La Salle Debain

I had a really good time at Debconf July 9th-17, but I had barely been home 15 minutes before I had my arm up a toilet. And it all went downhill from there reaching its nadir last week with an emergency filling extraction. I am now catching up and I'm at the point where I can think about blogging but obviously a blow by blow of my time at Debconf would be a bit pointless so I'll just jot down a few random bits and pieces.

Before going to Finland, I spent three days in England wallowing in nostalgia for my youth with my cousins. From London, I proceeded to Helsinki on the 8th with a brief stop in Copenhagen. Rather than sleep in the dorms I elected to stay at the Radisson Hotel in Espoo which is just a short walk from the conference venues. Not that it stopped me getting lost the first couple of days though.

Another slightly disorienting thing was how long the days were at this northern latitude. The other advantage of an extremely northern latitude, the Aurora Borealis is alas only at its best during winter.

Debian Day

Saturday July 9th, the day before the conference actually began, was designated as Debian Day. It was aimed more at the general public than insiders but it turned out most attendees were already Debian fans. Branden as DPL gave the keynote address. I noticed he used my "developers on every continent except Antarctica" line. I gave the first talk. It was basically the same "What is Debian?" introductory talk I have given several times before. Due to a technical glitch I wasn't able to use my slides but the slides were crappy anyway so it is not a big loss. It went pretty well I think. Video of my talk is available here .

There were lots of other interesting talks that day. One which particularly stuck out was by Juan Jose Amor about measuring the size of the Debian codebase. It included some interesting statistics such as if Sarge had been developed commercially, it would be worth (raise pinky to mouth Dr. Evil style) EIGHT BILLION DOLLARS. Unfortunately the presenter did not speak English well so he couldn't really answer questions.

During his talk, Andreas Barth mentioned, for the first time in public I think, that we were going to try and get Etch released by the end of 2006. This is welcome news to the many people who were fed up with sarges long release cycle.

I was also supposed to moderate a Q & A session with Debian leadership today but it got cancelled as we ran out of time.

Sunday 10th

I've gotten myself volunteered to moderate sessions, pass the mic around to audience members asking questions, that sort of thing. I did this for most of the rest of the conference.

Monday 11th

I ditched most of the presentations today to have a long conversation with Christian Perrier about Indian language support. This turned into a conversation with other people about the European constitution which turned into a conversation with other people about the war on terror and the psychology of suicide bombers. It's this type of thing I love about conferences like Debconf.

Tuesday 12th

AJ Towns gave a talk about debbugs the software behind the Debian bug tracking system . In a fit of enthusiasm I decided I want to try and add RSS support to it but I haven't followed up yet.

Wednesday 13th

No talks today. Instead there was an excursion to the fortress of Suomenlinna. I stayed at the hotel because I wasn't feeling well and I had some things to do. Plus it was really really hot. I know white people are prone to sunburn, even at my shade of brown I would have turned reddish in that kind of sun. But this is the first time I've seen people turn orange. Ouch!

Thursday 14th

The highlight of today was a very well-attended talk and Q & A session by Mark Shuttleworth concerning Ubuntu and his other endeavours. Interesting tidbit: He earns more in one month than the entire commercial Linux industry makes in a year! He said Ubuntu would try and stay in sync with Debian but wouldn't categorically pledge to it which was a bit disappointing even though I am not paranoid about their intentions. There was a formal dinner in the evening.

Friday 15th

I demonstrated my genius by absently walking into the plate glass doors of the Computer Science Building. A bloody nose resulted and even sadder, there were no cameras around to record the incident for Americas Funniest Home Videos. During the evening was the keysigning party. With around 180 participants is took several hours. And I still haven't sent out my signed keys. :-) Mattias Wadenstein made a much anticipated "Debian Cake" but alas he didn't have time to make it vegetarian so I couldn't have any.

Saturday 16th

I gave a talk about Debian-IN and Open Source in South Asia. This talk had a chequered history. First someone from Pakistan (who I'm not familiar with) was supposed to give it but he wasn't able to. So when the voting for talks happened it wasn't listed. I belatedly noticed this and offered to give it and it was added to the schedule. Unfortunately it was up against a very popular and interesting talk by Bdale. Then I started late and went over time. Still I got some people interested in Debian-IN so I'm happy. The slides from the talk are available here . In the evening I moderated an Adhoc BOF session to replace the Q & A that didn't take place on Debian Day.

Sunday 17th

Very low key today as people were already starting to leave.

Conclusion

I left early in the morning on Monday, once again via Copenhagen and London. I thoroughly enjoyed myself in HEL. Meeting many European DDs in person for the first time was fun and Finland is a lovely country to visit. I may be addicted to Laakahilo (Cloudberry Jam) So great job organizers and I look forward to the next Debconf in Mexico.