FSMK National Conference:The head start

Free Software Movement-Karnataka will be holding a National Conference by the end of March this year to portray the essence of a society interlinked with Free Software. This would be one of the means to demonstrate the larger goals we are striving towards-"Breaking the Knowledge Divide".

As our Conference will be touching upon the various facets of the society, we thought it best to involve the elite group from all sections of the society to fuel the run to the Conference by seeking their valuable inputs, efforts and resourceful help.

Today, we had the first meeting of all the main members who are supporting the cause of "Free Software, Free Society" by lending their help to our Conference work. To throw some light on how diverse this elite group was I shall mention a few of the Organizations these patrons are affiliated to,like Indian Institute of Science, Indian Institute of Management, Indian Institute of Astrophysics,School Teachers Association, Universities and Engineering Colleges,Journalists,Slum Computing Centres,Peer Free Software enthusiasts from other states, eminent literary figures, working professionals from the Government Secretariat, MNC's like CISCO, IBM, Accenture,Entrepreneurs and definitely a good number of enthusiastic students and our activists.

Today's session was mainly to brainstorm and channelize the flow of our efforts to accomplish our mission. Discussing in this regard, I heard a lot of quality ideas and inputs churned out from this group-few of the aspirations were highly pragmatic and efficient. For instance, the taking off of Swatantra Software at the applications layer to reach the layman at every level he uses Software, Inculcating a disciplined culture in making Swatantra Software for accountability, bridging the gaps caused by the digital divide by taking software in the localized form,instigating students to come with projects which would reach out every person touched by software,credible accessibility software and numerous other valuable ideas.

The support extended from all the people present there was encouraging to us at FSMK,and consequently it also increases the  responsibility while executing this Mission(Its more than just holding a conference to us).

We wish to reach out to as many people as possible and make them realize the potential vulnerabilities and inhibitions they would succumb to by promoting and using restricted knowledge, be it Software in specific or plain human knowledge in general.