Ahmedabad

After nearly 30 hours of travel, Chris and I landed on Friday, July 13, after midnight in Mumbai. We arrived to our hotel by 2 AM and then got up the next day, headed back to the airport to fly to Ahmedabad in the state of Gujurat. We headed there to participate in the first ever open source conference held in the state of Gujurat. Additionally, I had been hosting Skype calls and emailing with several graduate students at the Indian Institute of Managemet in Ahmedabad who have been thinking of interesting ways to help spread and promote Mozilla in India. It has certainly been an experiment in social networking and grassroots organizing as I have utilized every possible outlet to meet people: joining groups and posting scraps on Orkut, scheduling calls with Mozilla’s Lightning and Google calendar, taking those calls on Skype, blogging and posting on blogs, and emailing with people who expressed interest in meeting us in India. This trip to Ahmedabad was the first interaction we’ve had with people who have responded to my attempts to network internationally and it was, IMO, a big success.

Open Source in Ahmedabad

Ahmedabad, as described by some at the conference we attended, is an academic center where many scholars and professors are studying and working on their academic pursuits. Given that fact, it may come as no surprise that Professor B H Jajoo from the Indian Institute of Managemt was the lead organizer (with his colleague Dibyajyoti Bhuyan). The conference was also sponsored by the Confederation of Indian Industry. Conference topics touched on several different topics, and here are just a few of the sessions:

• Why Free Software?
• OSS Enginnering
• Open Source Business Methods
• OSS deployment in e-Governance Projects
• OSS and its relevance in India
• Building OSS communities (a presentation by me and Chris Hofmann)

The conference had roughly 250 attendees and Chris and I were able to meet many of the leading minds in India who are thinking about open source software and how it will gain more traction. I was impressed with everyone’s presentations and thought that Atul Chitnis gave a very interesting talk, stressing the importance of OSS in India. He has been working on open source projects since 1993 and it is his firm belief that young Indian entrepreneurs and start-up companies in India have no other option but to use open source software. Overall, I was impressed by the energy put into and the breadth of the presentations. It seems that many of the Indian professionals at the conference are trying to find the best ways to promote OSS while also making sure that the ideas are sustainable in the business setting. In my short time at the conference, I quickly learned that the spirit of the participants was very entrepreneurial and each individual seemed to be seeking ways to make open source software and their business ideas a success.

Indian Institute of Management – Ahmedabad

Another reason for our trip to Ahmedabad was to meet with professors and students at IIM-A. Many expressed interest in taking on student projects that will allow them to utilized their marketing and technology acumen to promote Mozilla and help spread its mission and software throughout India. Many thanks to Professor Anil Gupta and other members of the IIM-A community, including all the students we met and organizers like Guarav Shilpi. We met with three different student teams who are all thinking of ways to promote Mozilla. As part of the arrangement, students will either receive credit for helping Mozilla or, in the very least, list the project work on their CVs. Our next step is to reconnect with the students and professors when we return to the U.S. The ideas were terrific: launching a campus reps program in India, finding interesting ways to distribute Mozilla software, creating viral marketing campaigns similar to the NYTimes full-page advertisement at the release of Firefox 1, and localizing Firefox into Indian languages. It promises to be an active semester with lots of projects being taken on by these students.

Visiting Gandhi’s Ashram

In the pictures that I include in this post, you’ll see several from a morning trip to Gandhi’s Sabarmati Ashram. As the wikipedia link describes, “Gandhi made it his home, and on March 12, 1930 he embarked on his famous march to Dandi, Gujarat for the Salt Satyagraha. He vowed never to return to the ashram until India became independent.” If you have seen Richard Attenborough’s film Gandhi, you might remember the famous salt march to Dandi. Gandhi used this peaceful measure to show the British occupants that the Indian people would not tolerate the unfair and exorbitant taxation of salt. Some say that nearly 450,000 people joined him on the march in 1930. This fact alone is staggering. We learned during our visit that Gandhi, in a time of limited communication, was able to communicate to, organize, and then empower so many people to march for a cause. His mission was always grounded in non-violence and peace. We also learned that it was Gandhi’s unique ability to make people understand their freedom and choices that they had. Rather than being subjects to the British throne, he encouraged Indian people to seek independence peacefully. It was a fascinating trip to th Ashram.

The trip to the ashram was also very important for us because it gives us yet another glimpse at how people think in India. Like Gandhi, many people here feel empowered and entrepreneurial. Gandhi’s teachings are everywhere, his image is on the Rupee bank notes, and it is obvious that many people incorporate his ideologies into their lives. Many times at the OSS conference, we would hear about why the businesses people were starting were not only sound business practices, but would also bring about great social change here in India. That was unique because (at least in the U.S.) it’s not often that social change and business are so closely linked. It almost appeared as a strategic imperative to the entrepreneurs we met. And, we learned from our hosts, that it is this style of thinking that pervades the society and has its roots from leaders like Gandhi.

So far, fascinating. We have already met hundreds of people and Mozilla is well-known by them. Please take a look at the photos and let me know what you think.