Coding
Waking up from my pleasant dreams, with welcoming warm, humid weather out of the window i headed to take take bath for i need to charge myself up with breakfast. I still remember, we were fed with Idlis - which are out of shape, because of the climatic conditions necessary for it to ferment properly might not be available. However, saw beautiful puttu with kadalai curry which i knew would be hard to take after a few cakes. But cooprades with their greedy eyes (LOL) took more in order to supply their hunger demand, could not swallow it without water - and we had to share it with others, from which i instinctively abstained. But Kamalavelan decided to enjoy it as much as possible. We were treated well and good. I have to sincerely accept that.
With that by 10:00 AM, every team convened for coopathon, we again being the late comers. Still with not much time left, we have started to hack on our code base. While we were continuing the last days hacks, i again started to edit the presentation for the pitch, while Prasanna & Manimaran have almost completed the search functionality, using the database inbuilt database - making offline search possible. Maniraj have been into designing the required asset for the uauto application. For the backend Kamalavelan and Ragulkanth was learning and hacking Rust.
While our laptops are almost politically loaded, i was sincerely happy to see other team members laptops with free software or atleast open source products installed. But we as free software activists disliked proprietary software tools wherever used all along the hackathon and conference. There might be a justification from the organizers side. But given all their wisdom, its just not convincing for us, to see proprietray software in a conference that promulgates cooperation, collaboration, openness, transparency, scientific reasoning, etc... On that line of thought, we find it awkward of this coopathon, where we had just experienced the conventional hackathon method. Atleast i personally go or see beyond the hackathon's competitive spirit. May be its because of what ULTS & KSUM has planned to use hackathon as an instrument for find feasible solutions, for the problems they have. Similarly, since our cooperative constitute only dudes, gave a false impression about us in the coopathon !. But seriously everyone of us were expecting some introductions or proposals. I believe we looked young, even when i was ruled out.
Lunch & Post Lunch
As usual the catering service, with token collection strictly administered by Mr. Abinandh, was awesome - with special salads, soups, chapathis, biryanis, curries, curd that are almost my favourites. We cooprades eat our belly full, and were watchful to keep it always filled whenever we felt a vacuum built up in our stomachs. This is when kamalavelan had continued his serious discussion with one of the ULTS project coordinators, that currently addresses several logistics and transport related problems.
Fellow Cooperators
We had the chance to meet and discuss deeply with Harsh, Varun and Deobald from Nilenso - a tech. cooperative company from Bangalore. We already had been discussing and debating with Harsh regarding our license selection and why we have selected so - which helped us to come to a proper conclusion which we should actually select or atleast which license model we should pursue for. This helped us realize that any cooperative from the Science/Tech. sector need to go through such pain and let us land on two key parameters of licensing - virality and resilience, as the proper mixture of advantages of both Transparent Technology and Cooperativism. That would be the proper common ground to start with. Prasanna has initiated the talk with Varun and Deobald after lunch, and introduced the coopon to both of them. The discussion went on with explaining our technology stak, our objective, our present status, how Steven has helped us reach the conference and coopathon, how Nilenso as an organization has helped us knowing about the deed and legal formalities required for registration.
Prasanna has initiated the talk on Vipasana which made Steven little bit shy. From then the discussion was total fun, on how Prasanna found him from hacker noon based on the article on Vipasana. Believe me its fun to hear from him what Vipasana is, and how he is practicing it, how it is helping it and so forth.
Finish Line & Pitching
With only few hours to countdown, Prasanna and Manimaran, have their data listing for full text search completed. Great work and we really had a key task completed in the front end side of the application. This is vital for demonstration too. By the time, i have completed the presentation and prepared my mind for pitching. With organizers coordinating using google spreadsheet (bad decision) for scheduling the teams for pitching to the researchers/experts of the field, we were called 6th. We were scheduled to meet the team in the 2nd hall. Our team had fell into some kind of humour before going to the hall for pitching. Myself before even realizing that we were in hall, i was still in fun mode. Thus after listening to the evaluating panel, i am supposed to boot the presentation with proper words. But i was gawking at prasanna and kamalavelan - with an invisible callout for help. Fortunately because of the tuned mindset, they both have well presented the demonstration, the reasons and i participated trying to answer some of the questions.
Meanwhile, our cooprades were monitoring what the panelists were doing. Surprisingly we have monitored well enough to learn from their reactions and questions. When we left the room, we all together went on laughing to continuing earlier humour. Then someone started making fun of the panelists about their actions and responses. I was happy that we have presented almost what we intended. We also do noted down what the panelists where trying to convey.
Public Impression
Sadly out of some 24 teams who have participated in the coopathono, only 8 was selected for the final rounds where they would be provided stage for their public pitching - among the conference researchers, experts, professionals. Fortunately we was informed to come to the conference hall. I remember organizers asking us to pitch with available presentation and demonstration. Mr. Santhosh from ICA, have announced the teams that are selected for the presentation. We did have only few minutes before launching ourselves to the stage. With already a loose organization between us, we went to the stage with the demonstrated front end part of the project, streaming throuh the laptop. We were given only 5 minutes for demonstration and 5 minutes for explanation & pitching. Again looking among ourselves, the organic impetus brought Kamalavelan, Prasanna, and myself - while i badly expected Ragulkanth or Manimaran or Maniraj to start the introduction.
Nevertheless, Kamal has introduced about who we are, what the project is about, continued by Prasanna explaining the technical aspects of the technological stack and why we are attempting so, with proper reasons. While i started to speak around the holistic reasons of such project, and why we have attempted it in first place. I think, on the whole we have made a bold presentation. We had good response, and support from the panel members and the public regarding our project - that generated the impetus for network effect - which we actually aimed initially to gather from such conference and coopathon. Honourable finance minister and cooprade had good discussion regarding a similar attempt experimented by CPIM team in Kerala. Actually, he forget that Prasanna have actually questioned about it to him directly. We do not know whether we have impressed them or not. But we learned some neat stuff there.
After our pitching, remaining teams were called upon to present on their projects. We were generally happy about students actively participating through technological space. But us and some of other comrades in the public were deeply concerned about how some of the projects are directly linked to workplace surveillance. The technology is neat, but the application aspect made it very conducive for hierarchical control over the labour. We sincerely doubted, whether such solutions convince the labourers and labour members of the ULCCS and other cooperative members. On the whole, we could only see that the coopathon participants have not understood about the cooperatives in depth and breadth (which is not their fault alone), but have tried to use it as a cladding for their own ideas that did not actually fit to the cooperative realm. Surprisingly, we have seen a team with similar goals as us in the pitching stage. Immediately we attempted to connect with them and came to know they are actually working with ULTS team to solve a similar transport aggregation issue at Calicut. We were happy that students were part of the large team and were properly encouraged in the conference.
While at some instance, i really got pissed off, on seeing how surveillance tools, proprietary services were used by the participants of the coopathon without knowing what they are actually attempting to solve any given problem. It looked as if they want to demonstrate their solution somehow, without bothering much about what kind of extractive phenomenon they are supporting and presenting in public.
Prize Announcement
I had a little desire to atleast win something financially, even when i had no intention of doing so, as we have invested so much money for travel expense. With a mixed feeling i was observing Mr.Santhosh's announcement on prize winners of coopathon. I remember loudspeakers echoing our cooperative name bagging 3rd prize. It literally gave some breath for our team as we all aware about the money and travel we have undergone to attend the conference and meet the fellow cooperators and researchers. This prize announcement - provided us a little justification for our attempt. Even when we had non-significant interest in the prize, it has launched us to fellow participants, and many times have helped us initiated conversations, as people remembered the name and faces of bold presentation.
