Day 0

I left home at 15:30 on February 12, 2026. I took two buses, the first from my village to the nearest town for public transport to Coimbatore Airport (CJB). Boarding for the Pune flight started at 19:30, but I reached the airport at 19:00 and grabbed something to eat for the long ride.

After eating, I cleared security, waited a few minutes, and boarding started. Soon I was onboard and settled in for the flight. I landed in Pune at 22:00 but had trouble with Ola cabs, five drivers canceled after accepting. Finally at 23:15, I got a cab, reached my hotel, checked in, set my alarm, and slept right away since I was tired.

Day 1

I woke up at 06:00 and got ready for MIT WPU College, where DevConf India was happening. After a shower, I looked for breakfast nearby, but my hotel and other restaurants were still closed, so I skipped it. Samyak offered his hotel’s buffet 6 km away (he’d paid for an extra person and said I could come tomorrow too), but it was getting late. I decided to grab something from the campus canteen instead.

At DevConf

I got a cab and reached the college campus by 09:30. I met a friend named Saumili Dutta from TCS who’s into open source. We had a nice chat while finding the DevConf venue. We ended up at the Vyas Building, it was huge and well-maintained. At registration, they gave me a backpack since I was booth staff. I was surprised and happy, it was my first big swag from an open source conference. After that, I checked the canteen for breakfast, but nothing looked good, so I just got tea.

Later, I met Prasanth Basker and Shane Cardoz. They’re from Chennai, Tamil Nadu, and were the first Tamil-speaking folks I met there. I went to DevConf 2025 and didn’t meet any, but this time I did. Usually, there aren’t many South Indians in open source as far as I know, so it was great to see people from here doing cool work. Prasanth is into Kubernetes and is a core contributor in CNCF projects, and Shane is into FreeBSD. I was honestly amazed to see someone from South India working on FreeBSD.

I also shared about my contributions to Fedora’s Forgejo and upstream Forgejo. Shane is studying at Jeppiaar University, which I know because my uncle studied there too. Shane also talked about his experience migrating their remote repository hosting platform. Shane encouraged me to keep working on Forgejo since they are planning to switch platforms. I was genuinely happy to spot South Indian folks at DevConf and see the kind of interesting things they’re involved in.

Setting Up The Booth

After some time, Akashdeep called me to help lay out the booth. I came down and saw Samyak Jain already setting up our Fedora Project Community Corner Booth. We caught up, sat for a couple of minutes, then headed to the top floor for the opening note.

We stood there for a few minutes, taking pictures and videos, checking out the huge space. I’d never seen a building as massive as Vyas Building at MIT WPU. Akashdeep and Shounak were nearby with inventory, so Samyan & I went to the 1st floor to help carry it. But visitors started coming to the booth, so we got busy. Shortly after, Akashdeep and Shounak arrived. After greetings, we unboxed the inventory and set out badges and stickers.

Lots of visitors at the Fedora Project booth!

Matthew Miller visited our booth shortly after. Akashdeep jokingly asked him, “Hey Matthew, did you use Fedora Linux?” (I thought, you’re asking the ex-Fedora Project Leader?!).It was hilarious and everyone laughed. I didn’t expect that at all XD.

After a few minutes, our booth started filling up with visitors. I stood at the end of the desk and started chatting with people. They kept coming, and I kept talking. It was my first time as booth staff, so I felt anxious at first, but once I got into it, everything flowed naturally. It was a new experience.

So many people came to our booth. We talked about what the Fedora Project is, what Fedora Linux is, its goals, how to get started as a new contributor, and who can use Fedora Linux (it’s for everyone since it’s a general-purpose distro).

I met folks who game on Linux and some who wanted to start. I mainly game on Fedora Linux and shared my user reviews. I met Philip Pereira, who had the same RTX 3030 GPU issues on Fedora that I once faced. We shared experiences, and I suggested my fixes.

I met a good number of folks interested in my journey as a Fedora Project contributor. I told them I’ve been involved for over a year now, from onboarding and early days with Fedora CommOps, to shifting to Fedora Infrastructure, mainly contributing to Fedora Forge, and giving back to upstream Forgejo.

Most visitors were curious about the Fedora Project and Fedora Linux. Everyone knew Fedora Linux but not the Project, so I explained, encouraged newcomers to join, and guided them as much as I could. We got around 700-900 people on Day 1 alone and attracted lots of younger folks.

This went on for a while, I didn’t even notice I was thirsty until Akashdeep told me to hydrate. Since it was all new, I went all in and ignored hunger and thirst.

Later, Akashdeep and Shounak went for lunch, leaving Samyak & me to handle the booth. They returned after 10 minutes, there was a huge line at the canteen, and they couldn’t get food. They tried again and succeeded. Then Samyak and I went, but everything was sold out except dal rice. Instead, Samyak said speakers and booth staff could eat on the top floor, so we grabbed food there, chatted a bit, and returned to the booth to talk with more people.

After some time at the booth, I met Sunpreeth Singh, who was booth manager at last year’s DevConf India 2025. I recognized him but waited to confirm, then struck up a conversation and said I remembered him from last year. I mainly recalled him because he showed me and Akashdeep pictures of his dog. I was curious how his dogs were doing, so he shared photos of his dogs and some videos too.

The funniest thing was people kept coming to our booth thinking it was registration. We told so many that the registration desk was at the end of the hall. It was hilarious, and our spot stayed busy, I was happy we got so many visitors.

Giveaway Time

One cool thing was we gave swag to people who scored high on our quiz, picking 4 winners by the end of the day. Around 90 people registered on Day 1. We used the wheel of names to choose winners from those who scored 12/12. By the end of Day 1, we gave away surprise swag “Fedora sippers”. Finally, we announced the 4 winners using the wheel. After that, we booked cabs, and everyone got one except me. I waited over 40 minutes, then started walking to the MIT WPU college front gate. Even though there was a pickup location issue, I finally got back to my hotel without problems.

Dinner at Wasabi

Shoutout to Shounak for taking great pictures, all the food photos were captured by him. Credit goes to him ^^

We had dinner planned at Wasabi 15 near Pune airport. After some rest, I freshened up and tried booking a cab, but couldn’t get one from my hotel. We were supposed to meet at 20:00, but Akashdeep postponed it to 20:30 since everyone was late. I finally got an auto and reached around 20:15. Samyak was already there, so we chatted until Akashdeep and Shounak arrived. Matthew Miller and Karen were supposed to join but ate at the DevConf dinner instead. Still, we had a great time talking about the day and enjoying the food. It was my first time trying Japanese, Vietnamese, and Chinese dishes, and I loved it.

I shared with Akashdeep and Samyak my early open source program experiences. Akashdeep and Aurelian’s talk called out AI cheaters, submitting high-quality AI-generated PRs, then quitting midway. I’ve seen programs blindly accept them, giving high scores, jobs, and internship opportunities while ignoring genuine contributors who don’t use AI. Frustrated, I asked how they spot and select applications.

Akashdeep explained they don’t just look at PR quality; they observe contributors’ behavior, how they interact, response times, signs of using AI to seem smarter, and whether they ask for help or help others. They notice everything. It’s a thorough process that takes time since they’re selecting applicants for open source programs, so they obviously won’t pick people based on PRs alone. Honestly, hearing how the Fedora Project selects applicants was reassuring. I felt happy sticking with Fedora, now I’m at a level where everyone knows my capabilities and recognizes my contributions, unlike before when I was just hoping someone would notice me :)

After dinner, we wrapped up, booked cabs, and took some group pictures. My cab arrived right on time, so I hopped in and made it back to my hotel safely. I was completely exhausted, so I set my alarm for 6 AM and slept immediately.

Day 2

It was Day 2 of DevConf, and I woke up at 07:00. I took a shower and started looking for breakfast again, but I couldn’t find anything since nearby restaurants weren’t open yet, and the accommodation didn’t have theirs open either. Plus, since Day 2 was February 14th, most of us struggled to get cabs, rides got assigned but drivers canceled at the last minute. Finally, I booked an auto and made it to DevConf.

At DevConf

Matthew Miller was at the booth preparing for his talk “30 Fedora Releases in 30 Minutes.” I greeted him, then started checking out other booths. Again on Day 2, we thought we were late, but we were actually early. Most booths weren’t set up yet, and the Fedora Project booth was one of the first open. Lots of people came to talk with Matthew Miller.

After some time, Samyak, Akashdeep, and Shounak arrived at our booth. Akashdeep noticed I hadn’t eaten, so he insisted I grab breakfast. I went upstairs to the 5th floor and got Poha with Methu Vadai. While eating, I met Pranak from Red Hat who worked on early UPI development in India. We had a nice chat, and I also met his friend Prasanth. Too bad I forgot to take pictures with them.

Standing at the Booth

I got back to our booth after finishing breakfast at 11:00. We started getting more visitors, and the booth filled up again. On Day 2, people were curious about getting started with contributing to the Fedora Project, so I explained the onboarding process. I talked with one guy who had an idea for a Fedora Spin for an Android-based Linux OS. It sounded great, and he said he’d contact us based on his proposal progress.

Visitor numbers dipped slightly from Day 1 but not much, around 1100-1300 total over two days. Day 2 still drew young, curious folks wanting to join Fedora. Plus, with Matthew Miller at the booth, many came to chat and take photos with him.

After some time, a few people came asking for registration. It was funny, they kept assuming our booth was the registration desk on Day 2 too. I was happy our spot was so visible and drew more visitors. Joking with Samyak, I said:

Hey, we really need a note saying “We’re not the registration desk, it’s the Fedora Project booth!!”

Samyak took it seriously, pulled out paper from his notebook, and actually wrote it! XD

Checking Out Other Booths

None of us had time to attend talks on either day or check out other booths yet. So Akashdeep suggested Shounak & me to explore them. Shounak and I started our booth visits with:

• FOSS United: The folks explained that FOSS United is a non-profit foundation promoting and strengthening the FOSS ecosystem in India. They host hackathons too, if your proposal is accepted, the winner gets 10 lakh rupees in funding. They also mentioned events in other cities.

• OKD: OKD stands for OpenShift Origin. It’s a community-driven, fully open-source upstream of Red Hat’s OpenShift. They explained it’s a container orchestration platform based on Kubernetes, with CI/CD pipelines, automation tools, and more. It works well on cloud or bare-metal setups. We played a quiz game and got stickers.

• Argo CI/CD & Tekton: Argo CD and Tekton are tools that automate software building and deployment on Kubernetes. Tekton handles building and testing, while Argo CD deploys automatically. I couldn’t learn much from the booth staff, but I plan to spin up a VM to test them myself.

• Foreman: At the Foreman booth, I felt like I knew the tool from somewhere. Minutes later, the staff said it’s the upstream of Red Hat Satellite. It’s an open-source tool for provisioning, configuring, and monitoring servers, automating tasks with Puppet, Ansible, and others.

• Kubeflow: Kubeflow is an open-source CNCF project for simplifying ML workflows on Kubernetes. The staff said it’s mainly for MLOps and ML tasks. I told him I once tried Kubeflow but ML isn’t my thing.

• Elastic Search: I have experience setting it up from my internship, where I used it for a shopping site’s search engine. Talking to the booth staff taught me more. I didn’t know it was open-source before XD

Matthew’s Talk

After some time, we had to get back to our booths to wrap things up before attending Matthew Miller’s talk. We packed up temporarily and took the stickers and badges to the hall to hand out to attendees. I was a few minutes late because I was talking with the Foreman folks at the booth, but I made it just in time before the session started.

Matthew Miller covered Fedora Linux’s story like this:

• Its journey from the early days to now
• History behind each release
• Major changes and improvements over time
• Fun naming conventions
• What shaped it early on and got us here today
• Wallpapers used in each release
• Init system changes: SysVinit → Upstart → systemd

My first Fedora Linux was Fedora 38, and we’re now at Fedora 43 (with 44 coming in a few months). I really enjoyed learning about my everyday distro. The room was packed with Red Hat folks, college students, and the open source community, a huge crowd filled the room.

Giveaway Time

We returned to our booth one last time to welcome visitors and hand out surprise swag to winners. We used the “wheel of names” like Day 2, but added two extra quiz questions, only those scoring 14/14 got shortlisted.

In total, we got around 120 quiz responses over two days.

Lunch at La Sicilia

Shoutout to Shounak for taking great pictures, all the food photos were captured by him. Credit goes to him ^^

We wrapped up our booth by 15:30. Akashdeep booked a cab for the four of us, and Akashdeep, Shounak, Samyak, and I went to “La Sicilia Bistro and Patisserie”. Avadooth joined us shortly after, and we ordered something to eat. I’ve tried pizza before, but the one at La Sicilia was way better than the one I had two years ago. Eating pizza there totally changed my opinion of pizzas in general.

Akashdeep asked us what the best part was that we encountered, saw, or experienced on both Day 1 and Day 2. Shounak said there was a guy who took an entire stack of 50 stickers for himself, it was funny thinking what he’d do with all those stickers. Akashdeep mentioned Red Hat folks who were interested in contributing to the Fedora Project. For me, it was Samyak writing the note saying we were the Fedora Project booth and the registration desk was at the end of the hall, for people who kept coming to us assuming it was registration. After lunch, we took pictures together, started booking cabs, and headed back to our hotels.

Dinner at Ishaara

Ishaara is a unique restaurant located in Phoenix Mall of the Millennium, Wakad, Pune, known for its inclusive hiring of speech and hearing-impaired staff.

I didn’t know we were having dinner at Ishaara until Shounak and Akashdeep informed me. I was resting for a bit, recollecting what happened on Day 2, and then started getting ready for dinner. But I was double-minded because it was February 14th, and there seemed to be a lot of traffic, so getting a cab was hard. My flight was at 4:00 AM, and I wasn’t sure if I could return to my hotel after dinner and book another cab around 1:00 AM to reach Pune airport. So I decided to check out early. I packed my things and went downstairs to the lobby to check out.

A couple of minutes later, Akashdeep called to say that the location Samyak shared was wrong, and the actual restaurant was near the airport. Matthew Miller and Karen had already gone to the wrong location, so they decided to find a place to have dinner there. After some time, Samyak informed us that he was down with a high fever and couldn’t join. So it was just me, Akashdeep, Shounak, and Sudhir.

I finally reached the location, but the restaurant was inside the mall. I spent around 10 minutes looking for it until Shounak helped by giving me a landmark. After that, I found the restaurant and met Sudhir, Akashdeep, and Shounak. I had met Sudhir at last year’s DevConf India, so I already knew him, but I don’t know if he remembers me at all XD. He asked what I’m currently doing in the Fedora Project. We had a nice chat for a while, and after some time of talking and eating, Sudhir left. Then it was just Akashdeep, Shounak, and me. I was already full from lunch that day, so I couldn’t eat much.

I chatted with Akashdeep about a few things during dinner:

• My recent experience at NVIDIA RTX AI PC Day 2026
• My plans for project initiatives (still unsure about some)
• Future goals and projects I want to work on but feel like not important enough
• Questions on my mind about progressing in the Fedora Project
• What to do if I come up with new project ideas

He was super supportive, answered everything clearly, and gave great advice. After dinner, we wrapped up, said goodbyes, and Akashdeep and Shounak both sent me off at the first floor. My cab driver had already reached, so I ran fast :D

Waiting at the Pune Airport

Apparently, passengers can’t enter the airport unless their flight is within 4 hours. I arrived at the airport too early at 23:00 on the 14th, and my flight was at 04:00 on the 15th. There was no place to sit nearby, so I was just sitting on a stone wall on the way to Aero Mall. An auto driver saw me and told me to go to Aero Mall to rest. He was a good guy, without his advice, I would have sat there for hours.

I made my way to Aero Mall, found a good spot to sit, bought a Red Bull to stay awake for the next 4 hours, and rested there. It was tough, I was sleepy, but if I fell asleep, I knew I’d miss my flight. Time flew by, and around 03:00 AM, I headed back to the airport. I finished security, reached Gate 3 by 03:25, sat for a couple of minutes, and then they started boarding passengers for the flight to Coimbatore (CJB).

Day 3

Flying Back to Coimbatore

I thought it would be a smooth ride, but there were some minor issues at the start. A family of four had aisle and middle seats in two rows, and they wanted me to switch so they could sit together. It wasn’t even a request, they said:

“We are family, we want to sit together so I want you to switch seats.”

I straight-up said no since I paid for the window seat and wouldn’t switch unless they offered another window seat. But a little kid in the middle seat kept kicking me while sleeping, which woke me up and gave me a headache from the interrupted sleep. I didn’t complain though, after such a long day, I just wanted to reach Coimbatore and catch a bus home.

Returning to my Home

I finally landed at Coimbatore Airport by 05:55 AM. I walked quickly to the nearest bus stop and reached it by 06:05 AM. A bus to my hometown came at 06:10 AM, so I hopped on and grabbed a seat. I reached Nambiyur by 07:30 AM, but the last bus to my village had left at 07:20. I waited 45 minutes, then another bus came at 08:15, and I finally got home by 08:45 AM.

I crashed into my bed right away. Physically I was okay, but mentally I was at my limit.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I had a great time at DevConf as booth staff. I socialized a lot, talked with talented people and like-minded folks, and even made some new friends. I volunteered for everything and didn’t back down from anything. I went there to make the most of the opportunity, even if it meant feeling stupid or embarrassing myself. I initiated conversations with everyone who visited our booth. If I knew the answer, I gave it. Otherwise, I pointed them to someone nearby or we looked it up online. Honestly, it was fun learning new things together :D

For a long time, I thought I was bad at socializing and networking, but it turns out I just lacked experience. Attending DevConf proved that to me. Representing the Fedora Project was a blast. So many people visited our booth that I stayed busy and didn’t even have time to feel anxious. I just went with the flow. Overall, the Fedora Project Community Corner Booth was a huge success. We attracted around 1200 visitors, mostly young folks early in their careers and interested in open source contributions. The quiz was a great idea too, it kept people at our booth, interacting with us to learn about Fedora and answer the questions right. We drew in so many people, and I guided every newcomer and early contributor with the experience I gained when I first joined the Fedora Project, thanks to the join-fedora folks who helped me onboard.

In simple terms, DevConf India 2026 was fantastic. I learned a lot, talked a lot, made new friends, got out of my comfort zone, and I look forward to representing the Fedora Project at more conferences and events ahead.