Dear all, I should have shared this probably 2 weeks ago when proposal window had just begin but the advice got triggered when a colleague asked as any guidelines to follow. While I did share some things, I figured later that bits of it might be relevant to the larger pool of people who would attend debconf for the first time as well. Mind you this is from my personal experience so it might vary from one person to the next -
Dear X, I would be very very careful about what sort of things you would do in Debconf. Last year I told 10 things and did not do even half of those. The thing is Debconf is overwhelming, it's pretty easy to get into touristy things, attending talks which you hadn't thought of attending. What I mean to say there is a fair amount of unpredictability in Debconf and it will be good to be open for that. For instance, I found for myself socializing was my thing (meeting people and recoginizing people who were just IRC nicknames) rather than clunking down on the lappy because that is what I/We do anyhow all the time. As shared this is 'personal advice' but am sure lots of the experienced people could also add their own 2 bits or share what they think might be relevant. Maybe we could get few advises and put it as a separate page on the wiki as well (might be helpful for newbies) What do people think about it ? On a slightly different context, I was reminded of meeting a certain gentleman from South Africa who was fond of high-brow words. For few minutes/seconds I thought he might be the next 'Naom Chomsky' only to realize later he just enjoyed using high-brow/power words. While I found it better/easier to use as many common words as possible because when people are trying to understand you, they have to overcome your accent, your speed of talking (I tried to be slow but still) , so having high-brow/power words might be good but only if you have the audience who can understand the context. Having a varied audience like in a debconf it might be preferable to stick to common words when giving your presentation. Having said the above, there are two half-formed/half-baked ideas in my head which people - 1. Etymology of words - You could just have an etymological analysis of just 10 words which are being used/being prolific in the last 2-5 years but sadly people use it in the wrong context/wrong construct . One such word being 'hacker' which 'most' people think means somebody who breaks into systems rather than somebody who is tinkering/problem solving around issues plaguing her(is) system. The ideal word for the former would be 'cracker'. I am sure there are many more like that. I am sure there are people who have been part of CCC Germany (Chaos Communication Congress) who could enlighten us quite a bit from some of the words/terms spoken therein. English is a very funny language as the word/s get particular context in the way they are laid. It would be a pretty valuable service if somebody could provide it. I, at the very least would be interested in attending such a talk. 2. Epistomological outlook about Debian - Debian is weird in the sense it has some very passionate people. I myself got inflamed (more involved) after visiting Debconf and this I guess is the case with other people as well. I dunno if somebody has taken time to do an epistomological study about Debian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology - why is it that it drives people so passionately ? What could be to make it better ? There is much to be shared here but would leave it at that as the e-mail has become too long as well, what was supposed to be just two lines of advice has quickly become 10 paragraphs long. Look forward to response and till later. -- Regards, Shirish Agarwal शिरीष अग्रवाल My quotes in this email licensed under CC 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ http://flossexperiences.wordpress.com EB80 462B 08E1 A0DE A73A 2C2F 9F3D C7A4 E1C4 D2D8 _______________________________________________ Debconf-discuss mailing list Debconf-discuss@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-discuss
