DevConf India 2025

It was my first time writing a blog :P (I don’t know how to write a proper one, so bear with me)

DevConf India 2025 was a memorable conference for me. It was my first time

  • Attending a Conference
  • Traveling alone far from South India
  • Traveling in a flight
  • Staying in a hotel
  • Meeting online friends from Fedora in real life

I had so many “first-time” experiences during this event, I really treasure the memories and the things I’ve learned.

Day 1

I arrived at the campus at 9:30 AM and went inside the Vivekananda Auditorium, where the inauguration was happening. I sat at the back and watched the session. After a few minutes, I met Sumantro and Akashdeep. It was my first time meeting Fedora Project contributors in real life. After the session ended, I went to talk to them and introduced myself. I also met another Fedora Project contributor named Mahij. From then on, I tagged along with them. First, we went to have breakfast.

At that moment, I realized I didn’t have my ID card with me. The booth providing ID cards was nearby the canteen, so I quickly went to get it. It felt amazing to receive an ID card with my name printed on it for an open-source conference!

After breakfast, we went to visit the booths. We had been given a sheet with 6 stamp placeholders. If we visited 6 booths and got a stamp on each, we would get some swags. So, we looked around at the booths and talked to people (actually, I just watched Akashdeep talk with them since my technical knowledge and communication skills are a bit limited, so I let him handle everything). Then, one of the organizers told us that the booths weren’t giving stamps anymore because there were fewer people in the talk sessions. So, we went to attend a talk.\

Talk -1

Kafka Streams, Ansible Automates: Backbone for Building Scalable Event-Driven Systems by Ruchi Pakhle & Ruchika Suryawanshi

We went to this talk, but it was almost over when we arrived. They were demonstrating some Ansible playbook examples using event-driven systems. I didn’t understand most of it because we joined late. However, I had already started learning about Ansible, so this talk made me want to dive deeper into it using practical examples.

After that, we went back to the booths and got all the stamps. Finally, we got the swags, and I was really excited since it was my first time receiving them! :D

By then, we were getting hungry, so we went for lunch. We ended up in a shawarma restaurant. It was really good, and I enjoyed the different taste of mayonnaise (oily but tasty).

After lunch, Akash told me that we had another talk session by Sudhir. So, we went to the hall, but there was already a session going on. We decided to stay in the opposite hall.

I was really thirsty by then, almost dying for water! But the talk kept me awake.

Talk -2

PyTorch Community Connect / AI and ML Meetup @ DevConf.IN 2025 by Sumantro Mukherjee & Sudhir Dharanendraiah

This talk was really good. There weren’t any advanced topics, so it was easy to understand. AI is not my area of expertise, but it was insightful. Sumantro showed how to run LLM in a container, which was awesome. Now that Fedora has the openwebui as a package in dnf, it was simply amazing. He showed us what it does and how it works. At the end of the session, Sumantro gave out stickers to the attendees as a form of appreciation, but sadly, I didn’t get one. (Well, I’ll get one at Flock 2025! :P)

That was the last talk we attended on Day 1. Afterward, we planned to go for dinner. Akash invited me, so I joined them. :)

At first, we went to Starbucks (that was also my first time there). Mahij and Akash arrived on a bike, and I went with Sumantro in a cab. He told me many things I didn’t know, and it was awesome to learn from him. The people I met there were way more experienced than me in many ways. They’ve been part of the Fedora Project for a longer time, and they also have professional careers. I’m just a student, so I really learned a lot from them, things I wouldn’t have learned elsewhere.

After Starbucks, we went to “Toons Burger” for dinner. The burgers there were amazing, and they had different varieties of food that I had never seen before.

That’s it for Day 1. I went back to my hotel after dinner, and it was the end of my first day at DevConf India!

Day 2

Just like Day 1, I arrived at the campus at 9:30 AM and bought a few water bottles because Day 1 was miserable without having any water (also, Akash told me to buy some). After that, I went inside the Vivekananda Auditorium to attend Karanbir Singh’s session. He was talking about open-source stuff, how it works, how to enhance it, what he was doing in his day, how it was when it was booming, how Linux became popular, and so on. It was insightful to get information about open-source. After that, everyone in the hall gathered on the stage and we took a group photo together. On Day 1, I was kind of shy :P, but on Day 2, I knew there wouldn’t be another chance. Considering this was my first conference, I just went right away to take the photo. It was awesome!

Just like Day 1, we went to get breakfast and waited for Sumantro & Sudhir to arrive. But it seemed like they would be late, so we went to check out the booths again XD. Just like Day 1, same people and same booths. I thought there would be different booths on Day 2. After that, we went to attend Brian’s talk…

Talk -1

Sustaining the Future: Best Practices for Open Source Project Longevity by Brian Proffitt

Brian’s talk was exactly what I was looking for. Even though I’ve been into open-source for more than 6 months, I really needed some information about how it runs, how people come together, and best practices for longevity. He gave some interesting insights. I learned how an open-source project can survive by forking other projects. My perspective on open-source changed a little bit, and I started seeing it in a different way. I do plan on doing some research on it and writing a blog about it. Since I’m the type that learns by doing things practically, I’ll check that out soon!

After Brian’s talk, we went back to the booth and met Karanbir Singh & Vincent Caldiera there. Sumantro also joined us when Akash was talking with them. I was observing them talking about things I wasn’t aware of, and I just nodded my head. Well, everything was new for me, so I just kept listening. It was really interesting to talk with such great people, and they inspire me to do great things. Since I’m a new contributor, these talks are really helpful for me to move forward. I wish I could have shared my thoughts with them, but sadly my communication skills are still not that strong.

Talk -2

Fun Programming with Dependent Types by Jens Peterson

After lunch, we went to attend Jens Peterson’s talk, but it focused more on math, and I’m not very good at math (it’s not my area of expertise), so I was a bit sleepy. The topics were a bit advanced for me to fully understand, so I would say my lack of expertise is the reason for not grasping much. But I will make an effort to get comfortable in those areas because if I want to dive deeper into open-source, I could really use those skills.

Talk -3

Supercharge AI app development with Podman Desktop by Praveen Kumar & Ramakrishna Yekulla

This session was very practical, and I learned a lot. In fact, I tried it when I got back home. I really enjoyed their talk, and it was insightful for me. In simple terms, they explained how to self-host a local RAG LLM using Podman Desktop.

It was definitely worth attending!

Well, after that, I went back to the hotel after saying goodbye to the people I met there. And that’s how Day 2 of DevConf went.