TossConf25 – planning meeting 2 – minutes

Shrini

tshrinivasan

9 April 2025 at 22:02

meeting minutes

2025-04-10

Participants:
Salman
Sakhil
Thanga Ayanar
Shrini

Minutes:

website:
https://tossconf25.kaniyam.com/ is ready.
We can keep updating it once the schedule is being prepared.

We will get volunteers from SJIT college and Payilagam.

We can give the below activities for volunteers –

web site design
logo design
promotion
event organizing
Free Software Demo
GNU/Linux Installation
any other pre conf events like hackathon, game jam, OSM party, packaging party etc.

Student volunteer should colloborate with any GLUG, to do any activities.
volunteer should prepare for a talk on any FOSS sofware.
prepare slides, write a blog, make a video and then show a demo on the conf event or pre/post event.

We can have a panel discussion with all GLUG team.

GLUGs/communities should have a stall to showcase their activities with computer or banner/poster.

Freebies :

For the partipants, we can give free stickers
For the speakers and volunteers, we can print Dhuruvangal book and give it as gift.

Book – 200 Rs/per book
we can print 35 book.
200* 35 = 5000

stickers
18 * 350 = 6300

Total = 11300 INR

events :

mini CTF
plan for as a last item, if we get time.
should host on a external server.
Linux Install Fest
FOSS demo stalls
Book sale

Give some gift for all the people who support from collge,
like hall arrangers, cleaners, lab incharge, AV team etc.

Next,
plan for agenda
plan for stickers
plan for book print
plan for cost
plan for registration ( 100 INR min for external participants )

prepare a sheet for all the contacts, action plans and share.

plan to host a online game session for volunteers.
veloren
luanti (minetest)
xonotic
supertuxcart
0ad

Thanga ayanar will check with kalai for other network games.

plan for a OSM event, with all the volunteers.

Let us connect once in two weeks till may end.
then we can meet, weekly once, till the conference.

quick demo on org2blog

Shrini

tshrinivasan

16 March 2025 at 14:34

this is a test post to demo org2blog in kanchilug meet, on this special day of “Richard Stallman””s birthday. Explore emacs and start using it. it will be a lifetime editor for you.

quick demo on org2blog

Shrini

tshrinivasan

16 March 2025 at 14:34

this is a test post to demo org2blog in kanchilug meet, on this special day of “Richard Stallman””s birthday. Explore emacs and start using it. it will be a lifetime editor for you.

Fix – 1:

Shrini

tshrinivasan

12 March 2025 at 03:08

On searching this, https://stackoverflow.com/questions/26356268/call-to-undefined-function-imagecreatefromjpeg-and-gd-enabled

found that we have to install gd library of PHP.

we had installed this already in the server as

sudo apt install php-gd

Now, checked the php version.

php -v
PHP 8.1.31 (cli) (built: Nov 21 2024 13:10:15) (NTS)

installed the gd version for it.

sudo apt install php8.1-gd

and restarted apache

sudo systemctl restart apache2

That’s all.

Now, unpublished the catalog. re-uploaded the cover images and published again.

Now, the thumbnails are generated.

But they are too small.

Welcoming Winter with Python – PyKids and PyLadies

Shrini

tshrinivasan

31 January 2025 at 21:30

Winter Break for kids

In Canada, we have around 15 days of winter break for all school kids, covering Christmas and New year.

These celebrations are helping much to come out of the winter worries.

Winter is scary word, but people have to go through it, as life has to go on. As we can not travel much and there are no outdoor events/games, we have to be at home, all the days, weeks and months. Organizing indoor events are costly.

To spend the winter actively, many celebrations days are occurring. Halloween, Christmas, Boxing day, New year, Valentine day and more are there, to make the winter active.

Keeping the kids at home for 17 days winter break is tough. We have to engage them whole day. In our apartment, we are conducting many kids events like weekly chess hour, dance hours, board games day, movie time, sleep over nights etc.

Computer Literacy is good here. Kids are learning to use computer at school, from Grade 3 itself. They play many educational games at school. Homework are done with google slides and google docs, from grade 5. Scratch programming also trained here at grade 5. So, they know very well to use computer, read text online, search the internet and gather some info etc.

PyKids

This time, thought of having some tech events for kids. Called for 10 days training as “PyKids”, for grade 5 and above. The announcement was welcomed well by many parents. We had around 17 kids participated.

As our house is empty mostly, ( thanks to Nithya, for the minimalistic life style ), our hall helped for gathering and teaching.

By keeping the hall empty, we are using the place as Daily Zumba dance hall, mini party hall, DJ hall, kids play area and now as a learning place.

Teaching Python for kids is not easy. The kids are not ready to listen to any long talks. They can not even listen to my regular “python introduction” slides. So, jumped into hands-on on the day one itself.

My mentor, Asokan Pichai explained how we have to goto hands-on on any python training, few months ago. Experienced the benefits of it this time.

Even-though, I am using Python for 10+ years, teaching it to kids was really tough. I had to read few books and read on more basics, so that I can explain the building blocks of python with more relevant examples for kids.

The kids are good at asking questions. They share feedback with their eyes itself. It is a huge different on teaching to adults. Most of the adults don’t ask questions. They hesitate to say they don’t understand something. But, kids are brave enough to ask questions and express the feedback immediately.

With a training on 4-6 pm everyday, for around 10 days, we can cover so little of python only.

We practiced the code here – https://github.com/tshrinivasan/python-for-kids We used https://www.online-python.com/ as IDE, as the kids have laptops and tablets with different OS. Will install Python on their laptops on next events so that they can explore more python libraries.

On the final day, my friend Jay Varadharajan, gave a Pizza party for all kids, along with a participation certificate.

Thanks for all the questions kids. Along with you, I learnt a lot. Thanks for all the parents for the great support.

PyLadies

Nithya wanted to try out full day training for her friends. Getting a time of 9-5 to learn something is so luxury for many people. Still, around 10 friends participated.

Nithya took the day with all hands-on. She covered the variables, getting input, if/else, for/while loop, string/list operations. The participants were happy to dive into programming so quickly.

“A byte of Python” is a super easy book to learn python. Read it here for free. https://python.swaroopch.com/

Gave this link as asked to read/practice regularly. Hope they are following the book.

Home as Learning Space

Thus, we are converting our home as a learning space for kids and friends. Thinking of conducting some technical meetups too. ( I am missing all the Linux Users groups meetings and hackathons). Hope we can get more tech events in the winter and make it so interesting and productive.