About Me
Entered into GNU/Linux community in 2004 with joining Indian Linux User Group's Chennai Chapter (ILUGC). Started volunteering for workshops, seminars and demo days conducted by ILUGC and slowly scrawling over the learning curve. Starting with Red Hat <some-version> and Mandrake, tried Ubuntu when Warty was out and made Ubuntu my secondary desktop with Breezy. When Dapper was out, moved my desktop machine completely to Ubuntu and did the same with my new laptop which I had managed to acquire by then.
As I wasn't using IRC much, missed out joining the Ubuntu India Team till it matured into a vibrant team, but since the day of joining the Indian team I have been always an active member of the team. Joined the Ubuntu Tamil Team when it was created, though I didn't contribute directly through Translation @ LaunchPad. My major Tamil localization contribution goes to Django project during 2006. By 2006, had become one of the core members of Ubuntu India Team and started sharing responsibilities of managing team resources with other core members from the team. During foss.in/2006, a premier FOSS conference in India, I was introduced to KDE and KDE-India team by one of it's very active contributor from India. This actually changed my opinions about KDE, making me move to KDE for almost more than a year till Hardy was out; this is when I came back to using GNOME and wait till KDE-4 become comfortable to use for me.
As I became a part-time FOSS evangelist as a part of my day work, I got the opportunity to speak to lots of academic population and made used of the opportunities to enlighten them on Ubuntu as well. Also started mentoring students on their academic projects using FOSS. Contribution to Ubuntu remained mainly in the form of helping others, filing bugs especially trying during alpha and beta periods and spreading Ubuntu to people around, especially academic community.
Migrated from Chennai to Bangalore, from being a FOSS Researcher to full-time Python programmer in my day job, which kinda deterred spending more time on FOSS and Ubuntu. Started doing bug triage since Jan 2007, joined 5-a-day team and been moderately active in bug triage. Of late, joined with Aanjhan and OnkarShinde in conducting sessions on Bug triage and Packaging at #ubuntu-in-classroom, as well as started blogging in Tamil on articles related to FOSS, GNU/Linux and Ubuntu which I had been doing all these days in English.
I hold a Bachelors Degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering, and had been in a mixture of work profiles including Copy editor, Technical Writer, Web Programmer, Research Engineer, Python Programmer, Usability Practitioner, Documentation Maintainer and more. Hobbies include Blogging, Twittering, Reading (fiction, philosophy and technology) and Photography (point-and-shoot, macro).
Contact
Launchpad : https://launchpad.net/~parth-technofreak
Email : parth [DOT] technofreak [AT] gmail [DOT] com
IRC : parthan | teKnofreak | techno_freak @ irc.freenode.net
Blog : http://blog.technofreak.in
Photos : http://photos.technofreak.in
Twitter : http://twitter.com/technofreak
@ Ubuntu
Ubuntu India Team
- An active and core member of Ubuntu India Team, managing resources such as Mailing list, IRC Channel and Team website/wiki.
- Represent Ubuntu and Indian Team during various FOSS conferences and events such as FOSS.IN/2007, FOSS.NITC, FOSSConf Chennai'08, etc.
Organizer and Organizing Team Contact for Debian/Ubuntu Project Day at FOSS.IN/2007
Conduct session in #ubuntu-in-classroom on various Ubuntu related topics
Ubuntu Bug Squad
- A committed and patient bug triager in Ubuntu Bug Squad. I felt triaging to be comfortable, fun and to be one of the good ways to contribute to Ubuntu, but I need to spend more time for it which am trying my best to do.
- Moderately active member of 5-a-day team
Ubuntu Tamil Team
- Contribute to Tamil localization efforts
- Write articles in Tamil on Ubuntu and FOSS
Future Plans
- Become an Ubuntu member, hence encourage and inspire more people from Ubuntu Indian Team for the same.
- Spend at least an hour each day on Bug Triage
- Learn packaging and try to contribute through packaging as well
- Wish to work more on Usability for Ubuntu. Currently trying to start with Usability studies on some KDE apps.
Write tutorials and howtos in Tamil (and continue doing it in English
- Contribute more to Tamil localization efforts. Currently planning to work on Django Tamil localization for 1.0 release
- Help strengthen Ubuntu India Team and make it more active, vibrant and much more contributing team in Ubuntu community. This includes helping more new comers to start contributing, making the wiki a library of resources on Ubuntu, encouraging members to contribute to localization in their own languages and help bind the team together in spite of individual differences and interests.