By Akashdeep Dhar in Flock To Fedora 2023 — Sep 7, 2023

Day Two Part V - Flock To Fedora 2023

Continuing the tradition of keeping the entertainment for the evening, the attendees of the conference were let loose in the city with a tablet device per group, some map waypoints to track, some difficult questions to answer, some interesting activities to perform and a lot of excitement to be had

From left to right - Shaun McCance making his cameo entry in the team's robotic dance attempts, Michal's girlfriend, Michal Konecny, Anushka Jain, Sumantro Mukherjee, Clement Verna and Lenka Segura

While ensuring the safety of our teammates, we started off at around 0645 pm Ireland Standard Time with our first activity of performing a robotic dance and recording it on the tablet. I elected to do the recording while Clement, Sumantro, Lenka, Anushka, Michal and his girlfriend acted out their moves. I recall having been barely able to contain my laughter while recording them on the tablet device provided to us. I joined another group named "Fedorable" briefly in their robotic dance because this was the kind of fun that I did not want to miss out on. Then we moved on to the next activity, which required us to answer some questions based on the things adjacent to us like landmarks and vehicles.

From left to right - Akashdeep Dhar making his cameo appearance in the team Fedorable's robotic dance attempts, Nikita Tripathi, Jona Azizaj, Mike Nolan, Robert Wright, Adam Samalik and Jennifer Madriaga

The next activity required us to click a picture of a vehicle that did not have a registration of Cork, Ireland with an apple, a newspaper and a passerby Irish citizen. Anushka volunteered to head into the nearby hotel to resource those two things for some time and when we thought that we were probably spending too much time on this, Sumantro and I headed in to look for her. Other groups were also provided with a similar set of activities as we kept running into them now and then. The attempts to obtain an apple and a newspaper did not work out, so I proposed using the Apple logo behind Anushka's iPhone and Michal proposed opening up "The Irish Times" website on his phone for the photograph.

From left to right - A friendly passerby from Ireland holding an iPhone with the Apple logo visible, Akashdeep Dhar and Michal Konecny holding up his phone with The Irish Times website opened up

Luckily enough, the bus that we travelled on from the hotel to the activity place had a registration of Kerry, Ireland and we found some folks on the street who happily volunteered to be a part of the photograph. Once we were through with the activity, Sumantro assigned (read voluntold) Lenka and me to handle the tablet device and act as the scouts for the team as we headed into the next spot. On reaching the place, we answered a few questions about the landmarks around us including the bus stop. The next activity required someone in the team to deliver a makeshift speech about the working class of society as that was something that James Connolly from Ireland probably dedicated his entire life to.

Akashdeep Dhar trying hard to piece together a makeshift speech about the working class of society and abysmally failing at it

The next place we walked up to was an avenue with many hotels and bars where we had to perform activities like clicking a photograph of the entire group inside an elevator of one of the hotels there. One of the activities also involved one of us clicking a photograph with one of the attendants there that Clement volunteered to do. Once we were through a couple of these activities and a bunch of questions, the next ask from the tablet device was to make a guesstimate to pick the costliest house from a group of those advertised on a window of a building. The team also recorded themselves playing air guitar and headbanging nearby as a part of the next activity before we started heading off to a nearby street.

From left to right - Lenka Segura, Michal's girlfriend, Michal Konecny, Clement Verna, Sumantro Mukherjee and Anushka Jain preparing their air guitars before going absolutely hogwild with their headbanging antics

We had so much fun while exploring the city and we kept clicking so many pictures on our way that we lost track of time. It was around 0945 pm Ireland Standard Time when we figured that we could not possibly complete the remaining spots and have enough time to return to the starting location. Michal, Anushka and I performed the last set of activities of enacting a scene at a fishery before we got ourselves some scoops from a nearby icecream shop. Sumantro and I had a great conversation with the friendly shopkeeper and his assistant where they mentioned getting inspired from Kulfi, an Indian icecream variant and with that, we started heading back to the starting point of the activity.

From left to right - Akashdeep Dhar, Michal Konecny and Anuskha Jain trying to enact the scene shown on the tablet device as a part of a prescribed activity

With Michal and I having our double scoops and Sumantro and Anuskha enjoying their triple scoops, we got to see how beautiful the city could look under the pale purple sky in the late evening. We waited for a bit for the activity to be officially closed off and for the tablet devices to be collected back, but once we were through, we boarded the bus to return to the hotel. It was around 1030 pm Ireland Standard Time that the attendees finally reached the hotel, completely exhausted but incomparably satisfied by the evening event. I still had some candies left with me that I had Justin, Amita and Amy take some from as they loved their picks before retiring to my hotel room for some much-needed rest.