for those who missed the Inaugural #MangaloreFOSS 2026 last week, among other things (like 2 days of incredible talks, the beautiful sea breeze and the banger ghee roasts),

fyi :) #IndiaFOSS 2026

I want to stop defining by the negative Earlier this year, Vivek and I gave a talk at IndiaFoss about our practice at Diagram Chasing. By all metrics, it went well. I think even now, by a small margin, it is one of the most-viewed videos from this year’s conference. Plenty of people seemed to appreciate the talk, even though we weren’t on the main track. We’ve even been asked to give versions of it in two or three other places over the last couple of months. Overall, the reception has been lovely. I don’t know exactly why it resonated so much, but I am grateful that it did. However, there is something I said on one specific slide that has been on my mind ever since. It’s a small detail—a friend even told me I shouldn’t hang on to it—but the more I see this pattern in myself and others, the more it embarrasses me. In one of the early slides (18th slide out of 99), while introducing our projects, I put up text that read: > _We aim to create things with data that aren’t the same old dashboards or dry summaries_ Slide from our talk, which says 'We aim to create things with data that aren't the same old dashboards' Then, I went on to talk about what we _are_ doing. But in hindsight, I have the uncomfortable realization that at that moment I had not really articulated what Diagram Chasing is, I had only described it in simple terms by stating what it is _not_. That is a strange way to operate, and certainly not how I want to be as a creative person. I imagine there was someone sitting in the audience who loves building dashboards. Or perhaps someone who has a day job building dashboards that doesn’t allow them enough time to do anything else. Heck, I build dashboards at work. At that moment, near the very beginning of my talk, I likely alienated them. Even if they enjoyed the rest of the presentation, for a split second, I made them feel like I was posturing above them. Why did I do that? I don’t think it was malicious. I think I did it because, as creative people, it is very easy to be critical. It is easy to put something else down or talk about why you are “not like the others.” It is the path of least resistance. Sharing a negative attitude about a third party—whether a person, a group, or a method—is often a faster, stronger bonding agent than sharing a positive one. It’s easy to stand on a stage and bond with an audience by pointing at “boring corporate reports” and saying, “We aren’t that.” It creates an instant “in-group” of cool, creative people and an “out-group” of boring conformists or methods we look down upon. There is a cheap dopamine hit of superiority, but this, I think, is a brittle form of identity. If your entire definition is “I am not X,” you are still controlled by X. You depend on the existence of the “boring dashboard” to validate your existence as the “exciting storyteller.” You haven’t actually said what you stand for, what you’re trying to build, what drives this specific work/activity/process. You’ve just pointed at something else and said “not that.” It is much harder to do the work of articulating what _you_ actually are and explain it on its own merits. From what I can tell, this pattern is common to the dataviz community, the FOSS community, the design community, and other creative circles I’ve been a part of. I don’t think it’s because people are negative; I think it’s because differentiation is difficult. Wherever you find passionate people with strong opinions on ‘the better way’ to do things, the quickest way to carve out a niche is to define it in opposition to a vague status quo. However, I am not arguing for toxic positivity. I recently read the Resonant Computing Manifesto, and maybe the problem isn’t the criticism itself but the lack of a good follow-through. The manifesto is actually full of negative definition. It opens by dunking on “feeds engineered to hijack attention” and warnings of a dystopian future, but uses that criticism to pivot toward a positive, specific vision. The resulting articulation is substantial enough that it doesn’t need to position itself against something else to make sense. Going forward, I want to try harder to articulate that kind of vision. I realize I won’t always have the time or energy to do this perfectly, and sometimes “not X” is the only shorthand that fits on the slide, but it feels like the right aspiration. For now, Diagram Chasing wants to build news applications and write stories on public data. That is the work. No comparison required. Maybe this? And more.

A small reflection that spawned from a talk I gave at #IndiaFOSS, where I disparaged dashboards. Why did I do that? Maybe I didn't need to?

Defining oneself by what one isn't is an easy trap to fall into. aman.bh/blog/2025/i-want-to-stop...

Four Inkscape contributors posing for a picture behind the IndiaFOSS 2025 photo booth.

Learn all about the Inkscape Contributor Meet 🧑‍💻 in Bengaluru 🖥🏙 at #IndiaFOSS:

inkscape.org/news/2025/10...

Weekly Notes 39/2025 I spent most of the week in Jaipur. It was a bit hectic and hot, but it was a good week. I also had the opportunity to observe and learn a lot. Uma was warm on Sunday, but it developed into a proper fever and cough over the course of the week. It’s... The post Weekly Notes 39/2025 first appeared on Thejesh GN.

Weekly Notes 39/2025 I spent most of the week in Jaipur. It was a bit hectic and hot, but it was a good week. I also had the opportunity to observe and learn a lot. Uma was warm on Sunday, but it developed into a proper fever and cough over the course of the week. It’s... The post Weekly Notes 39/2025 first appeared on Thejesh GN.

Weekly Notes 39/2025 I spent most of the week in Jaipur. It was a bit hectic and hot, but it was a good week. I also had the opportunity to observe and learn a lot. Uma was warm on Sunday, but it developed into a proper fever and cough over the course of the week. It’s... The post Weekly Notes 39/2025 first appeared on Thejesh GN.

Weekly Notes 39/2025 I spent most of the week in Jaipur. It was a bit hectic and hot, but it was a good week. I also had the opportunity to observe and learn a lot. Uma was warm on Sunday, but it developed into a proper fever and cough over the course of the week. It’s... The post Weekly Notes 39/2025 first appeared on Thejesh GN.

Weekly Notes 39/2025 I spent most of the week in Jaipur. It was a bit hectic and hot, but it was a good week. I also had the opportunity to observe and learn a lot. Uma was warm on Sunday, but it developed into a proper fever and cough over the course of the week. It’s... The post Weekly Notes 39/2025 first appeared on Thejesh GN.

Weekly Notes 39/2025 I spent most of the week in Jaipur. It was a bit hectic and hot, but it was a good week. I also had the opportunity to observe and learn a lot. Uma was warm on Sunday, but it developed into a proper fever and cough over the course of the week. It’s... The post Weekly Notes 39/2025 first appeared on Thejesh GN.

Weekly Notes 39/2025 I spent most of the week in Jaipur. It was a bit hectic and hot, but it was a good week. I also had the opportunity to observe and learn a lot. Uma was warm on Sunday, but it developed into a proper fever and cough over the course of the week. It’s... The post Weekly Notes 39/2025 first appeared on Thejesh GN.

Weekly Notes 39/2025 I spent most of the week in Jaipur. It was a bit hectic and hot, but it was a good week. I also had the opportunity to observe and learn a lot. Uma was warm on Sunday, but it developed into a proper fever and cough over the course of the week. It’s... The post Weekly Notes 39/2025 first appeared on Thejesh GN.

Weekly Notes 39/2025 I spent most of the week in Jaipur. It was a bit hectic and hot, but it was a good week. I also had the opportunity to observe and learn a lot. Uma was warm on Sunday, but it developed into a proper fever and cough over the course of the week. It’s... The post Weekly Notes 39/2025 first appeared on Thejesh GN.

Weekly Notes 39/2025 I spent most of the week in Jaipur. It was a bit hectic and hot, but it was a good week. I also had the opportunity to observe and learn a lot. Uma was warm on Sunday, but it developed into a proper fever and cough over the course of the week. It’s... The post Weekly Notes 39/2025 first appeared on Thejesh GN.

Weekly Notes 39/2025 I spent most of the week in Jaipur. It was a bit hectic and hot, but it was a good week. I also had the opportunity to observe and learn a lot. Uma was warm on Sunday, but it developed into a proper fever and cough over the course of the week. It’s... The post Weekly Notes 39/2025 first appeared on Thejesh GN.

A group of young people pose together inside a spacious hall. Several are crouching and others are standing, with some making peace signs and playful gestures. In the background, other groups are engaged in conversation near pillars and tables. A prominent frame sign with 'FOSS UNITED,' 'UNITED BY FOSS,' and 'INDIA FOSS 2025' is displayed at the center. Most people wear casual clothing and backpacks, because the event was wrapped up

A large group stands closely together in a bright indoor hall, framed by a white event prop labeled 'FOSS UNITED,' 'UNITED BY FOSS,' and 'INDIA FOSS 2025.' One person holds up a yellow dapo above the group. More people stand and interact in the background near pillars and wooden doors, giving an energetic, social feel to the scene.

Me and the gang at IndiaFOSS 2025! (Post wrap-up pic)

Even though it's been atleast 3 years since I started going out(I'm practically a normie by compulsion now), I never, ever thought I'd have this much fun outside the comfort of my home!

@fossunited thank you guys so much for organizing this!

Jigyasu talks about benchmarking time series models with sktime

To wrap up the FOSS in Science devroom, Jigyasu Krishnan talks about Signal Over Noise: Benchmarking Time Series Models with sktime. Join us live at www.youtube.com/live/NyQced4...

#indiafoss #unitedbyfoss #scipyindia #fossinscience

Alosh Denny helps us understand how we can make LLMs Transparent for Science in his talk on "Breaking into the black box"

Alosh Denny helps us understand how we can make LLMs Transparent for Science in his talk on "Breaking into the black box". Watch him live at www.youtube.com/live/NyQced4...
#indiafoss #unitedbyfoss #scipyindia #fossinscience

aftab talking about instrumenting science with devops tools like grafana

Aftab talks about Instrumenting Science with DevOps Tools like Grafana in his talk on "The Observability of Everything". Tune in at www.youtube.com/live/NyQced4...
#indiafoss #unitedbyfoss #scipyindia #fossinscience

Agriya is countering server-based computing environments by introducing us to in-browser FOSS Tools

Countering server-based computing environments, @agriyakhetarp.al is talking about Beyond the Smokescreen: Interactive In-Browser FOSS Tools for Science Communication. Join in live at www.youtube.com/live/NyQced4...
#indiafoss #unitedbyfoss #scipyindia #fossinscience

Kriyanshi Shah talks about empowering open science with scalable interactive computing environments in India

Coming up next, Kriyanshi Shah will talk about Empowering Open Science with Scalable Interactive Computing Environments in India. Watch her live at www.youtube.com/live/NyQced4...
#indiafoss #unitedbyfoss #scipyindia #fossinscience

Sagnik Saha talking about theorem proving using Lean

Coming up, Sagnik Saha will talk about Formalizing Mathematics and Scientific Computing with an Open-Source Theorem Prover. Learn about Lean and theorem proving live at www.youtube.com/live/NyQced4...
#indiafoss #unitedbyfoss #scipyindia #fossinscience

Prof. Aaditeshwar Seth, IIT Delhi, is talking about the CoRE stack open-source initiative. Watch him live at www.youtube.com/live/NyQced4...

#indiafoss #unitedbyfoss #scipyindia #fossinscience

And leading us into the break, @arjxn-py is talking about building Collaborative CAD & GIS in JupyterLab. Watch his talk live at www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyQc...
#indiafoss #unitedbyfoss #scipyindia #fossinscience

Pradeep, an independent researcher, is talking about assessing the State of India’s Birds Using FOSS – Pradeep Koulgi. Watch him live at www.youtube.com/live/NyQced4...
#indiafoss #unitedbyfoss #scipyindia #fossinscience

Have you heard about Zarr yet? @sanketverma1704 is talking about Zarr, a Cloud-Optimised, N-Dimensional, Typed Array Storage – Sanket Verma. Watch him live at www.youtube.com/live/NyQced4... #indiafoss #unitedbyfoss #scipyindia #fossinscience

@aditi-juneja is helping us understand API Dispatching in the Scientific Python Ecosystem. Watch her live at www.youtube.com/live/NyQced4...
#indiafoss #unitedbyfoss #fossinscience #scipyindia

Checkout out her work at schefflera-arboricola.github.io/Schefflera-A... and github.com/Schefflera-A...

Jithin is talking about KuttyPy, his project to transform Arduino into Affordable Data Acquisition for STEM. Watch him live at www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyQc...

#indiafoss #unitedbyfoss #scipyindia #fossinscience

Folks who are at #IndiaFOSS, DM pls let's have some Mappy chats
I will be at @openstreetmap.bsky.social India Booth/ @maplibre.org Booth. #Bangalore #FOSS #fossunited

🚀 Just 2 days to go!

📍 Nimhans Convention Center, Bengaluru

#indiafoss2025 #indiafoss #unitedbyfoss #fossunited