The FOSSAsia 2026 event prioritized the friendly community interaction aspect of a free and open source software event by frontloading it on 08th March 2026 as a freely accessible event. This was surely a great example to learn from and implement at our flagship annual community conference, Flock To Fedora. I started the day by waking up as early as 0700am Indochina Time and giving Samyak Jain a wake-up call. As the timezone offset from Indian Standard Time was ninety minutes, I had to wait for some time before I could connect back home with my family members. Thankfully, the breakfast meal provided at Lumen Bangkok Udomsuk Station was a lot more flavourful and distinctive as compared to those that I was habituated to having at hotels in Europe. While there was a lot to be had for my dietary preferences, it was a tough time for Samyak in a mostly non-vegetarian selection of meals, so he had to request a custom vegetarian meal. Once we were through with breakfast, we started off for the FOSSAsia 2026 conference venue, True Digital Park West, at around 0930am Indochina Time.

As the venue was barely under a kilometer away from our stay, we were able to make it to the event on foot. While the summer season had not arrived in Thailand, it was still extremely humid, and we wanted to head indoors as soon as possible. Skipping the first couple of early sessions allowed us to get enough respite after a long yesterday, and that would mean that we could also last longer that day. After skipping through some floors of the True Digital Park Campus and connecting with the folks from the FOSSAsia Community Cycling Trip in the Telegram chat, we were finally able to make it to the right location. Following Mishari Muqbil's advice, we took the long escalator that skipped a couple of floors entirely to get us right in front of the event reception. The one thing that took me by surprise in Thailand was the fact that the ground floors were counted as the first floor, and there was no concept of a zero level. It was a pretty interesting observation that we had to mentally train ourselves to get used to, if we wanted to not get lost while visiting most (if not all) multi-storeyed buildings in Bangkok.

Walking through the premises, which astonishingly enough consisted of both student laboratories and shopping stores in equal measure, we entered the hall selection where FOSSAsia 2026 was organized. Surely, the volunteers could have done better at pointing folks to the correct place, but this feeling was quickly overridden when I ran into a bunch of acquainted and recent community friends. Getting to meet these people, mostly from APAC, at the event felt like making a victory lap to celebrate all the connections that I had painstakingly built throughout the last five years or so. Trying not to get swept away in all the interesting conversations, we were guided by an adjacent volunteer to get ourselves the badges, wristbands, and swag kits from the event reception. I was able to get those for myself as I was also participating in the conference as a speaker, but Samyak had to wait until the next day to obtain his badge. While we had the agency to join one of the running workshops at the time, we still decided to hang out at the hallway track a little longer to discuss open source strategies with the community.

After a brief catch-up with Ananthu CV from the Debian Project, whom I was meeting here after having done so during GNOME Asia 2024 and FOSDEM 2025, Samyak and I made it into the Eventyay Developer Workshop room at around 1045am Indochina Time. Although we initially thought that we were late, Norbert Preining, Srivastav Auswin, and Mario Behling were just getting started conducting a round of introductions for the folks present there. Since I was representing the Fedora Infrastructure in this workshop, I presented the case of how we used a similar event service platform, Pretalx, for our use case and how I was interested in learning all the various things EventYay had to offer. Amidst the feature run-through and tooling integrations, the workshop organizers had an interest in how the Fedora Project used Pretalx for running events like CentOS Connect and Flock To Fedora. Amidst the lack of proper seating in the room, I also got to meet Deepesh Nair briefly before agreeing to connect with Mario later for deeper discussions on how we could further collaborate in the future.

Hong Phuc Dang entered sometime later with an announcement for refreshments and some more seats for the workshop hall. This allowed the hall to be filled up a whole lot more as we headed back to the hallway track to meet with the likes of Aqsa Aqeel from DigitalOcean and Leon Nunes, who had begun his open source contribution journey. It was interesting to notice how the Fedora Project was the only RPM-based distribution on the scene there apart from our reliable downstream, Red Hat Enterprise Linux representatives. The distribution aspect of the event felt mostly occupied by the folks from Canonical and Debian, thus giving us the chance to capture some relevance. I briefly met up with Anuvrat Parashar and Shivani Parashar before having a conversation with Hong, who was surprised to note that the Fedora Project did not have a community booth. It turned out that there was another Call For Proposal form that was opened up closer to the commencement timeline, apart from the one for presentations and workshops, that I, as the event owner from the Fedora Project, was not even aware of.

This was also hinted at by Mishari in one of our conversations from the day before about the community booths being made available for free while the commercial booths were being charged a reasonable payment. In our discussions, Hong assured community support, and I discussed strategic collaboration before we had some quick photograph clicks to end the conversation. While not being able to have a community booth during FOSSAsia 2026 felt like a missed chance, I wanted to make the most of my participation as a community prospector for the Fedora Project's future participation in the event. We did not really have concrete plans on which workshops we would want to attend that day and were making our agenda on the fly. Making it back to the hallway track at around 1100am Indochina Time, I met up with the likes of Rajan Shah, Shivraj Patil, Veerkumar Patil, and Gaurav Kamathe from Red Hat, who were just arriving at the conference venue. It was hilarious to catch up with them here barely a couple of weeks after meeting them at the DevConf.IN 2026 conference in Pune, India.

At around 1130am Indochina Time, Samyak and I headed back into the rooms to attend presentations delivered not just in English but in a variety of languages. It was interesting to see just how open the FOSSAsia conference was to folks wanting to present their work in their own language, and when paired with a technology that live-transcribes it to a more generally known language, this could significantly lower the barrier of entry for these conferences. Most sessions, if not all, were bite-sized portions of fifteen minutes, and depending on who you are, the time management aspect of the presentation could be difficult. After exchanging the coffee coupon for a Dunkin-branded cold coffee and the meal coupon for a packed lunch, we headed out to chat with one of Samyak's friends from the Debian Project. We were able to make it back to Wendy Ha's talk on her experiences as an APAC Kubernetes Community Contributor, followed by Punsiri Boonyakiat's talk on balancing motherhood responsibilities with open source, which became a key highlight for International Women's Day.

On the second half of the community day, the host was doing absolutely terrific work keeping the audience entertained while the volunteer team looked into the technical problems that had crept in. Her fantastical oration with a deadpan expression did not allow our spirits to sour when the fixes were taking a little while longer. Contrary to my belief, the community day was not as occupied as I thought it would be due to its free-of-charge participation, but we were able to make the best of whoever was present on the ground. We also ran into Aaditya Singh from the GNOME Foundation and Mishari, who were just arriving at the conference venue in the afternoon, both of whom we were quite pleased to catch up with. After a quick conversation with Tamhant about the technological industry, I met up with Mario again to discuss how the Fedora Project evolved from a fragile ticket-based system to a robust dedicated event platform. It helped me understand how EventYay's Developer Preview Service could be accessed without having to establish the project environment locally.

As the Fedora Infrastructure's CommuniShift Project allowed for getting these deployments up and running in no time, I suggested the same to the EventYay developers, as they could find it handy to demonstrate this to the Fedora Project community. After running into Hong again, Samyak and I talked about how we could further push the adoption of the community day using interactive activities for folks hanging out on the hallway track. This would allow for greater participation on the community day, not just by those who have their talks planned but also by visitors. At around 0120pm Indochina Time, we made it to Peter Zaitsev's talk on Percona Project's attempts to make MySQL Community stronger. Apart from the obligatory jabs hurled at Oracle, there were also some tricky questions around the choice between MariaDB and MySQL if PerconaDB was not an option, addressed. We went on to attend Michael Meskes' talk on Open Source Business Models, which felt quite at home for us working with the Fedora Project as part of our responsibilities.

The "free" in a free and open source software project always comes with an asterisk marked hidden condition about the price being paid by someone else. The price is also usually not in the form of monetary payment, and that is what ends up hurting the longevity of these communities the most. After an insightful conversation on onboarding and retaining contributors, we headed out at around 0200pm Indochina Time to get another round of caffeine. We had discussions around the state of the warring world and how multiple cancelled flights through the Middle East affected selected speakers at FOSSAsia 2026. Aaditya welcomed us to station Fedora Project folks at the GNOME Foundation community booth since there would be enough space for both. As Samyak had stickers saved up from DevConf.IN 2026's Fedora Project community representation, we could use those here. Unfortunately, we could not meet Asmit Malakannawar, who planned to tag along with Aaditya, as his flights through the Middle East were also cancelled, and there were zero provisions made for remote talks.

Samyak and I headed back into the presentation rooms to attend Louis Yoong's talk on Building AI-Powered Interactive Maps with Open Data at around 0300pm Indochina Time, before attending a series of lightning talks from the Women In Tech category. After attending Velia Dang's informative talk on the reviewer's point of view when using EventYay and obtaining learnings to apply for Flock To Fedora, we decided to depart from the conference after the closing notes. While there were some activities planned at Lotus' Eatery for the Pre-Event Community Gathering, we wanted to use the remaining time of the day to explore what Bangkok had to offer. We were able to make it back to Lumen Bangkok Udomsuk Station by 0445pm Indochina Time before leaving again for the BTS SkyTrain after around forty-five minutes. With a rigid agenda to go with, we planned to visit Masaru, an anime collectible franchise store located near BTS Phra Khanong, which was barely four stops away from BTS Udomsuk. Ten minutes of train ride and five minutes of walking got us where we wanted to be.

We spent a little too long there than we could care to admit as Samyak got himself busy finding figurines while I was hunting for some Genshin Impact branded collectibles. Surprisingly enough, I was able to get a brokered change for the 1000 Thai Baht note that I was carrying while we were booking BTS SkyTrain tickets from BTS Phra Khanong to BTS Siam once we were done with our purchases at Masaru. It was going to be a comparatively longer ride with around eight stops and then a ten-minute walk to the world-famous MBK Center. At around 0800pm Indochina Time, we made it to BTS Siam station, but we kept getting sidetracked by the sprawling independent weekend market that we wanted to explore. With Samyak and me splitting again to find our pickings, I could not help but purchase some gifts for my family, including Hawaiian shirts, tourist hats, ornamental pendants, and much more. I was glad to have my wits about me while driving a hard bargain for making all these purchases because that would allow me to eventually purchase some more things in the end.

The humidity was making it tough, but we were finally able to push through to the indoors of the MBK Center by around 0845pm Indochina Time. Coincidentally, this is where we ended up finding one of the best independent handicraft stores, where Samyak and I got ourselves a wide assortment of personalized keychains and magnets for our friends and families. As our order was a massive one, with six for myself and six for him, we decided to depart after placing the order to see if we could make it to the anime café in time. The sprawling layout of the MBK Center only made it difficult for us to find our way - apart from, of course, getting sidetracked into purchasing Thailand incenses and local handicrafts. Splitting from Samyak again, who got busy with his purchases, I was able to make it to the place. To my utter disappointment, the shop had already closed by 0830pm Indochina Time, and I reached almost an hour late. I backtracked to where I last saw him, and we decided to head back to the handicraft store as we had to retrieve our orders right before the operations wrapped up for the day.

The enormous mall could be a treasure trove for those who know what they are looking for, but for the two of us exploring, it felt like an overwhelming labyrinth with similar looking pathways and deeply confusing corridors. We were finally able to make it to the handicraft store by around 0945pm Indochina Time, right at the time of the last handicraft being finalized. Since we had already cleared the bill, we headed back to BTS Siam while clicking pictures and discussing plans, only to end up boarding a rather crowded BTS SkyTrain on a weekend. By around 1045pm Indochina Time, we made it back to BTS Udomsuk, but after exploring the surrounding places to see where we could dine, we decided to order some food from the convenience of our hotel rooms using the Grab application. I got myself freshened up after requesting the hotel reception to retain the order, and I was glad to have ordered a carton of mineral water too. After a quick bite for dinner, I decided to call it a day with multiple precautionary alarms enabled to ensure that I woke up early the next day for the group photo.

As my arrival flight to Bangkok was scheduled to depart at around 0700am Indian Standard Time, I had to wake up as early as 0230am Indian Standard Time on 07th March 2026. The packing had already been taken care of previously, so all I had to take care of was ensuring that I got myself an Uber ride to the Pune International Airport in time. Thankfully, unlike my experiences from DevConf.IN 2026, I was able to get one pretty quickly, and at around 0400am Indian Standard Time, I reached the airport. The check-in process went smoothly, since I was not carrying much luggage anyway to begin with on my Air India Express flight. With my physical boarding pass in hand, I headed upstairs to wait for the immigration booths to open for the day. After forty-five minutes of waiting, the gates finally opened up, and I made it to the security check after smooth processing. The fact that I had my Thailand Digital Arrival Card registration done in advance helped me get through to the designated gate 1A without much hassle. I ended up having a lot of time left on my hands, so I decided to connect with the Egencia service about the troubled accommodation booking while I waited for boarding to begin.

Moving away from two noisy groups of travellers - one with senior citizens and one with rowdy men - I got myself a place to sit as I rang up the Egencia customer care helpline. Since 0530am Indian Standard Time was still a little early for their working hours, it took me a while to connect with a human representative. A helpful attendant attempted to connect with the Lumen Bangkok Udomsuk Station hotel employees, but that did not work out. I decided to board the flight anyway at around 0645am Indian Standard Time and leave the concerns about the troubled accommodation booking for when I would have reached Bangkok. There was not much that I could have done at that time to help the situation, and besides the issues that we had with Egencia regarding the flight confirmation, this worry would most likely have soured my entire experience. After a quick switch of seats from 7A to 6A, on a fellow passenger's request, I decided to watch some movies, such as Code 3 (2025) and Zootopia 2 (2025), on my phone. The Kebab Platter was soon served, and that allowed me to catch up on some rest that I was lacking due to having to wake up early in the morning just to make it to the airport.

The flight soon landed at the Suvarnabhumi Bangkok International Airport at around 1230pm Indochina Time, and after connecting with my family to let them know about my safe arrival, I headed swiftly into the immigration queue. The overcrowded traveller collective took me about forty-five minutes to make it through to the other side, where I found that the designated luggage belt #21 had finished delivering all of its luggage. After crossing a big group of Chinese travellers, I got myself a data plan from True 5G at the airport exit. 599 Thai Baht for 8 days of unlimited service was a great deal, and that allowed me to stay connected with both my family and friends, and with Samyak Jain, with whom I was representing the Fedora Project APAC community at FOSSAsia 2026. The humidity I faced after stepping out of the airport took me by surprise because it was even warmer there than it was in India. After unsuccessfully looking for a Grab ride that I had booked for about thirty minutes or so, I finally got one whose driver did a great job crossing over the language barrier and explaining where to find them amidst a rather crowded station of rides available for hire and buses that went into the city.

I connected with Samyak while I started off on the road at around 0230pm Indochina Time to instruct him about Airport Gate #4, where he could avail himself of a Grab ride, and that way he could avoid wasting that thirty minutes like I did. While connecting with my family during the Grab ride, I also commended the driver for just how clear they were with their communication while making the best utilization of the Grab application's live message translation feature for international travellers. I did not realize how swiftly I managed to reach the hotel at about 0315pm Indochina Time after all the immigration and cabbing troubles. Thankfully, the folks at the Lumen Bangkok Udomsuk Station gave me no trouble with the booking, and I was able to check into my room #703 rather swiftly. In contrast to the experience that I thought I would have, they also topped off their welcoming gesture with a cool popsicle-like snack as I headed downstairs to fetch the passport that I had left at the reception. With one less thing to worry about, Samyak and I still had to make it to the BTS Chit Lom station by 0430pm Indochina Time to meet up and join the FOSSAsia Community Cycling trip.

As Samyak touched down at around 0230pm Indochina Time, I had to proceed by myself to meet up with Mishari Muqbil after a quick changeover in my hotel room. After a brief struggle with finding an ATM and then losing about 250 Thai Baht for the international conversion, I made it back to the BTS Udomsuk station, which only accepted cash (and did not even provide receipts to track expenses!) but was thankfully situated right in front of my hotel. It took me thirty minutes to make it to the BTS Chit Lom station at around 0415pm Indochina Time, but I had to spend the remaining thirty minutes chasing Mishari's waypoint on Google Maps. As I flew in my bicycle helmet all the way from Pune, I had no plans of skipping the FOSSAsia Community Cycling Trip, and while it was my first time visiting Thailand, I did find myself audaciously picking trains and walking through as if I was exploring my backyard. I think I might have to credit the hotel reception and the BTS security for their welcoming behaviour, which made me want to leave the hotel room right after arrival because I genuinely wanted to experience more of what Bangkok had to offer, even when I was dead tired from the travels.

I was finally able to make it to the river jetty, where I met up with Mishari, Michael Christen, Anuvrat Parashar, Shivani Parashar, and others. The adventurous ordeal of catching up with them was rewarded with a scenic boat ride to the starting point of the FOSSAsia Community Cycling Trip. I managed to learn more about what Michael does with his work on YaCy and shared what I do as a part of the Fedora Council, the Fedora Mindshare, and the Fedora Infrastructure teams in the Fedora Project community activities. There were folks there for the first time like myself, and there were also those who had attended FOSSAsia since its beginning, so it was enlightening to know their experiences from this conference. During a brisk walk-and-talk with Anuvrat and other participants to the starting point of the cycling trip, I got to know about his frequent involvement in the PyCon organization and DGPLUG communities. Once we were joined by a couple of Mishari's friends and Wendy Ha, we began unlocking the rental bicycles using our HelloRide application, and Mishari gave us a quick orientation about street safety regulations at around 0530pm Indochina Time.

And there began our slow-paced ride through the alleys and streets of Bangkok! With Mishari and his friends leading our collective, I found myself at the start of our sequence, discussing with Bee about his involvement in technology. As a proving ground for their cartographic skills, we wove through a lot of parks, and I noticed a great number of cats along the various pathways we took. Since the cycling trip did not have many elevation changes to deal with, I took the liberty of falling behind in the sequence to chat with the likes of Wendy and Michael every now and then. At around 0630pm Indochina Time, we made our first stop at an independent family-owned chocolate store where we sampled many chocolates and purchased some beverages too. We were able to keep our rental bicycles safe using Mishari's (as Shivani hilariously named) "CYCLE-ogical protection," which mostly consisted of a loosely placed rope. This first stop also allowed Samyak to finally catch up with our collective, as I discovered him coincidentally heading in the opposite direction when we were on our way out. Tracking his location over WhatsApp's location sharing definitely seems to have been the right choice.

It was rather funny to finally catch up with Samyak on a random Bangkok evening street after having missed the chance at the airport and at the hotel. Our collective made the next stop at another independent family-owned ice cream parlour located in a deep alleyway at around 0700pm Indochina Time. While the location was tucked away in a seemingly long-forgotten corner of Bangkok, the place definitely had a very home-like feeling to it. We, of course, got busy sampling undiscovered flavours and ordering favourite ones for the break. After spending another thirty minutes there with my Butterfly Pea cold cone (and some obligatory badly written jokes by Mishari), we had a bunch of photographs clicked. Once we departed from the ice cream parlour, we found ourselves pausing every now and then due to certain cartographically inclined confusions, but our "vibe-riding" (as I hilariously named our fun experience) never had a dull moment. Through the riverside pathways to a restricted university, we seemed to be in the front seat of exploring what stories these streets and alleys of Bangkok had to offer—and as tired as I was, it still felt like we were just getting started and there was more to discover!

While we did have a bunch of registrations for the FOSSAsia community cycling trip, we barely had half of them turn up, so Mishari decided that it would be best if we found ourselves a dining place. After he quickly helped Samyak with his bicycle height, we caught up with the remaining group for yet another round of photographs - this time in front of a Bumblebee statue at a cross-section, if you can believe it. We also halted in front of the Royal Palace for a quick shoot before inching closer to the nearest drop-off point for the HelloRide rental bicycle center. Thankfully, I was able to take Bee's sweet custom ride for a quick spin before leaving, as it was filled to the brim with all the bells and whistles for an exhilarating street cycling experience. With about 80 Thai Baht spent for the HelloRide trip, some of us made it to the KemKon Vegan Experience Restaurant. As both Samyak and I had skipped lunch and exerted ourselves since the morning, we were starving. I was glad to note that while the menu was completely vegan, I still ended up liking the Make-believe Fried Fish Fritters that I had ordered for myself, both for the delicious taste and the quick service.

Apart from the nutritional values, of course, it was astonishing to notice just how close the vegan dish ended up tasting like a non-vegetarian one. Adding some spicy chili-flavoured oil on top of it all made it taste like heaven, and I could not see a better way to end the night than with this amazing meal. After clearing our bills, Shivani and Anuvrat stayed back at the market to explore some more, while Samyak, Mishari, and I headed back to the main road to catch a Grab ride to the hotel. It was magical just how we felt at home connecting with folks from various free and open-source software communities, all while doing activities like riding bicycles or sharing meals. The two of us were soon back in our hotel rooms, and apart from one misadventure of requiring the hotel staff's assistance to unlock the heavily jammed bathroom door, our arrival in Bangkok was super awesome. After a quick message to Julia Bley to inform her about our safe arrival at the conference and to conclude our saga of troubled travels, I called it a day at around 1130pm Indochina Time. There was so much to look forward to at the Community Day in FOSSAsia 2026, and I wanted to ensure that I was rested enough to experience the same.