The past four editions of WordCamp Mumbai took place at the same venue. The venue unfortunately is undergoing reconstruction for this year. The organisers started to look around for new venues and we were lucky to have some interesting candidates.
Our old venue, really afforded us a single track. Last year we sold more than 600 tickets. It is difficult to have a single track that 600 people might find useful. The number of attendees this year will probably be more than 600 (700?) and hence we thought it was time Mumbai went multi-track.
We came across Victor Menezes Convention Centre at IIT Bombay. The venue allows us use of 5 class rooms and a main auditorium with over 350 seats.
The best part was we had FOSSEE.in who graciously became venue sponsors. This means our venue does not cost us anything!
About FOSSEE
FOSSEE (Free and Open Source Software in Education) project promotes the use of FOSS tools to improve the quality of education in our country. We aim to reduce dependency on proprietary software in educational institutions. We encourage the use of FOSS tools through various activities to ensure commercial software is replaced by equivalent FOSS tools. We also develop new FOSS tools and upgrade existing tools to meet requirements in academia and research.
The FOSSEE project is part of the National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology (ICT), Ministry of Human Resources and Development, Government of India.
Credits: Prof. Kannan M Moudgalya who guided us around facilitating the venue with FOSSEE as sponsors.