followed by one day trip to TAJ MAHAL, Agra. GNOME.Asia Summit 2016 is the second community event of its kind in India.
The first day of the Summit, which was also an International Workshop on GNOME, commenced at 0930 hrs with the inaugural ceremony, floral welcome of the guests and Lighting of the Lamp in the presence of Honorable Vice Chancellor Dr. N. C. Wadhwa; Dr. M. K. Soni, Executive Director and Dean, FET; Dr. S. S. Tyagi, Professor and Head, Department of CSE, FET; Dr. Suresh Kumar, Professor, Department of CSE, FET; Dr. S. S. Handa, Professor, Department of CSE, FET; the visiting members of the GNOME Foundation Ms. Ekaterina Gerasimova (UK), Director, GNOME; Mr. Cosimo Cecchi (USA), Director, GNOME; Mr. David King (UK), Senior Software Engineer, Red Hat UK Ltd.; Mr. Nirbheek Chauhan, Senior Software Engineer, Centricular Ltd., Bangalore, India; Mr. Arun Raghavan, Software Engineer, Freelance consulting services, India and other dignitaries. Dr. S. S. Tyagi bid welcome to the International delegates representing various countries such as USA, UK, China, Indonesia, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, France, Czech Republic, Germany, Kazakhstan, and all the participants. Dr. N. C. Wadhwa, gave his blessings for the success of this Summit. He informed our foreign guests about Manav Rachna International University and its ideologies. Dr. M. K. Soni, in his speech, accentuated that it is a memorable occasion and a land mark for all of us to have this esteemed event being organized at our University, which has brought all of us together with the sole purpose of promoting GNOME technology. The Key Speakers for the morning session were Ms. Ekaterina Gerasimova, Mr. David King. Ms. Ekaterina Gerasimova spoke on ‘Make your first contribution’, whereby she explained how and why to contribute to GNOME. Mr. David King delivered his speech on ‘Writing a GNOME application for newcomers’. He identified several websites related to development of GNOME application. The key speakers for the evening session were Nirbheek Chauhan and Mr. Arun Raghavan, who talked about ‘GStreamer in your GNOME: Hands-on multimedia hacking’. They shared codes which the participants executed hands-on their laptops and any issues raised were clarified by the experts. The Workshop concluded with a vote of thanks by Dr. S. S. Tyagi, Professor and Head, Department of CSE, FET. The first day of the Summit saw numerous experts and was immensely successful with 29 International and around 100 National delegates and participants in attendance.
The second day of the Summit marked the beginning of a two-day International Conference on GNOME, which commenced at 1000 hrs with the inaugural ceremony, floral welcome of the guests and Lighting of the Lamp in the presence of Honorable Vice Chancellor Dr. N. C. Wadhwa, MRIU; Chief Guest Dr. K. K. Aggarwal, Chancellor, K.R. Mangalam University; Dr. M. K. Soni, Executive Director and Dean, FET; Dr. S. S. Tyagi, Professor and Head, Department of CSE, FET; Dr. Suresh Kumar, Professor, Department of CSE, FET; Dr. S. S. Handa, Professor, Department of CSE, FET; the visiting members of the GNOME Foundation Ms. Ekaterina Gerasimova (UK), Director, GNOME; Mr. Cosimo Cecchi (USA), Director, GNOME; Mr. Bin Li (China), Foundation Member, GNOME; Mr. Ahmad Harris (Indonesia), Foundation Member, GNOME and other dignitaries. Chief Guest Dr. K. K. Aggarwal, in his speech, accentuated that it is a memorable occasion and a land mark for all of us to have this esteemed event being organized at this University, which has brought all of us together with the sole purpose of promoting GNOME technology. He also mentioned that India thoroughly supports Open Source philosophy and culture. He urged students to use and experiment with available Open Source softwares and enhance their coding capabilities. He identified various reasons to contribute to GNOME community while citing several inspiring stories. The sessions on the first day of the conference continued in three parallel sittings, constituting 2 Keynote addresses, 6 presentations and 7 Lightning Talks. The first Keynote Speaker was Mr. Cosimo Cecchi who talked about ‘The next billion GNOME users’. He enlightened the audiences about the latest version of GNOME i.e. GNOME ‘Delhi’ Version 3.20, released on March 23, 2016. The Second Keynote speaker was Mr. Pravin Satpute, Senior Software Engineer, Red Hat India Ltd. He gave his talk on ‘State of Indian languages in GNOME 3.20’. Keynote addresses were followed by presentations, by Mr. Ankit Prateek, Betatester, Pen Test, India, on the topic ‘Privacy and Security in the Age of Surveillance’; Mr. Sahil Sareen, Software Engineer, Arista Networks, GNOME-Chess Maintainer, India, presented on ‘GNOME games health graph based analytics’; Mr. Eric Sun (Taiwan), Foundation Member, GNOME, on the topic ‘Why do we insist promoting FOSS in Taiwan’s Campus?’; Mr. Tzong-Heng Chi and Mr. Li-An Chen, FOSS Educationists, Free Software Foundation, China, spoke on ‘A better way to leverage the effectiveness of FOSS to the Remote Areas in China’; Mr. Tobias Mueller (Germany), Lead Member, BugSquad, GNOME, talked about ‘Five years of GNOME3’; and Mr. Sudarshan Chikkapura Puttalingaiah, Mechanical Engineer, Bosch, India, presented the topic ‘Building an Automotive platform from GNOME’. Seven lightning talks were delivered by different speakers in a two different sessions. In the morning session, lightning talks were delivered by Ms. Amisha Singla, M. Tech student, Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology, Gujarat, India, on the topic ‘Adding Print route support in GNOME Maps’; Mr. Sahil Sareen (India), Foundation Member, GNOME, talked on’Release of Chess and Sudoku’; Ms. Ekaterina Gerasimova (UK), Director, GNOME, spoke on the topic ‘Open Street Maps’. In the evening session, lightning talks were delivered by Mr. David King (UK), Senior Software Engineer, Red Hat UK Ltd. on the topic ‘EasyTAG: Cross platform Audio Tagging’; Dr. Indu Kashyap, Associate Professor, Department of CSE, FET, spoke on ‘Role of LMS in Higher Education/ Universities through GNOME’; Mr. Jonathan Kang, Software Engineer, Indonesia University, delivered his talk on ‘How to apply GSoC with GNOME’ and Mr. Muhammad Miftakhul Syaikhuddin, Unicity Indonesia, spoke on ‘Next GNOME for Education’.The second day of the International Conference on GNOME commenced with the warm reception of all International and National delegates and participants. The Keynote speech was given by Ms. Ekaterina Gerasimova on ‘Contribute to GNOME’, where she talked about how we can contribute to GNOME, means of communication such as IRC, Mailing Lists, about Outreachy Program for Women and Google School of Code (GSoC). After tea break and a group photo, the presentations resumed, given by: Mr. David King on the topic ‘xdg-app: sandboxing, bundling and the future’; Video presentation by Mr. Aryeom Han, Animation Film director and Animation Artist, GIMP, South Korea and Ms. Jehan Pages, Software Developer,GIMP, France on ‘ZeMarmot: A Libre movie made with free software’; Mr. Tobias Mueller (Germany), Lead Member BugSquad, GNOME, spoke on ‘Functionality, Security, Usability: Choose any two. Or GNOME’; Mr. Daiki Ueno (Japan), Free Software developer, Free Software Foundation, ‘Contribute your first application to GNOME’; Mr. Ankit Prateek, Betatester, Pen Test, India, on the topic ‘Privacy & Security in the Age of Surveillance’; Mr. Kunal Jain, Student, IIT Guwahati, talked on ‘What’s new in Polari in 3.20 Release and Future plans’; Mr. Syah Dwi Prihatmoko, System Administrator, KodeKreatif, Indonesia, delivered his talk on ‘FOSS in Indonesia Election’; Mr. Li Zhenning, Software Engineer, CS2C, China, spoke on ‘ Application Gnome in China’; Mr. Nirbheek Chauhan, Senior Software Engineer, Centricular Ltd., Bangalore, India, on the topic ‘GStreamer: Hacking Audio and Video into your GNOME application’; Mr. Iwan S. Tahari, Free Software Developer, FANS, Kazakhstan, spoke on ‘Open Source in Metal Roofing Industry’; Ms. Karishma Arora and Ms. Ekta Malhotra, Assistant Professors, Deptt. of CSE, FET, gave their presentation on ‘GNOME for Youth’.

Lightning talks were delivered by Mr. Ankit Pratap Singh, Mr. Anand Saurav, Mr. Avneet Kumar, students, Deptt. of CSE, FET, MRIU, on the topic ‘Present technologies in the Hacking World’; Mr. Milind Kanadkhedkar, Sr. Scientific Officer, MGIRI, Maharashtra, India, spoke on ‘ICT innovations for Rural India’; Mr. Bin Li, delivered his talk on ‘Spreading GNOME with Local User Group’; Mr. Vivek Kumar, B.Tech. Student, GGSIPU, India, spoke on ‘Standing alone in Linux community with new Graphics Game’; and Mr. Pranav Kant, Associate Software Engineer, Collabora Ltd., spoke on ‘Libre Office Online’.

After the sessions were over, Ms. Shobha Tyagi shared her views about this Summit. She showered praises to her peers at GNOME Foundation and thanked the organizing teams and Manav Rachna International University for the success of this event, hoping that we continue this alliance in future as well. Dr. S. S. Tyagi expressed his privilege for the opportunity to propose a vote of thanks on this historic occasion. He conveyed thanks to all distinguished participants who have come from distant places of the world to attend the Summit. He assured the visiting members of the GNOME Foundation that we will continue to work in the direction of creating knowledge and awareness about GNOME and Open Source software, so that we can find as many contributors who will help in the growth of the community. We are proud to discover that GNOME Version 3.20 has been dubbed as ‘Delhi’, referring to this Summit. GNOME.Asia Summit 2016 concluded with over 3 workshops, 3 Keynote Addresses, 17 presentations, 12 Lightning talks and speakers coming from places all over the world such as USA, UK, China, Indonesia, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, France, Czech Republic, Germany, Kazakhstan, as well as India. Later in the evening, a fun-filled cultural event was organized for the delegated followed by dinner. On April 24, 2016, all our delegates and participants went on a recreational trip to visit Taj Mahal, Agra, accompanied by CSE Faculty Members.