I gave a talk at FOSSConf08 yesterday and came away feeling very disappointed and let down! It was a poorly organized event where total chaos prevailed. My friend Venkat and I found ourselves unable to show our presentation slides because of an overheating projector whose brightness could not out-match the sunlight coming in from the open windows!

Venkat’s talk got delayed by nearly 30 minutes because the machine provided to him was ancient running a version of Fedora which could not automount the USB drive he had.

The only thing we were happy about was the audience who patiently listened to chalk screeching on the blackboard!

To any of you out there organizing a conference, here is a piece of advice,

The contributors spend their time and money visiting such events to interact with fellow enthusiasts. The least, you, as an organizer can do is to make sure everything is smooth and taken care of. I am not saying, you should bear the travel expenses etc. Just make sure something as basic as a projector works!

Here is my poor presentation which did not see the light of the day :)