About

My name is Balasankar C, but I usually go by “Balu” almost everywhere. I am a programmer, originally from Kalady, Kerala, and currently lives in Bengaluru, Karnataka.

I work at GitLab as a Senior Software Engineer on their Distribution team. Other major identities I have are Debian Developer, Mozillian, GNOME Foundation Member (Emeritus), Administrator of Free Software Community of India, Administrator of Malayalam Wikisource.

It may be clear from my above identities that I am pretty much interested in the Free Software ideology and organizations around it. Other than that, I am also a privacy advocate who is interested in the social perspectives of individual privacy and the technology surrounding it. I attended and completed Google Summer of Code in 2016 under Indic Project on their Malayalam spellchecker project.

I am also a self-proclaimed Bibliophile and a Procaffeinator, and identify myself as a textrovert (however, if the topic is something tech related, I don’t mind verbal talks/debates/screaming matches etc.). I am happy to mentor people on topics that I am confident on, and I occasionally give talks on various technical topics I am interested in.

Finding me on the Internet

You can find me at various social media and other discussion platforms on the Internet. The major ones that I usually check are

• Mastodon: balu@dravidam.net
• Twitter: @balasankarc
• GitLab: @balasankarc
• Diaspora: bsc@poddery.com

And no, I am not on Facebook.

Blogs

On the rare occasions when I decide to write something, and actually end up doing it, you can find them at my blog, Technocrazian. I used to dabble in literature in the past, of which I am quite embarassed these days. If you insist, you can find them at ശങ്കരാഭരണം

Contact Me

I am notorious for not being available over phone, and prefer text-based communication more. You can probably reach me via the following

• EMail: mail [AT] balasankarc [dot] in
• Matrix: @balu:dravidam.net
• Telegram: @balasankarc

Whenever possible, I prefer encrypted communication. My PGP key is DDF2B83B163533E05B696D5BB77D2E2E23735427.