Re: [Debconf-team] DC18 brochure & flyer final review

[Gunnar Wolf]

ChangZhuo Chen (陳昌倬) dijo [Mon, Oct 09, 2017 at 09:44:29PM +0800]:
> Hi,
> 
> The latest DC18 brochure & flyer are in [0]. Please help to review them
> so that we can start to look for sponsor.

Questions as a non-native English speaker:

- The caption on page 4's picture, shouldn't it be "...updating ON
  Debian status", "giving an update on Debian's status", or something
  like it? It's not as if Chris updated Debian's status by delivering
  a talk.

- I would add a line in the same page: I think video _archiving_ is
  also a valuable item for our sponsors. So, the subtitle would be
  "Live World-wide Video Streaming and Archiving", adding to the first
  paragraph: "Videos are also archived for their long-term use,
  contributing to a media library that includes every DebConf edition
  since 2005".

- I'm not sure I understand what the semantics of page 5 are supposed
  to mean. Why are all quotes partially indented?

Good work :-]


signature.asc
Description: PGP signature
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] Dear wafer-masters, please add to stylesheet...

[Gunnar Wolf]

Stefano Rivera dijo [Sun, Aug 13, 2017 at 07:29:50PM +0200]:
> Hi Gunnar (2017.08.07_05:53:26_+0200)
> > In order to (easily!) print out the room schedules in the morning, we
> > would be most grateful if you could add the following to Wafer's CSS:
> 
> Sorry, I experimented with this a bit at the time, but never got it to
> work.
> 
> FWIW, this is being tracked upstream at
> https://github.com/CTPUG/wafer/issues/141

Thanks - I completely forgot about this just after I sent the mail :)

Anyway, I have a couple of ideas/requests to help the Content Team
workflow, that I think could even be useful to other
conferences. Where do you want me to sketch them? Who is our most
likely implementor?
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

[Debconf-team] Dear wafer-masters, please add to stylesheet...

[Gunnar Wolf]

Hi,

In order to (easily!) print out the room schedules in the morning, we
would be most grateful if you could add the following to Wafer's CSS:

@media print {
body {font-family: Helvetica;}
h1, .footer, .navbar {display: none;}
table, td {border: solid;}
}

With that, we will be able to just send the schedules to print, and be
happy with the results (and paste them wherever we feel like it -
Yeah!)

Thanks!
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] [Debconf-sponsors-team] Ring demos during the DebCamp

[Gunnar Wolf]

Dorina Mosku dijo [Mon, Jul 31, 2017 at 05:34:54PM -0400]:
> Bonjour Louis-Philippe,
> 
> Merci beaucoup pour votre réponse rapide.
> 
> Je vais voir avec cont...@debconf.org la possibilité d'avoir un koisque
> pendant le Open Day pour présenter Ring.
> 
> Merci et bonne journée.
> Dorina.

Sorry for falling back to English; I can make some sense of what I
read in French, but won't attempt to write it :)

Our task as Content Team does not cover the kiosks, please do follow
the issue through with Pollo. I stand by what Louis-Philippe told you
- We don't have designated spaces, either in the hacklabs or in the
talkrooms. Louis-Philippe, I guess you can assign them the kiosk?

___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] Rescheduling the FSF BoF

[Gunnar Wolf]

Molly de Blanc dijo [Mon, Jul 24, 2017 at 03:59:02PM -0400]:
> John Sullivan asked if I could pitch in on running the FSF Members BoF
> (https://debconf17.debconf.org/talks/156/). But, I have to leave Friday
> morning (super early). Would it be possible to reschedule it to earlier
> in the conference?

I am rescheduling it to Thursday, 15:30. I hope the timing is better
for you!


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

[Debconf-team] Content team: Our current status, next steps

[Gunnar Wolf]

Hi,

As most of you are aware by now - We finally have a (preliminary)
schedule! \o/

It's not yet officially published, but I sent it by mail on an ODS to
the content team, and Pollo loaded it (modulo some errors I will try
to locate and fix somewhen soon) into Wafer.

Now, I'm going away for some days again. There is ample work to do,
and I need the rest of you to help with it. 

First, as I expected, several people have contacted me privately
complaining on why the schedule starts at 9AM. I agree, and you will
remember I have argued for it to start at 10AM. Please, before
publishing the schedule, consider _shifting_ everything by 1hr - That
means, start at 10, lunch 13-15, coffee at 17:00, supper 19:30. Please
do *not* change the blocks' logic (it's 3-2-2, not 2-3-2 or some
such), as it would immensely displease me :)

Also, several people whose talks were not accepted have asked how
ad-hoc or self-scheduled (pick a name!) sessions will happen. This has
to be discussed and decided *now*, or we will be drowned in requests.

Please do talk about this and decide. Ideally, the schedule and the
rules (and space availability, and all that) for self-scheduling
should be announced at the same time.

Thanks a lot. Now, I will try to disappear again into vacation mode.


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] sponsor communication issue

[Gunnar Wolf]

Daniel Pocock dijo [Thu, Jun 29, 2017 at 07:09:29PM +0200]:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I received a personal email from a sponsor who appears to be having
> trouble communicating with the team.  Who should I escalate that with?

I guess it's the mail I just replied to. Note that I replied only to
some of the points, I hope somebody else™ can reply to the rest.
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] Monday June 26th meeting -- starting at 14:00 UTC

[Gunnar Wolf]

Louis-Philippe Véronneau dijo [Mon, Jun 26, 2017 at 05:01:38PM -0400]:
> > Oh! One more, VERY IMPORTANT thing: At the Content Team, we don't feel
> > we can (even if we wanted) properly do the Open Day. We need somebody
> > to step up for it. We have 16 talks / workshops / events for it, but
> > we need a local organizer to make sense out of them and to assemble
> > the day's logic.
> 
> I took that task today, so I'll be the one coordinating Open Day.

YAY!


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] Monday June 26th meeting -- starting at 14:00 UTC

[Gunnar Wolf]

Louis-Philippe Véronneau dijo [Sun, Jun 25, 2017 at 10:42:37PM -0400]:
> Hi!
> 
> This is a reminder for the meeting!

Hello world,

As it has become usual, I am not going to make it to tomorrow's
meeting.

This and last weeks, the Content Team was quite busy rating talks. We
might have some new data, but as of last Friday, we had basically
rated all of the talks submitted in time. There are 183 registered
sessions; we used a rating system where each of us rated each talk
between -2 and 2; the amounts of talks we would accept if we set a
given threshold is as follows:

-2.0: 183
-1.8: 183
-1.6: 183
-1.4: 182
-1.2: 182
-1.0: 180
-0.8: 180
-0.6: 178
-0.4: 170
-0.2: 168
0.0: 154
0.2: 152
0.4: 148
0.6: 136
0.8: 127
1.0: 103
1.2: 102
1.4: 89
1.6: 69
1.8: 42
2.0: 1
2.2: 1

FWIW, the one event that's ranked about our theoretical maximum
is... The Cheese and Wine Party! So we can decide to drop work and
just have a fine party, and the Content Team's function will have been
achieved. ;-)

Anyway - getting from here to a schedule, or even to a preliminary
list of talks, is still a long shot (and a lot of work). We have to
check on:

- Comments from the submitters (i.e. requests for being scheduled in
  such-and-such day)
- Comments from the evaluations (from us)
- Work out when to lay out the tracks

This should amount to some hours of work... But I feel I won't be able
to do much: This week, I will attend a three day colloquium (and I
don't think I'll even have my laptop on me); Thursday and Friday I
basically expect pre-vacation hell to rain on me at work. Then, on
Sunday I'm going on family vacation for a week to Oaxaca city... so
although I plan on taking my laptop and doing some work...

...Content team, help: I need a champion. I need somebody to help us
get "from here to there". I will connect for a bit every day, but
honestly I don't think I can get the work we need in time. And we are
quite close to the conference date.

I would very much like to publish this week a +- reviewed list of
talks that we can present as preliminarily approved, and maybe a week
later (by July 7) to have a -preliminary, again- schedule.

One can dream, right? :-]

Who can step up to help do this?

Now, finally: There are a couple of events I'd like you to discuss. I
don't feel comfortable on sharing my concerns on a publicly archived
mailing list, but I have talked them briefly over with some of you,
hopefully you will be able to fill in during the meeting.

Please discuss on whether we want to accept the following
(non-academic, not in the "official" schedule) events. Or please
decide who should we discuss them with, as they don't really fall
under the Content Team umbrella:

- 175
- 173
- 118

There are other issues to discuss with the orga team, of course, but
I'll try to do it while being "present" in the channel.

Oh! One more, VERY IMPORTANT thing: At the Content Team, we don't feel
we can (even if we wanted) properly do the Open Day. We need somebody
to step up for it. We have 16 talks / workshops / events for it, but
we need a local organizer to make sense out of them and to assemble
the day's logic.

Anyway, that's basically our report.


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] Monday May 29th meeting -- starting at 14:00 UTC

[Gunnar Wolf]

> This is a reminder for *Monday May 29th meeting*. As always, the meeting
> will start at 14:00 UTC.
> 
> Depending on your timezone, that might be tomorrow!

As it is often the case, I won't be able to make it to tomorrow's
meeting.

Anyway, what is it there from us (Content Team)?

There has not been much movement team-wise. We stand at 113 registered
talks. We were supposed to make an announcement as to a first batch
somewhere in April, but due to some -I believe- important
considerations, we didn't. Mainly: We didn't want to pre-announce
anybody that was waiting for Bursaries to approve their request.

I got an answer from Bursaries, but this past week was quite crazy for
me, having a transhemispheric trip in between. For this starting week,
I intend (and I'm hereby doing so, by Cc:ing the content team) to
check if finding this list for a first announcement this late is still
viewed as convenient. There are arguments that point both ways.

As for the invited speakers, we have two confirmed, one
almost-confirmed, and we can now announce this to the orga team at
large (I hope this is not picked up as a formal announcement of
anything!): Deb Nicholson, Kathey Sutter and Matthew Garrett. We are
in different status of waiting for the three of them, but it's 95% a
done thing.

As a question for the orga team in whole: In order to start working
towards a workable schedule, what are the expected times for us? That
is, when do we expect to hold breakfast, lunch and dinner? I know the
information is Out There™, but, what spaces do we expect to manage?
(that is, which rooms, size, restrictions/capabilities i.e. video and
stuff)

That's all I have to report for now.


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] Revision of DebConf CoC

[Gunnar Wolf]

shirish शिरीष dijo [Mon, Apr 24, 2017 at 08:55:05PM +0530]:
> >> During DebConf16 some ppl put some effort to rephrase parts of the code
> >> of conduct. We'd like to gather opinions on this rephrasing in the hope
> >> to get the new version, or an amended version, adopted.
> >
> > I forgot to mention: during the last meeting, we decided on a date
> > before which we need to come to an agreement on this document: may 15th
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> The draft is somewhat long, could it be shortened otherwise people
> will sign it just as they sign any terms of service (i.e. blindly) .
> The real 'meat' of the new CoC as I understand it are the following -
> (...)

Thanks for pointing this out, Shirish! I stand by your point: The new
CoC is just too long. I saw Martin's reply to this, refering to how
Creative Commons implements an answer for a similar problem space —
If we want this level of detail and verbosity, items should somehow be
separated into sections. But that leads back to the same place: It
gets us a document that won't be fully read by anybody.

I understand the reasoning for expanding our Debian CoC into
this... But I feel this is just too much. There are IMO too many
examples and repetition. I feel a much more succint document will be
much more useful, even if it does not spell out in detail all bad
interactions — In this regard, Holger's mail is spot on. If we try to
spell out too much, we will be cornered into contradictions. 

I'm sorry I don't have a "positive" way of critizing this (I'm not
proposing, I'm just saying "this is not what I'd say that works"). I'm
currently too busy to properly think and contribute to discussion.


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

[Debconf-team] Request for our dear Wafer overlords (so we can better do Content Team work)

[Gunnar Wolf]

Hiya,

It is time for me to start pestering the Content team (and I'm hereby
doing so!) so we can start rating and classifying talks; after all, we
have a deadline during April for announcing the first set of approved
talks.

So... We could really really use pull request #348 to do our filtering
and discussing:

https://github.com/CTPUG/wafer/pull/348

Thanks a lot!


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] January 23rd meeting

[Gunnar Wolf]

Louis-Philippe Véronneau dijo [Sun, Jan 22, 2017 at 03:16:10PM -0500]:
> Hello!
> 
> This is a kindly reminder: we have a meeting on Monday January 23rd,
> starting at 15:30 UTC. Depending on your timezone, that might be tomorrow.
> 
> As always, we'll try to keep the meeting under an hour.
> 
> You can find the proposed agenda here: http://deb.li/il9wc. Feel free to
> modify it!

Hi,

While in general I will be able to participate in the meetings at the
time they are set now, tomorrow I won't make it. So I'll send in what
I have for item 2 (Content team). I am confident somebody else (most
likely Michael) will be able to fill in.

As I just accepted to be the team leader, I didn't want to "step too
heavily", so we don't yet have anything to show; I had an conversation
on IRC mainly with Michael, delineated some ideas, but waited for
input from the rest of the team.

Anyway, while I haven't sketched anything, time permitting (that
means, if my kids agree to sleep at their bedtime), I will fill in the
Wiki page we agreed to write¹ with the track creating and filling
process. Of course, being it a Wiki, I intend others to tune it for
better.

¹ https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf17/ContentTracks

As for the CfP: Please confirm, but I understood from mail
conversations that Wafer could start receiving talks now. So... I
think we can set February 1 as a start date for the CfP. Agree?

Anyway, I'll keep an eye for the meeting logs.


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] What's missing on wafer to open CFP & registration?

[Gunnar Wolf]

Jerome Charaoui dijo [Sat, Jan 21, 2017 at 12:21:05PM -0500]:
> Hi Tiago,
> 
> The wafer TODO list is in Kanboard, compiled mainly from dc16's Gobby notes.
> 
> https://kanban.debian.net/project/2/task/121

So, AFAICT, there are several pending issues for registration, but not
for CfP, right? Or do we need to open registration for CfP to start functioning?
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] Reviewing the venue contract

[Gunnar Wolf]

Jerome Charaoui dijo [Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 10:30:19AM -0500]:
> Hi team,
> 
> In about one month, we will be required to make the first deposit to
> establish our contract with the DC17 venue.
> 
> I have reviewed the contract and deem it reasonable, but it should be
> also reviewed by other persons, including non-locals.

Yay!

(about as much as a non-French-speaker can say)

> (...)
> Nonetheless, here are a few things of note:
> 
> * To ensure 24h access, volunteers will be required to man a door
> between 22h to 3h. This door is nearby to Registration and we'll be able
> to setup chairs, tables and networking next to it, but it will still
> require some coordination and commitment by volunteers. >3h access will
> be allowed from another entrance, for travel arrivals only.

I believe we talked about this on IRC. I believe the 3AM maximum is
fine for having shifts of our people at the door (and probably we
could ask people to stick around a bit longer if they are staying
awake, although not as a volunteered responsability).

However... This other entrance "for travel arrivals only" will
definitively not be available for people staying up late?

What time will doors open again in the morning?

> * The venue manager will have to approve our sponsors. They will raise
> objections if DebConf17 boasts sponsorship from businesses that run
> counter to policies of the College. Examples: bottled water and energy
> drink companies, cigarette/tobacco manufacturers

I don't think this will be a problem. But anyway, it would be nice to
say which general policies are in place. I mean, I don't expect to be
College policy to require people to pay all of their media licenses to
Apple services, but... :-]

Thanks!


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] Questions for the DebConf18 teams

[Gunnar Wolf]

shirish शिरीष dijo [Thu, Dec 29, 2016 at 12:46:42AM +0530]:
> > The southeast is the most industrialized region and where are the most known
> > cities: Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.
> >
> > São Paulo has the most of IT Companies, but some of them are coming to
> > Curitiba because we are not far from São Paulo, the quality of life is
> > better and the labor is cheaper.
> > I remember now ExxonMobil and GLT (HSBC). Other local companies are
> > specializing in outsourcing.
> >
> > In the South the weather is cold on the winter. The region was populated by
> > immigrants mainly from Japan and Europe.
> > Curitiba has strong influence of the Japaneses, Italians, Germans, Poles,
> > and Ukrainians immigrants.
> 
> How far or near is Curitiba from Rio De Janeiro ?  It's the place
> where you have a huge statue of Christ and also where the carnival
> happens.

It's quite far in time. Carnival is in February, DebConf will be in
July/August :-)

It's less than 700Km according to some web sites. The most common
arrival airport in Brazil is São Paulo, which is about halfway between
them.

http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=7/-25.110/-48.900
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] Questions for the DebConf18 teams

[Gunnar Wolf]

Paulo Henrique de Lima Santana dijo [Thu, Dec 22, 2016 at 09:53:04PM -0200]:
> > Clearly you didn't see this famous Terri Gilliam movie called,
> > precisely, "Brazil", right? You have to hand in form 104-B3 to get the
> > visa requirements information.
> 
> Should we worry about this film? :-)

I really hope not to have ignited the wrong sentiment with this :-) As
a Latin American, I have led all my life in a country with many of the
same (sane and insane, clear and obfuscated, clever and stupid)
cultural traits of Brazil. I have not properly been to Brazil since
2004, but have repeatedly crossed its airports when travelling to
Argentina since my now-wife moved to Mexico. I don't have a single
complaint about entering and leaving Brazil, and would be happy to go
there again!

> I would like to comment this queston:
> "Which location do you consider more important for the future of Debian and 
> why?"
> 
> To me is impossible go to DebConf in Europe/USA because 1 Dollar is
> more than 3 Reais. So, the costs to go to Europe/USA are very high.
> I know this is the same to others residents in Brazil and Latin
> America in general.

That's true - But don't just count it in currency equivalence, as it's
completely misleading (otherwise we would be hosting DebConf in Japan
because of the cheap Yen ;-) ). Latin America has quite low wages; I
can say that I live fairly well off in Mexico, as an middle-upper
class family, but I still make close to the minimum wage in the
USA. So, yes, the costs of life for us Latin Americans are huge when
travelling to so-called-developed countries.

___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] Questions for the 新竹市 Team!

[Gunnar Wolf]

Hi Paul,
> > 2 - You write that NCTU wants to sponsor both venue and accommodation in
> > dormitories. How strong is their commitment (do you have any signed
> > letter from them?)
> 
> The chairman of the department already wrote us a mail in Chinese which
> promised to sponsor both venue and accommodation.
> I've asked him to write it in English and directly send to debconf-team
> mailing list. I've already received that mail but seems the mailing-list
> blocks him? Or maybe it is because the chairman doesn't subscribe the
> mailing-list?

That's great! You say you already got the letter translated to English
- That's even better, but for the future, is not *really* needed. What
we mean by asking this question is that we want to make sure the
committment is official and not just some hallway chit-chat with
authorities; that the Chairman will not back down on his words. If you
already have a Chinese mail supporting this, I think this point can be
settled.

Debian mailing lists are usually open for anybody to write¹, but maybe
this is hitting a size limit because of a scanned attachment or
something like that. In any case, have the letter sent to you, then
provide it at iether the Git repository or the public Wiki (or just
personally upon request), as you see fit.

¹ Debian and DebConf lists might not share all of their policies, though

> > 3 - You plan to let people eat in different restaurants. How do you plan
> > to manage reimbursement for people who have their food sponsored?
> 
> We plan to talk to the restaurants inside the campus. To allow us to
> make "tickets". So after that they can charge us by giving the tickets
> back to us. Actually there was tickets for students in the campus
> years ago. What we need to do is just redo that again.

Great! There is a bit of community-making that several of us
personally enjoy if we are all set to eat together, but it is a good
compromise IMO, and this can make people avoiding getting tired of the
same caterer, something that usually happens no matter how good our
food is.

Although this leads to...

> > 4 - Having traveled in Asia (mainly mainland China) I have found that
> > even though I speak and read mandarin well enough to understand and be
> > understood, eating vegan meals was very hard. Lots of place will say
> > there is no animal byproducts but there actually are some in their food.
> 
> In NCTU campus, there is a true vegan restaurants. We will point out
> that restaurant clearly so people won't eat any animal byproducts.
> Also, we plan to issue special tickets that can only used for that
> restaurant. So vegan people will have that special tickets and they
> can't do anything wrong because regular restaurants won't accept it.

Do note that vegan people also enjoy eating with the rest of us. So,
if I'm discussing something with a vegan, we both understand she
cannot join me at the pork-based restaurant, but I should be able to
join at the vegan place.

I would even say that a vegan might want to join me at a "regular"
restaurant if we find a given dish that is suitable for vegans; I
don't see a point in restricting which restaurants will accept their
tickets. Maybe, if at all, provide them with a printed set of
instructions in Chinese, so they can provide their waiter with the
instructions on what they can eat.

Now, on a different topic, visas: You provide a list of countries for
which there is a visa waiver program. Fortunately, this covers most of
the DebConf attendance. However, the map at the following web page
proved interesting to me:

http://spanish.taiwan.net.tw/Article.aspx?a=17

It makes sense, of course, as the countries with less relations do
require a visa. We need visas for all of Latin America and Africa, and
for most of Asia. Can you ellaborate on how easy/hard the process
usually is, or an official requirements page?

I found the following information, but it is not official (and, of
course, is not universal to all relevant countries):

http://www.tramitedevisa.mx/visataiwan.html

It basically states that only basic requirements are requested for a
visa (original passport valid for ≥6 months, fill a request form,
accompany with photos, copy of the air ticket), and cost US$25, or
US$50 for multiple entries. Work-allowing visas are US$115/170
(single/multiple entries).

I want to add a question here: Although not that many, over the last
few years we have got several DebConf attendees from mainland
China. Will it be possible for them to enter Taiwan?



signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] Questions for the DebConf18 teams

[Gunnar Wolf]

Paul Wise dijo [Wed, Dec 21, 2016 at 06:32:09PM +0800]:
> Both:
> 
> Which location do you consider more important for the future of Debian and 
> why?
> 
> Have you investigated any options for the day trip?
> 
> Have any of the local sponsorship companies been contacted?
> 
> Curitiba:
> 
> The link to the official listing of visa requirements for entering
> Brasil is giving a 404 error, could you update it?

Clearly you didn't see this famous Terri Gilliam movie called,
precisely, "Brazil", right? You have to hand in form 104-B3 to get the
visa requirements information.



signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] dc17 haz no website, let's fix it!

[Gunnar Wolf]

Keerthana Krishnan dijo [Mon, Dec 12, 2016 at 10:28:18PM +0530]:
> > Keerthana,
> >
> > Thanks, your help is very welcome. We actually have the design done by
> > Valessio, see: http://valessiobrito.com.br/dc17/. The main blocker now
> > is migrating the stlyle to our Wafer instance at
> > https://debconf17.debconf.org/. I have no idea how to make it happen,
> > that's why I'm trying to put the masters together :)
> >
> 
> Cool! That logo animation looks awesome! Can you give me permission to
> access the website code?

Not only it is very cool, but Valessio showed me, he was very proud of
having achieved the animation without any Javascript, just SVG+CSS :-)
You will find many DDs are somewhat hesitant to running Javascript if
not absolutely needed.
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] DebConf16

[Gunnar Wolf]

Tammy Manning dijo [Mon, Jul 11, 2016 at 11:57:38AM +0200]:
> Hi Everyone
> 
> Is there anything we need to do post-debConf? Apart from the final report?
> 
> Regards
> Tammy

You should really relax and enjoy. You should be very congratulated
and thanked for a whole lot of work that resulted in another
great conference. Better than any other DebConf? Nope. Different, as
they all are. But perfectly in line, and very very very memorable!
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] Afternoon Meeting

[Gunnar Wolf]

Giacomo Catenazzi dijo [Mon, Jul 04, 2016 at 03:36:13PM +0200]:
> >> Hi Everyone
> >> 
> >> I am off to do a couple of things.
> >> What time is the Team meeting? and where?
> >> I was half awake this morning.
> > 
> > IIRC, towards the end of dinner (that would be... 19:30-ish?). I don't
> > think we discussed on where to meet, but I think the Nervous Room
> > makes sense..?
> 
> I remember in the coffee  break on afternoon or just after the last talk.
> 
> So let’s everyone meet on a different time and place. This would make meeting 
> quickly and efficient ;-)

That's a clear sign that morning meetings are not as clearly
remembered as they should. I don't want to write them off as useless,
but we should be more careful to note the agreements!
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] Afternoon Meeting

[Gunnar Wolf]

Tammy Manning dijo [Mon, Jul 04, 2016 at 02:10:04PM +0200]:
> Hi Everyone
> 
> I am off to do a couple of things.
> What time is the Team meeting? and where?
> I was half awake this morning.

IIRC, towards the end of dinner (that would be... 19:30-ish?). I don't
think we discussed on where to meet, but I think the Nervous Room
makes sense..?
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] DebConf T's

[Gunnar Wolf]

Tollef Fog Heen dijo [Wed, Jun 01, 2016 at 10:48:39AM +0200]:
> > Cape Town in Winter is known for its rain, and cold temperatures on
> > some days. I would strongly suggest, going with the Long Sleeve
> > options. 
> 
> I find conference t-shirts should be useful for after the conference
> more than at the conference.  I have a strong preference for regular
> t-shirts here.

+1 for Tollef here. I have tens of t-shirts from conferences, and
that's basically my usual weekend attire. I have very few long-sleeved
shirts — I guess that's partly because they are more expensive to
produce, and that's partly because they are way less popular. Of
course, vicious circle. But when I printed T-shirts in Mexico, the
price difference was really big — Even two-color shirts (such as DC6
and DC7's)¹ are quite cheaper than long-sleeves.

¹ https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/Debconfshirts12.jpg

> > There are different Material options: 
> > a) Hemp and Organic Cotton - super soft and comfortable
> > b) Plastic Bottles and Cotton - Yep, you'd be surprised at how soft Plastic 
> > Bottles can be! The T's are made out of
> > recycled plastic bottles. The fibres are then woven with the cotton to 
> > create the fabric. 
> > c) Cotton - lovely and soft. 
> 
> I prefer a or c.  I find polyester and other poly blends to be a lot
> like wearing a plastic bag, and they also start to smell a lot quicker
> than natural fibres.

I'd also go for A or C. I also avoid anything plastic in contact with
my body for hours. Organic sounds best from an ethical PoV, but we
don't yet have here the pricing difference.
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] Visa arrangements and timetables

[Gunnar Wolf]

Neil Williams dijo [Fri, May 06, 2016 at 01:50:26PM +0100]:
> > On Fri, May 06, 2016 at 12:04:57PM +0100, Neil Williams wrote:
> > > Just wondering how long registrants should expect to wait for visa
> > > information for debconf16 via v...@debconf.org?  
> > 
> > not long. If there hasnt been *any* reply at all, I'd resend the mail
> > to visa@ after two days…
> 
> OK, so the original message was:
> On Saturday 16 April 2016 08:25 AM, from Senthil Kumaran S
> 
> The ping was:
> Message-ID: <572b0a16.7070...@gmail.com>
> Date: Thu, 5 May 2016 14:23:42 +0530
> 
> .. at which point I was CC'd.
> (...)

Yesterday I talked with Graham, who is part of the visa team. He is
currently waiting for the university to produce some papers... I have
also sent a mail (April 12, it seems)... So, yes, things are moving,
please ensure Senthil he is not getting forgotten — And at least as
far as I have seen the visa granting process, we still have enough
time without worrying.

Visa applications take up to one week (in Mexico's case, at least). I
know what is seen at one country can be vastly different from what is
seen at a different one... I'm just mentioning this as a data point.


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] timing for sessions

[Gunnar Wolf]

Allison Randal dijo [Sat, Apr 30, 2016 at 07:43:47PM -0400]:
> Different countries have different ideas of civilized hours for running
> conference sessions. Taking a look at PyCon ZA, what do you all think of
> the following schedule for the main DebConf session days:
> 
> 9:30-10:15am First Talk/BoF
> 10:15-11:00am Morning Tea/Coffee Break
> 11:00-11:45am Third Talk/BoF
> 12:00pm-1:00pm Lunch Break
> 1:00pm-1:45pm Fourth Talk/BoF
> 2:00pm-2:45pm Fifth Talk/BoF
> 2:45pm-3:30pm Afternoon Tea/Coffee Break
> 3:30pm-4:15pm Sixth Talk/BoF
> 4:30-5:15pm Seventh Talk/BoF

Given what we have always seen at DebConf, I would:

- Start a bit later. Starting at 10AM feels more natural.

- Having the first break after just one session lowers IMO motivation
  for waking up early — Arriving at 11AM means only one talk lost?
  Then people will sleep late. If we are having lunch at 12:00, I
  would skip the formal morning coffee break (people can grab a coffee
  in the 15 minutes between talks).

  So, I'd say first talk 10:00-10:45, second talk 11:00-11:45, and
  we're set in time for the (horribly early, but who's me to judge?)
  lunch.

- Lunch break should be 2h instead of 1h, so people can eat and talk
  relaxed and with good time. I'd return by 2PM.

- And then, yes, two sessions, break, two sessions; 14:00-14:45,
  15:00-15:45, 16:30-17:15, 17:30-18:15.

  I would even be happy if we jammed in one more session, be it
  two-break-three or three-break-two, if there's enough demand
  (i.e. enough talk submissions). Finishing the formal activities for
  dinner at 19:15 sounds quite doable, and we are often starved for
  sessions more than for dinner! ;-)

> I'm sure we'll get more BoF proposals closer to the event, and some of
> them may even be more "talk-like". But, we'll have plenty of time to
> accommodate all the content, with no need to create a frantically paced
> schedule of sessions starting at the crack of dawn and crammed into
> every minute. I'll also note that the social side of DebConf often runs
> until 4am or beyond, so keeping the morning light and putting more
> content in the afternoon works well.

Your point is good. But then, we could pick up from the scheduling we
had in Portland, and leave unallocated "hacking sessions" halfway
through so that people are more at leisure.

Spaces with no video coverage can be probably self-scheduled by having
a blackboard or poster at the door where people pin or write their
intended activities?
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] volunteering for the debconf by non-locals - queries.

[Gunnar Wolf]

shirish शिरीष dijo [Sat, Apr 30, 2016 at 06:30:36PM +]:
> (...)
> There is another way I would like to help in case I'm part of the
> debconf (this time purely selfish
> reasons). I do remember reading that some teams also do some sort of
> small cooking. As I have
> just discovered mexican cuisine few years back (nachos with different
> sauces mainly, and couple of other dishes I don't remember atm) I
> would like to offer my services to cut veggies and stuff
> and learn if there are any vegetarian mexican cooks and lovers while
> helping conversations happening in those team/s, I would strictly be
> in the cutting phase as have no idea of the different taste buds where
> multiple nationalities are concerned (so would be safe). Having some
> experience and some recipes for me back-home would be good to cook for
> self :)

I am Mexican, and was vegetarian for ~20 years. I will be delighted to
talk with you regarding how we eat. I also love Indian food.

But just as a side note: What you mention, nachos with sauces, is
*not* Mexican food. If anything, Texan food. Maybe North-Mexican. I
will be sure to take some interesting ingredients with me to Cape
Town!

But... well, we are steering very much off topic for this list. For
any replies, we can continue on private mail!
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] [Debconf-sponsors-team] Job Fair: team input please

[Gunnar Wolf]

Hi,

I don't want to introduce too much noise, so if this topic has been
discussed, please just say so.

> >>1. Stand space - do we have set limits?
> >We stayed clear from taping boundaries onto the ground, but we
> >measured the available space, did the maths and communicated the
> >area expectations to the sponsors. It all worked out and while some
> >sponsors used up more space than others, nobody complained or got
> >into each others' way.
> >
> >I'd still think it's necessary to communicate the rules up front so
> >that it's easier to enact when necessary.
> >
> >If you're planning 2×2 as your e-mail said, then that's pretty
> >tight. I'd probably go for 3×3 instead if possible, and also
> >communicate that there'll be 1–2m between stalls of space.
> You usually want a hierarchy so (suggestion!):
> 
> Silver: 2m width (up to 1m depth), we provide a standing table and two high
> chairs
> 
> Gold: 3m width (up to 1m depth), we provide a standing table and three high
> chairs
> 
> Platinum: 4m width (up to 1.5m depth), we provide a two standing tables and
> four high chairs
> (...)

While some of you know I am not exactly happy with the job fair idea,
I will push my issues with it aside ;-)

I think the job fair is not exactly aligned with the interest of
sponsors. I mean, we have two very different events and causes for
them to participate: One is to secure presence in a world-class,
clearly recognizable development conference, and the other is to hire
people. Sponsors are sometimes local, mostly global. I expect that
companies interested in the job fair (specially as they have to
provide people for interviewing and all that) will mostly be local.

I guess this will be one of the points where we have a clearer
difference between what happens in "central" countries, as Germany
last year, and in "peripheric" countries, as South Africa.

So... While I agree that sponsors deserve a space in the fair if they
so desire, I think the job fair should be more open to local
companies, even if they are not our sponsors. This could be done by
selling stand space by itself. Of course, stands would then need to be
cheaper than our Bronze sponsorship level.

As we just state in the brochure that Silver, Gold and Platinum get
"Space at our job fair", I think this could be implemented as having a
basic space allotted — Say, we could "sell" 1m² at US$500 (so what I'd
consider as a minimum workable space, around 3m², would be worth
US$1500); Silver gets 3m² included, Gold gets 4m², Platinum gets 5m²
(that'd be US$1500 to US$2500 value). But anybody could decide to
increase their size by buying space, if they think it's in their best
interests.

I just came up with this idea without thinking much about it, and it
might be holding a lot of water... But please comment on it!
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] Suggestion for DC17+ fundraising brochure: advertising service vs. ad space

[Gunnar Wolf]

martin f krafft dijo [Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 09:29:57AM +0200]:
> Hello,
> 
> I am currently working with a bunch of highly professional
> fundraisers and learning. There are also a couple of ideas to pass
> along for us to consider for the next fundraising brochure(s).
> (...)

I will AOL on Cate's and Holger's mails. The service we sell is
"become visible as related to an important Free Software development
community", not "landing near thousands of eyeballs every week". We do
fundraising, sure. But there's something I don't want DebConf to
become is a part of a group of "highly professional fundraisers". In
part, because I believe that "professional fundraiser", as well as
anything marketing-related, is borderline "professional lier". (lier?
liar?)

> With a bit of effort, I am sure we can get those numbers to
> reasonable accuracy, and then include them in the next brochure.
> 
> In the hope that you find this convincing, I've started a wiki page
> to collect these numbers. Please have a look to see if you can
> contribute. The numbers need not be 100% accurate. For instance,
> knowing that our website had ca. 20,000 hits in August 2015 is
> a better data point than stating that it had 11,342 visits in March
> 2016.

And this shows a bit the reason why. Of course, you would not be lying
if you said "20,000 hits in August", but you'd surely be selecting a
convenient bit of reality. They could also say, "hey, but you got only
1,510 hits in December", because during December we are too busy doing
$otherstuff.


___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] Meeting between Debconf committee and Montreal DC17 team

[Gunnar Wolf]

Louis-Philippe Véronneau dijo [Mon, Mar 21, 2016 at 02:12:14PM -0400]:
> Oï!
> 
> It looks like the best time for the meeting is Friday 25th at 20:00 UTC.
> 
> If you haven't answered the poll yet, you still have the chance to do
> so: https://framadate.org/xwPJNIfcK1wVmEL8
> 
> I'll confirm the official meeting date on Tuesday morning. Make haste!

Hi,

Sorry for not answering earlier, while not announcing my availability
would be limited in this timeframe. I am very unlikely to show up at
the meeting, as life has put many activities in my hands for this
following couple of days.

In case of doubt, my vote should be cast for the best option ;-)

Thanks for doing this great work.


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] DebConf17 Bid Decision Meeting Date - Feb 29 18h30 UTC

[Gunnar Wolf]

Didier 'OdyX' Raboud dijo [Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 03:01:32PM +0100]:
> Given the poll announced on [0], I'm hereby announcing the date chosen 
> for the DebConf17 Bid Decision Meeting.
> 
>   The DebConf17 Bid Decision Meeting will happen on
> 
>   date -d 'Mon Feb 29 18:30:00 UTC 2016'
> 
>   As usual, it will take place on #debconf-team on irc.debian.org.
> 
> DebConf Committee members & Bid team representatives, please confirm 
> your presence (or send your excuses) on-list.

I didn't confirm earlier on due to... not having done so, sorry, no
excuse. But I will definitively be there.
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] Prague team: Ping? [Was: DebConf17 bids - DebConf Committee ⇒ 2016.02.17 18:30 ]

[Gunnar Wolf]

Ondřej Surý dijo [Tue, Feb 16, 2016 at 10:48:24AM +0100]:
> Hi Gunnar,
> 
> thanks for the heads-up. Somehow this is the first time I am hearing
> about the Committee meeting. I guess I am missing subscription to
> DebConf mailing list? Which list should I subscribe?
> 
> 18:30 is CET or UTC? I can make both.

So, great that I pinged you, yay! \o/

It's 18:30 UTC. The mailing list is debconf-team@lists.debconf.org,
the channel is #debconf-team in OFTC.

See you there!


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

[Debconf-team] Prague team: Ping? [Was: DebConf17 bids - DebConf Committee ⇒ 2016.02.17 18:30 ]

[Gunnar Wolf]

Hi all!

(Ondřej, Michal: I'm explicitly mailing you as you are the only listed
DDs as "Local Team" in the bid page¹)

Two days from now, we will be just-finishing our Committee meeting. So
far, several committee members and Montreal team members have
confirmed they will be present; I have not yet heard from the Prague
bid.

So, are you still pushing the bid? Can you or somebody else from the
team be present at the meeting?

Greetings!

¹ https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf17/Bids/Prague


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] DebConf17 bids - DebConf Committee ⇒ 2016.02.17 18:30

[Gunnar Wolf]

Didier 'OdyX' Raboud dijo [Sat, Feb 13, 2016 at 10:47:07PM +0100]:
> > The meeting shall take plae on Wednesday 17, 18:30.
> > 
> > People from both bidding teams, *please confirm* you can attend at
> > that time. If you cannot, please state if you can attend 1hr later
> > (19:30). If that's not doable, come up with a second-best proposal
> > based on the Dudle.
> 
> I hereby confirm I'm fine with Wed 17. 18:30 or 19:30 UTC.
> 
> Just to confirm, Gunnar, you intend this meeting to be the _decision_ 
> meeting, right?

I don't know. And FWIW, it's not my call to make; IIRC we have not
"formally" agreed we would skip some steps. I am not feeling rushed,
nor do I feel the teams feel so (but my sampling is of a very low
quality and frequency :-P ).

I am OK with meeting to talk about the venues' strengths and
shortcomings, and come up with a decision on a second round. I would
also most welcome an obvious decision, if one of the teams does feel
*very* far ahead of the second. But it's not my call to make, I'll go
with whatever the dominant sentiment among the committee is.


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] DebConf17 bids - DebConf Committee ⇒ 2016.02.17 18:30

[Gunnar Wolf]

Holger Levsen dijo [Wed, Feb 03, 2016 at 10:01:47AM +0100]:
> so far only 6 people have voted in this dudle poll - so if you haven't please 
> vote now.
> 
> That said, I'm a bit unsure about the timing, as I think such a meeting needs 
> at least 7 days warning in advance, which already invalidates some available 
> dates from that poll and will invalidate more every day noone calls for a 
> meeting.
> 
> So far, February 17th looks like a date I would pick.

One more person voted. And yes, time is passing by quickly. And
whatever we choose, only the Committee has voted — we have not heard a
word from either the Prague or the Montreal groups.

So I'll push this forward, as somebody needs to do it. Given that:

- No date yields seven positive votes, or six positive and one
  abstention at least (Thu18 is either bad for Holger or for Neil, and
  besides that day, Didier's schedule is incompatible with Moray's,
  and Holger's is unknown)

- I agree with the "no less than 7 days warning" that Holger mentions

- The meeting is not supposed to be long, but a scheme limited to 1hr
  can be less than ideal (as Neil cannot attend Thursday >19:30)

The meeting shall take plae on Wednesday 17, 18:30.

People from both bidding teams, *please confirm* you can attend at
that time. If you cannot, please state if you can attend 1hr later
(19:30). If that's not doable, come up with a second-best proposal
based on the Dudle.

Of course, both bidding teams: Please do confirm whether you are still
running :)

So, see you next week!


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] Event "tracks" (was: talk submissions: wafertest vs. summit)

[Gunnar Wolf]

martin f krafft dijo [Fri, Feb 05, 2016 at 12:04:35PM +1100]:
> > I'd appreciate if we were able to add tracks to our current setup.
> > OTOH, we have sometimes defined tracks based on preexisting talks
> > rather than (or additionally to) the other way around... So we can
> > get to that point later on.
> 
> Wafer does not have the concept of tracks, currently. It can
> probably added pretty trivially, but before we take this upstream,
> I'd really appreciate if we could evaluate this first and conclude
> that we really benefit from tracks.
> 
> Do we? How do we want to use them?

We *have* used them in the past quite a bit, and they were very
successful.

But then again, at some other DebConfs, they have been quite
meaningless.

It depends on the content team in question, and even on the cultures
of the different speakers (and audiences).
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] DebConf17 bids - DebConf Committee ⇒ 2016.02.17 18:30

[Gunnar Wolf]

Sorry for the noise - 18:30UTC.

12:30 Mexico, 13:30 Montreal, 14:30 Nova Scotia, 18:30 UK, 19:30 most
of Europe (including Prague), 20:30 South Africa. Did I miss any of
you? :)
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] DebConf17 bids - DebConf Committee

[Gunnar Wolf]

Didier 'OdyX' Raboud dijo [Sun, Jan 24, 2016 at 05:13:46PM +0100]:
> Dear DebConf Team, dear DebConf Committee, dear DPL,
> 
> I consider the DebConf Committee to be validly formed, with this page as 
> reference:
>   https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf_Committee
> 
> The 7 persons from the 'Confirmed for the DC17 decision' list have 
> acknowledged my request for confirmation, and are hereby BCC'ed.

Yay \o/

As one of the Bcc:ed people (I don't think there's any need for
secrecy here), I'm eager to find who else is part of the Committee,
and to start working to get this decision over and set the work
going. I voiced my concerns about this, but given the DPL is in the
loop (and appears to be active in the topic as well — Hi Neil!), I am
happy to see things are moving.

> (...)
> DebConf Committee members, please fill the poll before the end of 
> January. Anyone of you, please take over the date agreement and meeting 
> organization, as I won't be able to. :)

I failed to register in the Dudle before the end of January, but just
did it (on Feb 2). But much to my dismay, I was not the only person in
the Committee missing — I was just the third (plus our DPL, I
guess). So please, fellow Committee members, *do* take action. I do
not think we will manage to hold the meeting before Didier returns,
but nevertheless it seems we will not find a time where all of us can
be present. Well, things that happen, we will manage with the most
possible people, if not all.

Please get your act together and register when you can hold the
meeting.
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] DebConf17 bids - DebConf Committee

[Gunnar Wolf]

martin f krafft dijo [Wed, Jan 27, 2016 at 10:48:26AM +1300]:
> also sprach Tiago Bortoletto Vaz  [2016-01-27 03:56 +1300]:
> > > I was trying to not diverge too much away from the process. But
> > > if there's no strong objection to skipping directly to the Bid
> > > Decision Meeting, that works for me too!
> >
> > As far as I can remember this was a tragic experience.
> 
> It was made tragic by some, yes. It came quite as a surprise to most
> that we even had to have a second meeting in the last two years.

I stick with the "popular" choice here, I think having an extra
meeting is not too hard a burden on any of us.

> > If a meeting before the decision meeting has no many points to
> > discuss, then it will be quick and no precious time from committee
> > will be spent.
> 
> If we have the necessary discipline to do this, then sure, having
> a point of synchronisation is never wrong. Still, questions and team
> introductions should probably still happen on the mailing list
> before the meeting, don't you think?
>
> And it should go without saying that all committee members are
> familiar with the bids and the mailing list discussions by the time
> the meeting commences.

YES YES YES.

Here I completely agree with you. We as committee should get engaged
with the bidding teams, and the teams should also be familiar with
each other's offer's main points.

> Let's try not to enslave us to protocols too much. Several times in
> the past and especially in the last two years, a bid decision could
> have been made during (or even before) the status meeting, but we
> shunned it for the sake of sticking to "the procedure". Of course
> it's important to be fair to all teams, but let's not ignore the
> signs and rule out the possibility to fast-track the decision when
> it's quite clear that not much will change in the two weeks between
> meetings.

...Or at least, make sure the bidders do know about this, that it's
not a surprise for them.

> An earlier decision and one less meeting puts the winning team on
> track faster, and wastes less time of the committee and the other
> teams, who should be encouraged to try again next year. Sometimes it
> might even make sense to cast a decision for the next two years!

A two week slip in the decision to start planning for something to be
organized in a ~18month time... should be hurt-less!
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] I get by with a little help from my friends

[Gunnar Wolf]

Allison Randal dijo [Wed, Jan 20, 2016 at 11:18:08AM -0800]:
> > I'm still willing to help with content selection and maybe CfP
> > drafting, but I certainly won't be able to drive the invited
> > speakers track as I did for DebConf15 (if we still want that).
> > 
> > The content needs a new lead I think, and Allison is right person
> > in my opinion.
> 
> Thanks! We just talked about this on IRC in the team meeting, and I'm
> happy to act as content lead this year, if folks are okay with that.
> 
> It's worth mentioning that I haven't served on the content team for
> previous DebConfs, though I've run content for plenty of other tech
> conferences (including OSCON, which is such a bear to schedule, it
> makes DebConf look like a walk in the park). I'll aim to preserve the
> traditions of DebConf, but will be relying on folks to let me know if
> I seem to be missing something important.

Yay, thanks a lot, Allison!

I am interested in being a part of the Content team, although I asked
*not* to lead, as my time is severely limited. But if you agree, I can
work with you as the Supreme Conservative Power¹ ;-)


¹ For a while in the XIX century, there actually was a fourth branch
  in Mexico's government with that name, with powers to overrule some
  decisions by Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches. Of
  course, I am joking on this. I just want to lend a hand :)
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] DebConf17 bids - DebConf Committee

[Gunnar Wolf]

Daniel Pocock dijo [Sun, Dec 20, 2015 at 06:29:51PM +0100]:
> On 20/12/15 18:18, Allison Randal wrote:
> > On 12/19/2015 01:09 PM, Daniel Pocock wrote:
> >> On 18/12/15 14:48, Didier 'OdyX' Raboud wrote:
> >>(...)
> >> Freezing the decision process may also be a practical way of emphasizing
> >> to the wider community that DebConf would welcome more contributions.
> > Our blocker right now isn't really the wider Debian community, so this
> > isn't putting pressure on the right point. The best approach may be to
> > say that the DPL is acting DebConf chair until he puts a new delegation
> > in place. That both gives us an established authority figure to slot in
> > place for immediate needs, and also encourages him to hurry up on
> > forming the delegation, so he doesn't have to spend the time on
> > day-to-day DebConf management.
> 
> The chairs resigned citing very specific issues with DebConf
> organization.  Simply proceeding without any chairs may also be a little
> disrespectful to that final decision of the chairs.
> 
> That said, you are right about the DPL's involvement.  If the DPL was
> fulfilling the role of the chairs in the meeting or if he simply gives
> the DebConf committee a green light to go ahead without chairs or with
> somebody appointed chair on an interim basis then it would certainly
> make the process more robust.  I'm not stating any opinion on whether he
> should or shouldn't do either of those things, but if other people want
> to ask him, I hope it helps.

I agree with Daniel and Allison here. Now, this message has been
sitting for around two weeks. I believe that, given the lack of
delegates, their powers revert to the DPL - I agree, he has not been
expressly "summoned" to this thread, so I'm hereby doing so. But yes,
we have been expecting interaction from the DPL for far longer than
that.

So, please, Neil, what would be your stand on the current situation
and upcoming tasks for DebConf? How should this proceed? Can we
consider you a part of the Committee for the upcoming decision?


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] DebConf17 bids - DebConf Committee

[Gunnar Wolf]

Didier 'OdyX' Raboud dijo [Wed, Dec 16, 2015 at 06:07:22PM +0100]:
> Dear DebConf Team,
> 
> Please be aware that the DebConf17 bids deadline has now passed and that 
> there are two bidders:
> (...)
> I suggest to proceed this way: if there are blockers, for the two Bid 
> teams or some DebConf Committee members, please voice them on the list 
> now! We should really be able to decide on these dates before the end of 
> this year (although, given [2], someone else should probably step in to 
> actually decide on the dates).

Hi all,

As Didier said already replying to Steve, I am among the people
responding "yes" to the call. There is one bit that I do feel
important: We can reach a consensus as to which bid is more apt in our
eyes, but formally, we don't have a delegated body to make things
formal. According to the current delegation, the decision must be
taken between the Committee and the Chairs — Which don't currently
exist.

So, we must come up with a decision on that regard.


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] DebConf17 bids - DebConf Committee

[Gunnar Wolf]

Richard Hartmann dijo [Thu, Dec 17, 2015 at 07:57:01PM +0100]:
> Quoting in full on purpose.
> 
> Can DPL just tell the committee to do this on its own this once?

That, or put a delegation in place before mid January. Or come up with
a different, sustainable scheme.
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] I get by with a little help from my friends

[Gunnar Wolf]

David Bremner dijo [Thu, Dec 10, 2015 at 02:10:19PM -0400]:
> > Things are a bit up in the air at the moment, but the day-to-day
> > practicalities of DebConf are pretty much the same as always. It would
> > help me enormously to briefly hear what folks are planning to work on in
> > the coming months. I'm not concerned about structure or teams or
> > whatever. Out of all the ordinary tasks we have to do every year, where
> > do you think you'll spend your time?
> >
> > I'll start. I plan to work on:
> > - Fundraising
> > - Maybe content if we need the help
> > - On-site general assistance, wherever help is needed (pickup coffee and
> > printer paper? sure!)
> 
> I'll help with the bursaries selection process.

Last year I was part of the bursaries, but this year I intend to be
disqualified for that position (that means, I expect on being in Cape
Town by July, but am unlikely to be able to pay for it myself ;-) )

So, my take was to join the work of the Talks/Content and Bid
Selection teams.

Once we are on-site, I'll quite probably step in to help with more
chores, maybe videoteam and stuff. But that's too far yet.
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] About microblogging

[Gunnar Wolf]

martin f krafft dijo [Tue, Nov 17, 2015 at 08:50:45PM +1300]:
> (...(
> > I'd just prefer to not promise this to sponsors after DC16.
> 
> I spoke to a few sponsors about DC15 twittering their engagements
> for the first time and resonance was neutral-to-positive. Those
> companies who themselves are on Twitter thought it was a nice idea,
> and it's in fact quite common in the conference landscape.
> 
> Why would we not promise this? It costs us fairly little and it does
> bring visibility. We also promise an ad in a non-free, printed paper
> that costs us fairly little. And none of this means that we endorse
> the media, or that we don't also service users of the Free networks.

Of course they won't object to us giving them more publicity.

Why I don't like them? Because it leads to further merchandification
to what should be official news channels, with interesting (read,
mostly technical) insight. Turning a Debian account into a (yes, very
low volume, but still) ad source does not feel in any way positive to
me.

Of course, sponsors will have their logos on our conferences' web
pages, and of course, they can confirm our pages stay alive longer
than most. That should be a much bigger carrot than a tweet or such.
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] DebConf15 Thank you ad.

[Gunnar Wolf]

Donald Norwood dijo [Wed, Nov 11, 2015 at 05:14:40PM -0500]:
> Dear Team,
> 
> The Thank You advertisement for DC15 is close to completion, there are 3
> versions on one theme available for viewing here:
> 
> http://debconf-data.alioth.debian.org/tmp/
> 
> Please be vocal and let us know of the 3 which you would prefer (and
> what changes should be made).

I would go with something similar to ad2.png, with the following
changes:

- Black text over red swirl is not so good. Also, the red features of
  the lion get lost over a red swirl. Maybe if the swirl was in
  Debian's official pinkish color, with ~30% solidity (70%
  transparency), it would look better. Yes, red is part of the DC15
  identity, and it would be preserved in the lion+text on top.

  I know that ad3 was reflowed for that reason, but IMHO that kind of
  reflowing results in a childish, unprofessional image.

- I would add the bottom text from ad5.png, I believe it is important
  information to include. I prefer it in text form and not in logo
  form (as in ad5a.png) as it overloads with a different meaning and
  becomes more a distraction than real information.

- The sponsor logos area should be the biggest possible, as in
  ad2.png.

Thanks!

(oh, and you said "be vocal". They are all great, and I have no design
qualifications to base my points other than "I think that"... But you
asked us to be vocal! :) )
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] Protecting Debian from DebConf issues? (was: Collaboratively drafting the next DebConf) delegation

[Gunnar Wolf]

Steve Langasek dijo [Sat, Nov 07, 2015 at 09:19:52AM -0700]:
> > For me, making them responsible implies that they are either actually 
> > taking these decisions, or exercise some sort of leadership onto the 
> > team actually taking these.
> 
> > If we expect the DC$n teams to decide on the use of 'Debian resources' 
> > on their own, then these teams should be made responsible, not the 
> > chairs.
> 
> I don't expect that at all.  A team that is only handling the organization
> of a single year's conference shouldn't have anything resembling the
> authority to decide on their own how Debian resources are used.
> 
> The "local team" will have lots of good ideas and enthusiasm for how to put
> them into effect.  But they *must not* do this without the oversight of the
> DPL or delegates - they can propose these ideas, but must not assume that
> being the local team gives them the authority to use Debian resources
> without discussion.
> 
> For the past few years, we've fared well with strong, well-organized local
> teams that pose little risk to the Debian Project.  This has not always been
> the case.  The organizational structure of the DebConf team needs to handle
> the cases when we *don't* have a strong local team, not just the cases when
> we do.

YES YES YES.

Please, add my personal emphasis to everything here said by Steve.


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] Protecting Debian from DebConf issues? (was: Collaboratively drafting the next DebConf) delegation

[Gunnar Wolf]

Sorry for the long time for this reply...

martin f krafft dijo [Thu, Oct 22, 2015 at 07:01:55AM +1300]:
> also sprach Lucas Nussbaum  [2015-10-20 19:49 +1300]:
> > Given that the chairs are supposed to protect the Debian Project
> > from serious issues with DebConf organization,
> 
> This concern seems to be at the root of both delegations so far.
> 
> I don't have my tongue in my cheek here at all, but have we ever
> stepped back and answered the question what threats could put the
> Debian Project at jeopardy which couldn't have been prevented
> through a functioning team even without sledgehammer powers?

This was one of the reasons where the first ~10 DebConfs were not run
by Debian (but by Debian people). IIRC, it was at a session at DebConf
10 where we decided (of course, having discussed and all that) that
DebConf would become an official Debian project, and that it needed a
delegation.

IIRC, at some points in the past Debian *did* lend money to DebConf. I
don't remember whether in the end we didn't need it, or whether
DebConf paid it back to Debian, but it was a clear distinction. That
was partly made to keep Debian safe from any mistakes (either
organizational or financial) we ran into. Actually, being a Debian
project helped us be much more at ease, knowing that there is official
backing and whatnot.

But in the end, yes, having this official backing does need some
responsabilities. That's what the delegation was made for (and yes, I
still maintain it is needed). Of course, that is the reasons why the
Chairs had to approve any non-minor budget changes, and that's the
reason the initial budget is sent to the DPL for initial approval.


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] Protecting Debian from DebConf issues? (was: Collaboratively drafting the next DebConf) delegation

[Gunnar Wolf]

Carl Karsten dijo [Wed, Nov 11, 2015 at 11:52:01AM -0600]:
> > DebConf would become an official Debian project, and that it needed a
> > delegation.
> 
> Can you or someone explain what "a delegation" is?

It is the formal statement where the DPL determines the extent of
powers and responsabilities given to a group of people. For example,
the currently active DebConf chairs delegation (even though the
chairs resigned) is:

https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2015/05/msg2.html


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] Protecting Debian from DebConf issues?

[Gunnar Wolf]

martin f krafft dijo [Thu, Nov 12, 2015 at 08:21:26AM +1300]:
> > This was one of the reasons where the first ~10 DebConfs were not
> > run by Debian (but by Debian people). IIRC, it was at a session at
> > DebConf 10 where we decided (of course, having discussed and all
> > that) that DebConf would become an official Debian project, and
> > that it needed a delegation.
> 
> Yes, I remember. And I think we can all conclude now that DebConf is
> regarded an official Debian project, but that does not mean that it
> really needs a separate delegation. There are plenty of core
> subprojects in Debian without delegations.¹
> 
> ¹) https://www.debian.org/intro/organization
> 
> It seemed like the right thing at the time, but we haven't made it
> work, have we?

Well, there was conflict and misunderstanding for the DC15 edition,
and that can be attributed to incompatible personalities between the
chairs and local team or whatever. But I can tell you for sure that
the delegation worked and helped quite a bit in DC1{1,2,3,4}, even
though a not neglectible share of conflict happened at each of
them. Yes, we could have been better mediators, but as a friend used
to say, "I'm only a human, and that's when I'm lucky".

We had very rough discussions at each of the DebConfs, but in the end
the result was good and strengthened both the ongoing team and our
"brand recognition" as a successful conference. I know that my
stepping down was less than stellar (won't go into arguing that issue
now), but I was very happy to follow and participate in the
reorganization during DC14.

What happened during the pre- and post-DC15 days... Is beyond my
understanding. I followed the lists as much as I could, but frankly my
mind has been somewhere else. Finding the conflict was so bitter was
quite a shock to me. I have been working closely with the people
organizing this conference for a decade, and I simply could not expect
what I saw. And now, there are very few long-experienced people
carrying on DebConf work. Coincidence? :(

> But most of the money we use for DebConf is money DebConf raises for
> DebConf, not for Debian. For these funds, we are primarily
> accountable towards our sponsors, not Debian.
> 
> It goes without saying that our sponsors only give us money because
> DebConf is *the* Debian conference, but our only responsibility
> towards the Debian Project remains ensuring that we don't promise
> things we can't deliver or otherwise acting "unfaithful" towards
> Debian or tarnishing the brand.

In the end, sponsors donate to Debian, and they gain by having a
better Debian than otherwise. The conference is an (expensive but
useful) means towards that. So, DebConf owes IMO loyalty and results
to Debian, not to the sponsors. This is one of the reasons why DebConf
belongs inside Debian.

> How to achieve this and put on a successful conference at the same
> time depends entirely on the group of people doing the work. Their
> alignment with Debian's values is a process, not something that can
> be policed through a delegation.

The delegation does not have to be seen as adversarial, and was never
seen so while I was a Chair. Delegates should be trusted to be on the
same boat as organizers. And yes, sometimes they will have a different
opinion to a local orga team member — If the opinion is substantiated,
it is worth hearing (since the Chair is not delegated just because; it
has to be a person with clear understanding and ample
experience). Veto? We didn't even think about such a dirty word until
shortly before DC15.
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] Protecting Debian from DebConf issues? (was: Collaboratively drafting the next DebConf) delegation

[Gunnar Wolf]

martin f krafft dijo [Thu, Nov 12, 2015 at 03:33:57PM +1300]:
> also sprach Patty Langasek  [2015-11-12 13:32 +1300]:
> > Incorrect. 2 of the 3 original delegates ended up losing time for
> > various reasons, the last remaining delegate remained active. More
> > delegates were added, and became active right around when things
> > were "heating up" so to speak, and were involved in a lot of
> > discussions on the ground.
> 
> That was not my impression at all, but there's little point in
> arguing over this.

As one of the chairs-who-stepped-down, I'm fully with Patty on
this. My stepping down didn't mean I stopped being an orga (just much
less intensely), and it was not *completely* unexpected (I had
reiterately told the DPL, fellow chairs and orga team I had no longer
enough time to adequately pursue this responsability. For months).

Even though they were very recently appointed, Tincho and Tássia
(together with Moray) were *very* active in all meetings and
decisions, and devoted a huge time to rethinking the team organization
before, during and after DebConf.
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] Collaboratively drafting the next DebConf delegation

[Gunnar Wolf]

Lucas Nussbaum dijo [Tue, Oct 20, 2015 at 08:49:31AM +0200]:
> (...)
> The wording of this in the current delegation is:
>   When necessary, e.g. when the DebConf team's inability to make a
>   decision has an major impact on DebConf organization, or when a
>   decision taken by the DebConf team is perceived by the DebConf chairs
>   as creating serious risks for the organization of DebConf or for
>   Debian, the DebConf chairs can override specific decisions.  
> I'm still not sure whether the problems arose from the scope of this
> wording, or from an inability from chairs and the DebConf team to work
> within this wording. I wonder if what's missing isn't a stricter process
> for chairs to communicate that they are making a statement as chairs.
> Really, I think that the technical committee sets a good example here
> (about how to restrict the discussion about a specific question, how to
> make a clear decision, and how to communicate it).

Thing is, when we talk about this kind of decisions, it's basically
impossible to be precise. I do believe that, if there is a delegated
set of individuals, they should be able to "ensure sanity". We have
had many seemingly good ideas by motivated (but not necesarily
experienced) local teams that have been stopped by our diverse
incarnations of global leads; sometimes, lots of time might have been
saved had the Mighty Chairs (or whatever their name) were to have a
veto power. And yes, I like your parallel about T-C — a veto power is
something not to be abused.

> 2) move the chairs selection process from designation by the DPL to
> election by the DebConf team. Given that the chairs are supposed to
> protect the Debian Project from serious issues with DebConf
> organization, I find it backward that the DebConf team is able to
> self-select the controllers. Of course it's obvious that the DebConf
> team should have a say about possible chairs (to ensure that they are
> fine with working with the chairs), but I think that an election goes to
> far. I wonder if a suitable result could not be achieved with a
> negociation between the team and the DPL about possible chairs for a
> specific edition of DebConf. (The important change here would be that
> chairs would be nominated for a specific edition of DebConf, which makes
> it possible to choose them based on the ability to work with specific
> organizers)

...Although positions can be defined and later validated, AIUI with
our current constitution and structure, the easiest way to handle what
we currently call a delegation is, precisely, with a delegation (yay
for tautology!)

That is, if we do value democracy over all, the team can suggest a
list of chairs/whatevers, and the DPL would basically ratify it by
delegating. I think it can be a sane procedure.

Up to now, this has been discussed somehow in the shadow. When Holger,
Moray and me were chosen as the first chairs, it was because we were
prominently the visible longstanding orgas — but I don't recall having
a formal, visible discussion on who (or how) would this be. For Tássia
and Tincho replacing Holger and me, we were (all orgas) requested
input, but the decision was not taken visibly; I guess the DPL and the
lone-standing chair discussed on the profiles, but cannot know. Same
goes for Cate.

But OTOH... Discussions on who becomes part of each delegated team is
not usually done in the open, and there might be important reasons for
it. For one, I believe (even having stated in the past I was clearly
affiliated with the Nicaraguan team) the Chairs need *not* to be too
strongly affiliated with the current-local team. Partly, yes, this
will help decisions to be visible online; too many decisions taken
locally will in some way alienate people living far from the
organizing country.

> 3) The proposed delegation also increases the power of the chairs by
> putting them in charge on selecting the location of the next DebConf (if
> I get this right -- I'm not sure of how to read "decide on the team
> awarded the right to conduct the N+1 DebConf"), and in charge of
> selection a "DebConfXX project leader". I'm not sure that this is
> necessary:

I'm not quite happy with our current "DebConf Committee"
arrangement. This committee that exists solely to choose the next
bid. There is quite a bit that can be fixed here; I don't think
restricting the decision to three (two? whatever we come up with)
people is positive, though. I appreciate having a larger body of
people weighing options. Again, I am not a fan of our current
arrangement, but IMO we should strive to hold the decision among ~10
people, to ensure viewpoint diversity.

> - do we really want to force each and every DebConf to explicitely
>   have a project leader? I think that different organization models can
>   work here, and I would prefer the team to decide on a organization
>   model that suits them, as long as it works.

No, please don't!

> Just my 2cts, feel free to ignore and think "Gosh, it's good he 

Re: [Debconf-team] Team Roles

[Gunnar Wolf]

Jonathan Carter dijo [Mon, Oct 12, 2015 at 01:11:19PM +0200]:
> Hi
> 
> Do I understand correctly that
> https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf16/LocalTeamRoles will no longer be
> used?
> 
> It looked really useful to me but there has been some who didn't like it, if
> we're not going to use it then I'd rather remove the page and the link to it
> from the mediawiki sidebar.

Sketching out this reorganization proposal was not a whim nor done by
the chairs only; it was a team-wide work during several interesting
sessions at DC14, with lots of preparation time from the chairs
beforehand and with lots of following discussion and action.

Some things were not optimal, some just fell apart when dealing with
inside hostility.

The chairs have resigned, but that clearly does not mean their work is
not useful to keep. Note that I was against many issues, but a
structure adopted and agreed upon by the whole team must have
something besides the leadership of their authors.
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] Resignation

[Gunnar Wolf]

Martín Ferrari dijo [Tue, Oct 06, 2015 at 03:27:09PM +0300]:
> DebConf team members, Debian Project Leader,
> (...)
> Sadly, our efforts have been met with such a resistance by a very vocal
> minority, that in the end the atmosphere has become unbearably toxic --
> for us and for many others. For the benefit of the team, but more
> importantly for our own health, we have decided to step down.
> 
> Despite working very hard for a long time trying to follow our mandate,
> it has become patently clear that some people will keep boycotting any
> efforts at consensus-building until their particular vision is applied.
> The "argue until everyone else goes away" approach, which has previously
> driven away a number of long-term team members, has now succeeded even
> with us Chairs.
> (...)

I'm very sad to see this happen — And yes, you do have my full
understanding in this course of action.

For one, as I participated in the DC14 assessment/reorganization
sessions you led, I really admire your work and energy, even though
the organization style you tried to push for was completely different
from what I considered best. It was your time to push for changes, and
you did a full analysis to keep DebConf as one of Debian's most
lively, successful, loved subprojects.

And yes, I agree with how you feel now. I was mostly uninvolved during
this past cycle due to many well-known real life pressures, so I'm not
among those driven away by the approach you mention... But I clearly
recognize it and resent it.

Thanks a lot for your work in the past ~two years, for a great project
bet, for all of your time and patience. And hope to keep working with
all of you in many other Debian projects.


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] On the "local team"

[Gunnar Wolf]

martin f krafft dijo [Sun, Oct 04, 2015 at 04:12:51PM +0200]:
> > So what it is local team? I think many of us are helping bid
> > teams, giving opinions but trying to avoid the conflict of
> > interest, and givint true local the decisions [in spirit of this
> > mail], contrary of Martin work.
> 
> The original e-mail explicitly purports a different spirit: that the
> "local team" (a bad name) is *not* just made up of "true locals",
> but a natural grouping of people supporting a bid/conference
> instance.

Umh... I disagree here, from my personal experience. In several cases,
I have acted as supportive to a given bid. In the case of DC12, I had
been pushing since 2009 (when I first travelled to Nicaragua for the
first Central American Free Software Encounter) for some country in
the region to present a DebConf bid. Of course, for the DC12 bid
presentations and decision I did act as a local, and didn't vote (as I
had a stake on the decision). But if I wasn't there on a day-to-day
basis, if I was unable to go to meetings with physical people, if I
didn't know the whereabouts and details on how to arrange for
$whatever, I wouldn't have considered myself a local.

Of course, we long tried to dillute the meaning of the "local team",
insisting on that they were basically "the locals" in the wide
organizing team. And yes, being ~2000Km away I was clearly not among
"the locals".

Of course, that's my personal experience. One data point. You are a
different data point. But I guess we have been through somewhat
comparable situations, hence this post.

___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] website presence meeting: crunch time.

[Gunnar Wolf]

Jonathan Carter (highvoltage) dijo [Mon, Oct 05, 2015 at 10:32:28AM +0200]:
> I also don't see the need to battle them out. We have a few people
> strongly in favour of wafer and no one against it (at least as far as I
> could track). martin has brought up Odoo before, but has said that he's
> going to try it out at another conference first and report back to the
> DebConf team next year on how that works out.
> 
> I would rather suggest adding it to the next formal meeting (or maybe
> with at least a week notice if anyone wants to prepare/research
> anything) as an agenda item that we're finalizing website framework
> based on current consensus and take it from there.

I'm replying as I had made a suggestion of adopting Drupal. I still
believe it is flexible enough to cover (at least, most of) DebConf's
needs in at least as good a fashion as the systems we have used over
the past few years.

But OTOH, even if I take a firm time commitment to be available (which
is my intention, but I have learnt not to trust my intentions too much
;-) ), I completely agree with you. There are many Wafer
enthusiasts. That makes it quite better suited than anything I can
come up with, so let me withdraw my proposition.


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] Fixing the Debconf Delagation

[Gunnar Wolf]

Joerg Jaspert dijo [Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 09:23:48AM +0200]:
> On 14073 March 1977, Lucas Nussbaum wrote:
> 
> > With the current models, ideally, the Chairs would:
> [...]
> > - not be too involved in the organization of the current DebConf(s),
> > so that there's no conflict between opinions expressed a mere organizer,
> > and opinions expressed as a chair
> [...]
> 
> This definition point alone would directly take out Cate as a chair,
> possibly Tassia and leave only Tincho, from what I saw from their
> involvement in actual DebConf organization. Not sure that thats the best
> thing.
> 
> Depending on how one defines "too involved in the organization", but
> having chairs for the DebConf that are mostly just bystanders doesn't
> sound like the best idea for me.

Yes, I also understood this to be precisely the opposite. During my
time as a Chair, my *main* Debian task was to be as close as possible
to DebConf organization, to be able to answer (or to point to right
answers) to questions about DebConf, be they originated in outsiders,
in Debian people, or in the orga-team(s?) themselves. We always tried
to have at least two chairs attend every meeting (true, we sometimes
failed to, but at least we tried hard to), usually chairing the
meetings.

So, yes, as an ex-Chair, this is the only point in Lucas' mail that
made a big dissonance with me.

> Keeping conflict of interest away you do by having chairs come from all
> parts of the orga, have multiple and then have them NOT expressing
> opinions as chair on matters that touch their own area of activity
> inside orga.

It's very hard to manage conflicts of interest in this kind of
projects. I would not say we have ever had a very strong line on this
point, but rather we trust each other to do things on good faith.

Of course, we have all abstained to act on some issues (i.e. I think
I've never been part of a Bursaries team when I was requesting
sponsorship), but it's mostly based on trust.


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] This week's meetings...

[Gunnar Wolf]

Eric Dantan Rzewnicki dijo [Mon, Sep 14, 2015 at 08:37:29PM -0400]:
> On Mon, Sep 14, 2015 at 10:33:21AM +0200, Bernelle Verster wrote:
> > Hi all
> > * 2. Website meeting - Tammy, Raoul, Simon
> 
> Other possibly relevant persons: wendar, tumbleweed, cate, edrz (me),
> (other past contributors ...), ...
> (...)
> For too long we've had (at least) 3 separate web facing systems: static
> site, wiki, conference management system (penta, summit, wafer(?)). The
> topics listed in 2. apply to each at least to some degree. Some of us,
> myself included, would like to see the 3 systems integrated as much as
> possible with a unified look/feel/user experience and minimised
> duplication of data, content and effort.
> 
> Perhaps we can call it a web presence meeting?

Count me intersted in this.
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] Job fair timing and sponsorship criteria

[Gunnar Wolf]

martin f krafft dijo [Wed, Apr 29, 2015 at 12:19:00PM +0200]:
 also sprach Jimmy Kaplowitz ji...@debian.org [2015-04-29 10:19 +0200]:
  The job fair is currently scheduled for the main DebConf arrival day.
 
 Actually, we would like Saturday to be the first day of DebConf and
 the main arrival day be Friday, but we probably failed to make this
 clear.

I know I'm late to this, but having the arrival day on Friday is
usually problematic from people travelling from far away: It requires
taking basically an extra half week from work (Thursday+Friday) to
arrive on time (and the equivalent on teardown+flyback day). IIRC, we
have usually (read usually as in: where I've been more closely
involved in scheduling) had Saturday as arrival day, and then start
activities on Sunday. Likewise for departure, finish activities on
Saturday and cover sponsored accomodation until Sunday, having most
people depart on Sunday.

 The big question is: can we somehow tweak things in the
 communication and still convince people that *all* should arrive on
 Friday already?

Well, DebConf is announced as starting on Saturday 15th and finishing
on Saturday 22th, so... it *could* be understood that the first
activities will be held Saturday morning. Dunno... I'd start gentle
and have the first activities on Saturday afternoon, in consideration
for people who cannot travel on Friday (i.e. within Europe) or have to
do a long distance flight (i.e. rest of the world)

 This could be done *in addition* of moving the job fair to Sunday,
 if those responsible for the job fair and scheduling deem it
 appropriate.

It would be sensible, I'm for moving it. And yes, as it has been
pointed out, one extra day does not completely dillute jetlag... But
the effect on those who suffer it is much less shattering.
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] Job fair timing and sponsorship criteria

[Gunnar Wolf]

Margarita Manterola dijo [Wed, Apr 29, 2015 at 07:37:04PM +0200]:
 
 I understand where these concerns are coming from. I used to live in
 Argentina, so I totally understand the problem. However, I also know
 that the further away you are, the less significant the exact day of
 the week on which the conference starts, as cheap flights are normally
 on weekdays, not weekends, and if possible most people don't cross the
 Atlantic for just one week...
 
 Whatever the case, I'd like to note that we've been discussing the
 schedule since September or so last year, there was a lot of feedback
 that was taken into account and accommodated. But nobody had brought
 this up until now.  And we had just called it final last week... I'm
 very reluctant to now go revisiting the schedule, not because it's not
 possible, but because we want to move on to other stuff. The constant
 revisiting of decisions already taken is very frustrating, energy
 consuming and de-motivating.
 (...snip...)

I'm sorry for bringing in noise (even more as I was just me
too-ing), I know I have been quite inactive and disconnected lately.

I'm not retracting from my position, but I don't want to introduce
needless stress in the process. And as you say, there has been a long
time for discussion, and I didn't speak up (more) on time. Yes, I
spoke opposing several details, but I guess those issues were dealt
with back then :)



signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

[Debconf-team] Leaving the Coordination Team

[Gunnar Wolf]

Hi all,

I am currently the shadow of the Coordination Team. However, I must
recognize I have been unable to follow DC15 organization close enough
to get a decent panorama on what has been or needs to be done, and I'm
very unlikely to change this soon. Between being new to the art of
parenting, and working extra hours on my Specialization (and
attempting to follow on with a Masters), I just don't have much time
left; add to that the fact that I won't be at DC15 but remotely, and
an important incentive is substracted...

I talked this already with Marga, the Team Lead. Of course, I will
continue trying to participate in the meetings, and follow and comment
on what's going on, but I must recognize I won't be able to
responsably follow that role.

Thanks!


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] Citizen four screening

[Gunnar Wolf]

Maximiliano Curia dijo [Tue, Feb 24, 2015 at 08:56:25PM +0100]:
  If there is no stark opposition, then I'd like to get the ball
  rolling here… I think the documentary is highly relevant to what we
  do and so it seems like a perfect addition to our programme.
 
 I think this would be a nice adhoc activity, probably after dinner. On the
 other hand if the intention is to project it during the normal DebConf
 schedule I think that it should be proposed as a regular (although with a
 weird length) session to the content team.

I also suggest it to be held as an ad-hoc, off-the-schedule,
after-formal-activities thing — More or less as the screening of Sita
sings the blues was done in New York. Of course it is of interest to
Debian, but we don't want this screening to compete with any
talks. Besides, it's not as if the talk presenter must not be tired,
or the session recorded by the video team.
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] call for bursaries team volunteers

[Gunnar Wolf]

David Bremner dijo [Wed, Feb 18, 2015 at 10:41:52PM +0100]:
 We need volunteers to form the DebConf 15 bursaries team. This team
 has two related duties
 
 - to vet applications for accomodation and food sponsorship, and
 - to rank applicants for travel sponsorship.
 (...)

I am willing to be a part of this year's bursaries team. I have been
on this team several times in the past, and will be happy to be
again.


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] Bitcoin payments for DebConf15

[Gunnar Wolf]

Gaudenz Steinlin dijo [Sun, Feb 15, 2015 at 01:05:04PM +0100]:
 I'm not really comfortable with this. Not because I don't trust madduck,
 but because if the Project is in the process of reaching a decision
 about wheter to accept Bitcoins or not, we should not circumvent that.
 After all DebConf is part of Debian.

I agree with Gaudenz. We don't need to use Bitcoin, and as long as the
project does not officially support it, I'd prefer not making them
formally known as (hackishly) OKing its use.

If somebody is unable to transfer funds some other way, we can
probably find a way to do so via Bitcoin. But we don't need to
advertise its use widely.
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] DC16 Decision Meeting - Second take

[Gunnar Wolf]

Hi Stefano,

Thanks for the succinct update report!

I got a question on this; it might have been addressed already, but
I'm only noticing it now:

 * Fleshed out the exchange control laws section.

This section now says that basically all attendees can enter without
worrying about their personal money. However, what would it mean to
DebConf's operative money? We work with quite a high budget, and we
receive (and spend) it throughout many months. Also, that transfers
over R1m have to pay 10% tax. What would this mean for our finances?
10% tax on all money we use for paying expenses in South Africa?
(i.e. most of our budget, aside from travel sponsorship)

Thanks!


PS- Just as Tássia asked: Montreal team, can you provide a similar
update summary?
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] Food [Re: Registration questions]

[Gunnar Wolf]

Daniel Kahn Gillmor dijo [Thu, Feb 05, 2015 at 11:25:37AM -0500]:
  While I am in the group that sometimes wished they could eat the
  vegetarian dish, because it looked tastier, or because they wanted to
  skip meat one day, I really don't agree with your proposal.
 
 Can you think of a better way to frame it so that we can avoid the
 every-meal-has-meat baseline assumption that the current framing
 implies?

That is not implied and has (almost) never been the case.

Eating meat every day twice a day would most likely be considered too
much for almost everybody. But OTOH defaulting to no meat would also
be considered excessive for many people.

What we should try to cater to is having a reasonably healthy and
varied menu. Being it in Germany, I'm sure I am not alone to expect
some sausages and breaded meats. Not every day, not at every meal, but
surely so.

I seriously doubt we have to offer an I always need M34T option. But
(and bear in mind I was a vegetarian for 20 years) truth is default
means meat is OK.

 Right, what i was proposing was the people who have no dietary
 restrictions should be OK with getting a meal that is (as a baseline)
 lacto-ovo vegetarian; those who have a restriction that requires them to
 eat meat could identify themselves so that they could be sure to have
 meat.
 
 The people who are providing us with food will need guidance about what
 to prepare in any case; being clear to them about the needs and desires
 of the group will help them to help feed us sensibly.

When I travel, I always want to get a taste of the way locals eat —
Not necessarily fancy cuisine, just normal food.

I would even believe that, at least for the impression an unknowing
outsider has about Germany, that many people would end up registering
for always meat, to get something closer to what they
expect. Defaulting to ovo-lacto might then mean increased meat
consumption!

(Of course, no way to test my hypothesis without involving real people)

  I'm also in favour to book more vegetarian menus, and offer meat only
  to the first 60-80% of carnivore people (as first served basis), which
  could help me, tincho and many others to have a mixed diet.
 
 Hm, i think i would say it as offer vegetarian meals to the first
 20%-40% of omnivores (as a first-served basis), since that's what's
 usually missing from these arrangements.  I hope that we can actually
 offer meat to 100% of the strict carnivores in attendance, or else
 they'll be very hungry. ;)
 
 And yes, i think this makes sense (though i'm not sure how you come up
 with the right ratio; maybe based on the expressed preferences, as
 suggested above).
 
 So i'm amending my earlier proposal to this:
 
  Dietary restrictions:
   - Not applicable
   - No dietary restrictions Default
   - Lacto-Ovo Vegetarian (dairy and eggs OK)
   - Vegan (strict vegetarian)
   - Meat required at every meal
   - Other (contact registrat...@debconf.org ASAP)
 
 Is that OK with people?
 
 Thanks for engaging constructively with this!

I think this is right(er), although still pointless IMO. I do not
believe (most) people expect to eat meat at every meal. I think it
would be easier to agree with our caterer to provide meat for
approximately half of the days. I don't think it'd be seen as too
little, and I think you would approve of the idea of setting a
hard-maximum on served meat! :)
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] LWN coverage of DebConf15

[Gunnar Wolf]

Margarita Manterola dijo [Mon, Feb 02, 2015 at 10:16:34PM +0100]:
 (...)
 Before we agree to this, though, we would like to know what the cost
 would be. The closest to Germany that the journalist is coming from,
 the cheaper it's going to be for us to sponsor them, so it'd make
 sense for them to come from a closer country.  If they are coming from
 the US (as has been suggested) we probably will want to do partial
 sponsoring of the ticket, capped at a certain (still undecided)
 number.

Right. I am replying to this mostly because of my other, very
enthusiastic mail. I supposed there would be an Europe-based LWN
member to cover DebConf; if the person has to fly from the
USA... Well, I'd still love to have them on, but it might be too high
a price to pay (this is, it would mean having them in instead of at
least two flight-food-and-accom-sponsored people from Europe).
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] LWN coverage of DebConf15

[Gunnar Wolf]

Martín Ferrari dijo [Thu, Jan 29, 2015 at 04:37:43PM +]:
 Hi all,
 
 By initiative of Paul Wise, recently there has been some talks about
 inviting a LWN journalist to cover DebConf15, by offering travel and
 board sponsoring.
 
 LWN is one of the most respected news outlets in the Linux world, they
 have a strong emphasis on free software, and they are known for the
 quality and technical depth of their articles.
 (...)
 Does this seem like a good idea to the wider orga team? If so, I would
 then defer this to bursaries and budget team to study the costs and
 feasibility.
 
 Note: this is a public mailing list, so if you have some comments that
 should not be publicly archived, please reply directly to cha...@debconf.org

YES.

I have greatly benefited from LWN's coverage of other Linux- and Free
Software- related conferences. Not only it gives much more exposure to
our work, but it also helps creating a professional-grade chronicle of
what we get. IMO, we would win a lot from this. In this case (and re:
one of the topics recently discussed in the Content team), I would
perfectly see the reason for a LWN staffer to hold one of the
invited positions.

Even more if we can ask them to deliver a talk as well, which given
their technical level, is IMO quite likely.


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] Montréal food prices update

[Gunnar Wolf]

Louis-Philippe Véronneau dijo [Wed, Jan 28, 2015 at 01:13:32PM -0500]:
 Hi!
 
 We received some quotes from one of our caterer options. The Nest
 (McGill’s student-run café) quoted 20 CAD$ per day per person for 3
 meals a day.  Just to be clear, this means about 6,66 CAD$ per meal
 per person, or 5,34 USD$ per meal per person at current currency
 rates.
 
 We have ask for a possible menu and should get it soon. In the mean
 time, all other infos about food can be found here:
 https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf16/Bids/Montreal/Venues/McGill#Food
 
 I'll reply to the list when I will get some more infos.

This sounds very good!

A question that always pops up, specialy when the venue is in the
middle of an interesting city: How flexible are they regarding actual
attendance? Say, we ask them to prepare food for 250 people (as we
have i.e. 200 food-sponsored and 100 non-food-sponsored), but 80
people decide to eat out that night instead of 50. Do we have to pay
the missing 30? Or if one night only 20 go out instead of 50, will
they have enough food for them?

What are the margins they would feel comfortable within?

Thanks!
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] DC16 Costs

[Gunnar Wolf]

Philipp Hug dijo [Tue, Jan 27, 2015 at 06:49:36PM +]:
 Hi,
 
 So far I found the following information about our main cost factors
 (venue, food, accommodation)
 
 Do these like look correct? Can you provide better estimates?

Assuming the costs are correct, I think the following numbers are good
to compare: For 200 people staying a full week (6 nights) and
everybody staying at the cheapest accomodation option):

 Montreal
 Food: ?
 Accomodation:
 * Hotels: 60-130USD/double (only few rooms at cheap rates)
 * Dorms: from 53 CAD= 42 USD p.P
 Venue:
 * UQAM 7*3600 = 25200 CAD / 20kUSD list price
 * McGill: around 30k for venue/personnel

UQAM: 2 + 6 * 42 * 200 + $food = US$70400 + food

McGill: Add 10k to that (although you didn't state which kind of
dollars were they ;-) )

 Cape Town:
 Food:
 * 33 USD/day (current quote, on the higher side according to local team)
 Accomodation:
 * Hotels:  50USD/double room/night
 * Dorms: 20USD/p/night
 Venue:
 * Upper Campus: free
 * Breakwater: ?

Upper Campus: (free) + 200 * (6 * 20 + 7 * 33) = US$70200
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] Question to Cape Town team: transportation to/from the venue

[Gunnar Wolf]

Hi Bernelle,

 That is correct. People tend to not want to take any form of public
 transport after dark in South Africa. Students usually drive here or share
 private taxis back.

This brings another questions: If walking after dark is dangerous, and
people don't take public transport either after dark, how safe are
taxis? For context: Many people in my country (Mexico) rely on having
the phone number of a known taxi base, as they don't trust grabbing a
random taxi on the street. How is that subject in South Africa?

 We did obtain quotes for 'dinner shuttles' - 14 seater buses to be used ad
 hoc, see
 https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf16/Bids/Cape_Town/Potential_Venues#Transport_jottings

Right, although that would constrain us to meeting at specific
times. A good help, of course, but still likely to leave people
stranded.
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] Question to Cape Town team: transportation to/from the venue

[Gunnar Wolf]

Hi again, Bernelle :)

   We did obtain quotes for 'dinner shuttles' - 14 seater buses to be used
   ad hoc, see
  
  https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf16/Bids/Cape_Town/Potential_Venues#Transport_jottings
 
  Right, but I worry more about the daily trips that attendees will make.
 
 It would be silly to stay in town and commute daily to the debconf venue,
 in my opinion... We are only considering venues with very close
 accommodation.

There's always a group of people who choose to stay in a fancier
hotel than what most of the sponsored attendees get. Would they be
able to stay nearer the venue?

   This may be a weak point of this venue, but at any other venue we would
   have to organise transport after dark as well, and possibly right
   through the day too.
 
  Oh. I understood that the other venue option would be of walking
  distance of most amenities. Can you elaborate on this?
 
  I think there might be a perception here that town is where most is
 happening, which I think is not necessarily the case. Cape Town, as most of
 South Africa, has extensive urban sprawl, and the places to hang out are
 clustered in suburbs. Every suburb has it's 'feel' and it's famous eateries
 and attractions. So all venues will have walking distance amenities (Cape
 Town team please correct me or elaborate?). The university campus is also
 walking distance from amenities, getting back to the venue just has a steep
 uphill. It's just getting to town proper that is a bit more of a mission.
 In my personal view, town is a touristy thing or a weekend-ey thing to do,
 and to do once and once only.
 
 I think from a long ago discussion we're more similar to the US in our
 urban design than Europe, but may be completely off the ball here.

OK, this is an important point which I think slipped for most of us. I
also had the understanding this campus was basically set away from
everything. If there are enough amenities to keep people happy and
entertained, the need to go downtown will be much diminished. Maybe,
yes, we could organize a (or some) night group trip to the downtown,
as we also have the right to see the touristy stuff ;-)
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] DC15 - Prices and deals for non-sponsored attendees

[Gunnar Wolf]

martin f krafft dijo [Sun, Jan 18, 2015 at 06:56:27PM +0100]:
 also sprach norman nor...@riseup.net [2015-01-18 17:40 +0100]:
  Not sure if it's a good idea but maybe I'm missing something, I'd prefer
  not to have those kind of difference, we always encourage people to
  support DebConf by paying their food+accom and we always have a good
  response of regularly DebConf attendees.
 
 Marga's idea here is that by acknowledging the support — especially
 by professionals, who voluntarily donate 200 € to the conference
 — we can encourage others to follow suit.
 
 Many of us can afford 200 € out of the money we earn using Debian.
 Being able to publicly say so, e.g. with a coloured badge, or
 getting swag in return is just a nice confirmation.

I am with Norman, I don't like that idea. I start from the basis that
people will follow suit if they can. Because we are all devoting our
time (thus, our work, thus, our money) to Debian. If I know that
Debian is paying for my stay, I'm taking something from Debian (hoping
to give back more).

The reasoning behind DebConf should stay as evaluating a community of
people wanting to do good for the project. I don't think we have a
real problem of freeloaders who come on vacation. And visible
differentiation is by far not the way we should go.
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] Q for Cape Town bid: attendees safety outside the venue

[Gunnar Wolf]

Moray Allan dijo [Tue, Dec 23, 2014 at 05:34:40PM +0100]:
 Still, we haven't completely avoided problems; I remember a few
 people having bad experiences in Managua, for example, mostly when
 they were obviously carrying expensive phones or laptops as is
 rather normal for DebConf attendees (whatever advice we give).

FWIW, I have been robbed twice in my life: Once in Mexico City, in
1997 (of course, given I've been here ~95% of my life, this
probability is high), and once in Paris, en route to Bosnia (and being
on the same metro with Ben and Nattie... And, of course, failing to
pay attention to the boring announcements in five languages to stay
aware because pickpocketers are quick...
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] Q for Cape Town bid: attendees safety outside the venue

[Gunnar Wolf]

Stefano Rivera dijo [Fri, Dec 19, 2014 at 02:02:37PM +0200]:
 I was in Managua, too. I felt pretty safe in Managua, just as I do in
 Cape Town.
 
 I didn't explore that much, beyond the hotel, conference venues, and the
 local mall. I was just too busy.
 
 There's pretty much nowhere I won't walk in Cape Town, alone. There are
 areas I won't feel safe, walking in, but I'll still do it, and just be a
 little more aware of my surroundings.

Right, there have been many times we have asked people to be
aware. DC4 was in a great insulated hotel near to a not-so-beautiful
area; for DC6, we were in a small and mostly safe town, but I know
many people later wandered through South-East Mexico, and they all
returned safely. Argentinians often say their country is unbelievably
insecure, yet we held a very successful DC8 there (with people, again,
wandering on their own around the country). New York City's northern
part has its reputation, but TTBOMK nothing bad happened during
DC10. Some people were worried about safety in the Balkans, but we had
a perfectly safe DC11 (complete with police escort from the border to
attendees from odd countries!). Managua has been tackled already, and
yes, people did wander into the city and the countryside.

So... yes, I believe history proves we are not such social inepts as
to put ourselves in danger. Of course, if DC16 is to be in South
Africa, we should proactively warn people of the situation - But trust
our collective awareness.
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] Next Coordination Team Meeting - Tuesday, December 16th 19:00 UTC

[Gunnar Wolf]

Margarita Manterola dijo [Thu, Dec 04, 2014 at 09:28:07PM +0100]:
 Hi all,
 
 As expected today's meeting run longer than 1 hour, even without 2
 teams being absent from it.
 
 The minutes and log are at:
 http://meetbot.debian.net/debconf-team/2014/debconf-team.2014-12-04-19.00.html

Grrr, and I'm very sorry and ashamed I was not part of this meeting —
I thought it would be *next Thursday* for some stupid reason.

So, for being the coordination team shadow, I was as useful as a
shadow on a cloudy day.

I *will* make sure to be present for the next meeting :-P
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] DebConf dinner: which style

[Gunnar Wolf]

Tiago Bortoletto Vaz dijo [Fri, Dec 05, 2014 at 08:52:10AM -0500]:
 Personally, I am leaning towards common plates or buffet as that's
 more lively and the latter increases mingling and interaction. It also
 solves the problem of portions which are too small/large, etc.
 
 That's also my opinion.
 
 Another point I'd like to bring is the 'ritual' part of the dinner.
 I've really missed that in the recent conferences. I remember it in
 my first DebConfs, where we had a short speech from the DPL (and by
 anyone willing to talk) opening the dinner. This was quite special,
 we all together in a so positive energy... we need that :) I know it
 doesn't depend only on local logistics, but in part it does (eg. try
 to wait for ~everybody arrival before serving, improvising a stage
 etc).

I agree with this. I *think* we moved the bits of the DPL to be part
of the programmed events in the venue because:

1. To have video coverage
2. Because in several DebConfs the dinner has not been in
   auditorium- or regular room-style setting, which made listening to
   the speech difficult or impossible for many of the attendees
3. Later on, because we had already made this switch, and having the
   DPL address during the conference dinner was no longer expected

But, were it to be possible, I adhere to Tiago's appreciation: It is a
nice part of the ritual.
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] results from the cfp from the content team

[Gunnar Wolf]

Ana Guerrero Lopez dijo [Tue, Dec 02, 2014 at 10:41:05PM +0100]:
 (...)
 From the chair's canvassing email and my call for help, I got the
 following people interested:
 
 - Michael Banck (mbanck)
 - Ana Carolina Comandulli (caroll)
 - Margarita Manterola (marga)
 - Martin F. Krafft (madduck)
 - Maximiliano Curia (maxy)
 - Rafael Rivas tato
 - Santiago Ruano Rincón santiago
 - jathan
 
 I never got a reply from an email I sent to jathan to know their name and if
 they has attended any debconf, so I'm not taking them into account.

He is Jonathan Bustillos, Mexican. He attended DebConf12; I will ping
him to check as why didn't he reply. I know he has been quite tied up
with work and school this year.

 Right now, accepting everybody we would be 5 people from last year and 7 new 
 = 12
 and I was aiming to something like 10 people.

But yes, given this, I think you will also be privileging people who
have more Debian experience than relative outliers.

 The content team is probably the team whose work is more independant from the
 venue itself, so maybe we should prioritize here 'global people' over 'local
 team' and keep only 2 people out of 10 from the 'local team'. Last year, there
 wasn't any local in the talks team and it worked fine, but I think it's good
 to have at least one person. I would like to ask marga, mbanck, maxy and
 madduck to discuss between them the responsabilities every of them have 
 already
 and choose the two people will stay in the content team.

+1, as it's nowadays said. Thanks!
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] Sponsored lanyards, a proposal

[Gunnar Wolf]

martin f krafft dijo [Tue, Nov 25, 2014 at 11:05:26AM +0100]:
  The amount of money needed to have the logo printed.
  We are selling the space in lanyards for nothing.
 
 Not true. We are trying to figure out what the right price will be.

  I'm pushing to have again the Debian lanyards, like the old one
  which we reused many time, for many conferences and other events.
 
 Will you be in charge of the logistics? How do you assure that we
 can print matching lanyards in the future, when we don't have enough
 for the next conference?

Lanyards were never a necessity for the long years we used clip-on or
safety-pin nametags. Or when we were in Managua, lanyards were just
pieces of string. Having printed lanyards is not necessary at all IMO,
and I would also not be happy by having them as one more branded item
stuck to my body, prominently advertising a sponsor in all photos and
that.

FWIW, that could also bring back the discussion that died away (but
never got really resolved) about how to identify people for/against
being photographed.

  Lower cost, big impacts for Debian and attendees. With DC15
  proposal, for really nothing we have throw away lanyards.
 
 People collect them.

s/P/Some p/

While some other people just throw them away.

If nametags will be in the €400 price range, I'd strongly go the
Managua way. €400 is within the price range the cost for a person's
attendance costs, which is surely more valuable. Of course, it's a
sponsorship opportunity, but a very obnoxious one IMO.

But, as Tiago said, I will only state this once and shut up.
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] RFH: Pictures for the DC14 Final Report

[Gunnar Wolf]

Uli Scholler dijo [Mon, Oct 27, 2014 at 11:14:20PM +0100]:
 I'm looking for suggestions for pictures to use in the DC14 Final
 Report:

Hi Uli,

I took a quick look at the pictures I took and uploaded to the annex,
and while you are more than free to look at the whole bunch and select
some more, I'd suggest the following.

Thanks for your work!

 - Venue:
   - outside (I hear the park was nice)
   - the buildings: “Smith Memorial Student Union” and “The Broadway”
   - the big auditorium (inside, with audience in it)
   - a characteristic picture of Portland

http://annex.debconf.org/debconf-share/debconf14/photos/gwolf/20140829/Linus_QA_session/IMG_3841.JPG
http://annex.debconf.org/debconf-share/debconf14/photos/gwolf/20140829/Linus_QA_session/IMG_3835.JPG
http://annex.debconf.org/debconf-share/debconf14/photos/gwolf/20140830/IMG_3882.JPG


 - Purpose:
   - hacking
   - presentation
   - meeting face-to-face/socializing/hallway track

http://annex.debconf.org/debconf-share/debconf14/photos/gwolf/20140825/Keysigning/IMG_3277.JPG
http://annex.debconf.org/debconf-share/debconf14/photos/gwolf/20140825/Keysigning/IMG_3275.JPG
http://annex.debconf.org/debconf-share/debconf14/photos/gwolf/20140825/Keysigning/IMG_3293.JPG
http://annex.debconf.org/debconf-share/debconf14/photos/gwolf/20140829/IMG_3799.JPG
http://annex.debconf.org/debconf-share/debconf14/photos/gwolf/20140831/IMG_3944.JPG

 - Video team at work

http://annex.debconf.org/debconf-share/debconf14/photos/gwolf/20140829/IMG_3796.JPG
http://annex.debconf.org/debconf-share/debconf14/photos/gwolf/20140829/IMG_3795.JPG

 - Day trip
   - nature
   - smiling happy excursionists

http://annex.debconf.org/debconf-share/debconf14/photos/gwolf/20140827/Daytrip/IMG_3552.JPG
http://annex.debconf.org/debconf-share/debconf14/photos/gwolf/20140827/Daytrip/VistaHouse/IMG_3732.JPG
http://annex.debconf.org/debconf-share/debconf14/photos/gwolf/20140827/Daytrip/RoosterRock/IMG_3640.JPG
http://annex.debconf.org/debconf-share/debconf14/photos/gwolf/20140827/Daytrip/RoosterRock/IMG_3693.JPG
http://annex.debconf.org/debconf-share/debconf14/photos/gwolf/20140827/Daytrip/RoosterRock/IMG_3704.JPG
http://annex.debconf.org/debconf-share/debconf14/photos/gwolf/20140827/Daytrip/Multnomah_Falls/IMG_3610.JPG
http://annex.debconf.org/debconf-share/debconf14/photos/gwolf/20140827/Daytrip/Multnomah_Falls/IMG_3588.JPG
http://annex.debconf.org/debconf-share/debconf14/photos/gwolf/20140827/Daytrip/Multnomah_Falls/IMG_3585.JPG

 - Food
   - the buffet (of the standard conference food)
   - people eating (the standard conference food)
   - conference dinner

CheeseWine:

http://annex.debconf.org/debconf-share/debconf14/photos/gwolf/20140826/CheeseAndWine/IMG_3378.JPG
http://annex.debconf.org/debconf-share/debconf14/photos/gwolf/20140825/CheeseAndWine/IMG_3314.JPG
http://annex.debconf.org/debconf-share/debconf14/photos/gwolf/20140825/CheeseAndWine/IMG_3326.JPG

Conference dinner:

http://annex.debconf.org/debconf-share/debconf14/photos/gwolf/20140827/IMG_3759.JPG
(not really a great picture, but the venue was not particularly 
picture-friendly :( )
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] DebConf subteams list

[Gunnar Wolf]

Martín Ferrari dijo [Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 05:39:59PM +0100]:
  - In the slightly longer term, should we make subteam leads
  automatically/ex-officio become members of the DebConf Committee, for
  venue decisions etc.?
 
 I think so. Adding some external people, as Lucas pointed out, seems
 like a good idea too.
 
 
 There has not been much discussion on this, so I guess most people
 thinks this is a good idea?

I do. One of the issues that lead to not so much discussion here is
that the role of the DebConf committee has not been too clear, or has
been too limited. Assembling a Team of Elders just to help the vote
for the next venue decision is maybe too much.

Yes, of course, it's a hard decision, and one that has led in the past
to quite a bit of discussion and demotivation (mainly if we count the
demotivation of the teams that do not get picked, of course), but I
would surely want to have the Committee play a more active role
throughout the year.


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] Checking people's feelings on Paypal (as an option) for Debian donations.

[Gunnar Wolf]

martin f krafft dijo [Sun, Oct 12, 2014 at 08:35:38AM +0200]:
 I would not call these fees competitive, but there is no doubt that
 Paypal provides some useful management features. So yes, using it
 while it's a reasonable option makes sense, but IMHO, we should not
 just settle for it and look no further. Paypal already is massive
 and I'd much rather see us pick a smaller, innovative competitor.
 
 In particular, I think we should not foreclose the possibility to
 accept crypto-currencies, e.g. Bitcoin. Paypal itself is in the
 process of embracing Bitcoin (as it enables them to pay less money
 to its partner banks etc.) and there is no reason why we should give
 them such a large percentage of turnover.

Be liberal in what you accept, be conservative in what you send.

In other words: IMO, there's no reason to foreclose accepting Paypal
or crypto-currencies, as long as we don't hold assets in them for the
mid- or long-term.
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] General schedule proposal for dc15

[Gunnar Wolf]

Steve Langasek dijo [Sun, Sep 21, 2014 at 12:47:43PM -0700]:
  Interesting suggestion, which leaves only the aspect that these
  sessions could also serve to provide an incentive for people to show
  up and pay courtesy to the first speaker of the day.
 
 There's also the aspect that morning is the optimal time to communicate
 new information that's come to light overnight.  You can't use an after
 lunch slot to communicate information to attendees that's relevant to the
 morning sessions.

...We could also explicitly expect everybody to look at
http://debconfXX.debconf.org/announcements.html at least once a day
(or to follow a RSS feed). I don't think requiring people to sit at a
daily announcements session is needed.
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] Length of morning sessions (was: General schedule proposal for dc15)

[Gunnar Wolf]

Margarita Manterola dijo [Sun, Sep 21, 2014 at 11:40:37PM +0200]:
  also sprach Margarita Manterola margamanter...@gmail.com [2014-09-21 
  18:00 +0200]:
  This hasn't been agreed on.
  I was pretty sure we had mostly agreed on this being a good idea.
  What sort of agreement do you want? This is something worthwhile
  trying out, so why drag our feet?
 
 What hasn't been agreed is the amount of time spent for this.  I think
 that pushing everything to 10:30 because of this is not a useful way
 of spending our time. I believe 15 minutes should be enough for both
 announcements and raffle.

...And a raffle should be an entirely optional activity, it should not
be tied to announcements. Specially if it is a sponsored activity. I
am not opposed to having a daily raffle, but I'd very much prefer to
be able to skip it without it meaning I'll be missing interesting
talks, important information, or whatever.

 Therefore, I propose this structure for the morning session
 09:45 - Announcements and Raffle
 10:00 - Keynote (no parallels)

Right, that would work for me — I expect I won't be the only one
joining at 10AM. Again, I expect important announcements to be relayed
online, don't think we will really need to have an announcements
session. 
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] Report from the talks team

[Gunnar Wolf]

Anthony Towns dijo [Fri, Sep 19, 2014 at 09:37:15PM +1000]:
  * We must find a way to make submitters to make better talks
  descriptions. Bad or incomplete talks description made to waste
  a lot of time to both the talks team and attendees.
  Yeah, I can see this very well. We should make sure that people put
  at least as much time into making a submission as it takes us to
  evaluate it.
 
 Would some sort of wiki-ish approach to talk proposals be possible?
 ie, let people propose talk ideas publically, with the ability for
 other people to help improve the description, add suggestions or
 correct typos before the talk review happens? Could let attendees
 provide an indication of interest in a topic in advance too?

Humh... In one other conference I helped run at some point, as the
talks team we tried to group people that wanted to present similar
topics — Even suggesting unrelated speakers of too-similar topics to
get in touch with each other and present a single talk proposal.

I'll be gentle, and will limit myself to saying... The idea didn't
fly.

If I'm proposing a talk, I might be interested in some input on how it
is viewed. But I usually don't want others to _tell me_ what is my
talk going to be about. Many of the talk submitters ended up just
dropping their proposals.

Of course, different conferences are made by different people,
but... I don't think this would be a very good idea.

 An alternative approach: just reject any talks with poor descriptions.
 Try to tell submitters early if their description isn't good enough --
 maybe give them a short extension after the deadline to resubmit a
 better description even, but otherwise leave it up to the submitter.
 Worst case, they get rejected and can organise an ad-hoc session,
 can't they?

We have tried to do this, with decent results. This last year I have
been too busy with all kinds of stuff to really have my head sitting
properly on top of my shoulders, so I might have only partial memories
of the work we did, but in past years we _did_ ask prospective
speakers to fill up the descriptions - Or accept we would vote them
down. A talk title is NOT acceptable as a talk proposal.

- Ask participants to provide links to previous events or videos,
  allowing us to evaluate the quality of the speaker. Note that
  I am not talking about witty audience magnets only, and I have
  seen fantastic(ally prepared) speakers who presented in their
  !first language and didn't have perfect slides.
 
 Does/can debconf offer any help to poor speakers with great ideas?
 Like, maybe hooking up a new speaker with an experience speaker to
 help draft/review slides, or something like that? Could have some
 volunteers available to help folks write good descriptions for their
 proposal too, maybe?

I am not a fan of this idea. We should IMO strive to judge talks based
on their content, interest, relevance, etc. Of course, the talk
presenter will largely shape the interaction, but anyway — Shunning
somebody because they don't have a great on-stage personality does not
seem fair to me.

Over the years, I have refered to and recommended Meike Reichle's
great presentation from eight years ago:

   
http://ftp.acc.umu.se/pub/debian-meetings/2006/debconf6/theora-unscaled/2006-05-19/tower/Cheap_thrills_Instant_inspiration_for_the_masses-Meike_Reichle.ogg

And yes, your suggestion is good, although it would probably not be
something doable by the Talks Team itself but by just about everybody:
Helping speakers prepare their material.

In earlier DebConfs, we used to print proceedings. Then, proceedings
became digital only. And starting several years ago, people don't
prepare a written document before presenting the talk, because after
all, it won't be read. And, of course, every day we have legions of
people missing talks because they are busy preparing their own talk
for the following day.

If we could in some way recover the practice to prepare a small paper
for a talk presentation, I think the aspects we are discussing would
surely get better. But I don't know how we can require people to
prepare a paper.
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] Report from the talks team

[Gunnar Wolf]

Michael Banck dijo [Fri, Sep 19, 2014 at 02:03:29PM +0200]:
  also sprach Anthony Towns a...@erisian.com.au [2014-09-19 13:37 +0200]:
   An alternative approach: just reject any talks with poor descriptions.
   Try to tell submitters early if their description isn't good enough --
   maybe give them a short extension after the deadline to resubmit a
   better description even, but otherwise leave it up to the submitter.
  
  Yeah, I favour this approach.
 
 Alternatively, the talks team could take a quick look at 1/2 (they
 accepted a couple of talks this year at around that time, which I found
 great, so were looking already) and maybe 3/4 into the CfP and give some
 feedback to submissions with bad descriptions, warning them that they
 will be rejected if the description is not improved by the end of the
 CfP. Hrm, in re-reading AJ's proposal, that's probably what he meant
 with Try to tell submitters early...

FWIW, as a part of the talks team, I'd better not repeat it as it was
this time for the next year.

We announced the first batch of accepted talks early on because CfP
response was coming in *very* slow. We feared we would end up with ~80
slots and... ~20 talks. That would clearly not be good. 

I don't think we accepted many proposals I'd rather not have, but I do
feel it was somewhat unfair — Early submitters were judged differently
from late submitters, and we never announced we would do it this
way. So it was some way of cheating.
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] DebConf orga/governance sessions at DC14

[Gunnar Wolf]

martin f krafft dijo [Tue, Aug 19, 2014 at 01:24:34PM +0200]:
 (...)
 It's been many more months than are in a year or even two that we've
 become aware of the problems around DebConf governance. No change
 has been initiated. DC orga was shattered during the preparations of
 DC13, and two chairs quit this year at the pinnacle of frustration.

Two bits:

- I did not resign out of frustration with the current, past or future
  DebConf teams. I resigned after repeatedly requesting, first
  privately and later publicly, for a new delegation to take place. I
  resigned because I lack the needed time commitment; I have reduced
  my participation in most of my voluntary projects because I'm having
  a hard time following with my more tangible obligations. And I know
  this is not likely to improve in the short- or medium term.

- DC orga structure+governance will not be solved ever in a single
  session or set of sessions. I see it, in any case, as an iterative
  and continuous process. We are currently in a much better shape than
  we were several years ago. DebConf governance is malleable and
  changes year to year, even if the team delegations do not, because
  it's a somewhat different team.

  What *did* become frustrating at some point to me was that everybody
  was expecting the Mighty Chairs to decide. The Chairs' decision
  powers should be used as sparingly as possible; I do not believe any
  imposed organizational structure will fix this, but just working on
  team management, trust (re?)building, and each of us learning when
  to shut up and listen to others. Most of our (quite big!) problems
  ended up boiling down to people not knowing to shut up and think again.

 Three months later (!), two new chairs are appointed to the same
 situation, apparently not really knowing of their nomination until
 this month. I know we are all volunteers, so don't take this the
 wrong way, but it's been more than a week and there hasn't been any
 sort of statement about what the team is to expect.

FWIW I also expected a shorter delay or a clearer message. I also
expected a shorter delay since I first requested to be undelegated
(IIRC in October). But the situation does not have to be dismal. I was
thinking... At some point I pushed for fixed terms for Chairs. But
Chairs should not be different than any other delegates. And delegates
continue serving their role until either they are fed up with it, or
the project (via the DPL) are fed up with them. So, yes, a natural
term could be until I'm ready to give this responsability to somebody
else. Holger and I lasted approx. two years, Moray is still going,
and Tincho and Tássia are happily starting. Let them decide how long
to stay.

 In this light, your fear of wasting four hours of time at Debconf is
 not enough to suppress an initiative. On the contrary, I am baffled
 that there isn't *much* *more* of an effort to bring the team
 together and get our shit fixed. And no, I don't mean more mailing
 list discussions… talk about wasting time!

I would advise... Maybe not holding this as a exhaustive, extensive
sit-down meeting with all involved, but to have it as a recurring
thought. To speak between us all, on smallish groups, throughout
DC. That will allow for a better flow of understanding.

___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] DebConf orga/governance sessions at DC14

[Gunnar Wolf]

Richard Hartmann dijo [Tue, Aug 19, 2014 at 04:20:18PM +0200]:
 As someone who is relatively new to DebConf, not Debian, but who jumped
 into the deep end:
 
 * There is obviously frustration in a lot of places, this is not good.
 * As someone who helped spearhead the successful DC15 bid, I found the
 process opaque, inefficient, ill-designed, and... frustrating
 * Timelines were ignored or redefined on the fly. Again, not good.
 
 I will not be present so I can't participate, but I have known of tension
 for a full year now and next to nothing, that I can see, has happened.
 
 I can not see how referring this discussion to mailing lists instead of a
 once-yearly possibility of meeting in person is helping; especially since
 there has been a year of de facto inactivity.
 If this discussion is not needed/wanted at all it should be communicated
 clearly. If it's useful, please let it start at some point.

Hi Richard,

I do not believe the year was a stalemate. Things were done quite
differently than last year, and next year they will be done
differently, because the teams have very different compositions and
personalities. Many of us also have DebConf as a very recurring and
important part of our participation in the project - and we have
talked it over repeatedly.

We *have* had DebConf governance sessions in the past. They have been
half-successful... But half-failure. They tend to draw too many
uninvolved people, and to leave out many fundamental people (for very
understandable reasons).

___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] Android App for debconf14

[Gunnar Wolf]

Tobias Preuss dijo [Mon, Aug 18, 2014 at 04:30:59PM +0200]:
 Hi Martin,
 good to hear. My offer would be to deploy another app which is
 designed to work with Frab.
 Here is a current publication for another conference:
 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nerd.tuxmobil.fahrplan.congress
 Let me know if you are interested.
 tp

Hi,

This year we are not using Pentabarf anymore; we tried Frab (maybe not
too deeply, but we looked at it), but we settled on using Summit.
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] Budget woes

[Gunnar Wolf]

martin f krafft dijo [Mon, Aug 18, 2014 at 11:34:02PM +0200]:
If we don't have consensus/approval/support by 8am PDT Monday
morning, the default is that we're not getting bottles, because we
won't be able to.
   
   Not sure how you want to vote on this or what establishes consensus,
   but as I said months ago to Patty: if you raise the funds, you can
   have the bottles ;). So I am in favour of this.
  
  Umh, I might be late to answer, but... No, I do not feel this
  way. Steve, if you say the tap water is perfectly drinkable,
 
 … I said the above, and it's about reusable bottles (that can
 contain tap water), not bottled water.

Uh, then we are in agreement :) I was talking about the water
dispensing service (or how was it called?),not the bottles. The
bottles themselves look completely OK to me.
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] Developer conference

[Gunnar Wolf]

martin f krafft dijo [Sun, Aug 10, 2014 at 10:17:09PM +0200]:
 Is there a reason why we call DebConf our Developer conference and
 not e.g. our User  developer conference?

The aim of the conference is development. Users are welcome, but if
they are not involved in any way in Debian development, they will make
little sense of the talks.

It is for users that we have the Debian Day, with its different
denominations and changes throughout the last decade.
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] Request for Videoteam Budget increase

[Gunnar Wolf]

Steve Langasek dijo [Thu, Aug 07, 2014 at 10:55:36PM +0200]:
 (...)
 How did you arrive at this $200 figure for HDMI to VGA converters?  The
 *worst* price I've found for HDMI-VGA cables on Amazon is $20 apiece;
 assuming one per talk room, that's  $70 including shipping, which is
 nowhere near $200.

Again, I do have four such adaptors - Two of them should work readily
(VGA to HDMI dongles), and two should work with a MiniHDMI to HDMI
adaptor. If they are useful, I can take them with me. I won't be
during the plenary session days, but can lend them for all of the rest
of the conference time.
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] Final schedule structure - review

[Gunnar Wolf]

Ana Guerrero Lopez dijo [Wed, Jul 09, 2014 at 11:26:49PM +0200]:
 On Wed, Jul 02, 2014 at 10:06:51AM +, René Mayorga wrote:
  [2] http://people.debian.org/~rmayorga/schedule-dc14.png
 
 If you look at the above image, you'll see we can schedule 55
 official talks and 26 ad-hoc talks.
 We have gotten about 100 talks proposals which mean we will need
 to reject many good proposals. We can do this or:
 (...)

I would propose one more way out for this. We have more space,
although it has been reserved as hack time, but people will end up
using it anyway in the most ad-hoc of senses. I think we must
acknowledge Monday afternoon/evening and Thursday morning *will* have
some talks activity — And it should be reflected in the schedule. We
can mark a distinction by saying those are purely ad-hoc spaces,
without video coverage, but allowing people to submit proposals for
those timeslots. Thus, we would gain 18 slots (6 slots, 3 rooms) for
ad-hoc talks. A similar slot could even be added after dinner, giving
up to 19 extra slots (6 days with the rooms separated in 3, 1 day with
a single room).

Again, even if we don't formally include said slots in the schedule,
they will be used. By including it in the schedule, we reduce the
space usage clashes and increae the visibility. And by not officially
videoing them (up to the video team to enforce/enable/prohibit this),
we do keep part of this hacking time requested by some.
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] Motivate woman contributors

[Gunnar Wolf]

Hello Yehuda,

I'm sending this reply only to our debconf-team list, it's a common
practice among us to reduce cross-posting as much as possible :)

 My name is Yehuda Korotkin and I teach technologies in one of leading
 colleges for women in Israel.
 
 I thought about the possibility of introduce Debian and the Debian
 community to the girls that i teach.
 
 Our girls will install Debian Linux for the first time in their lives next
 week.
 I would like to take them on a journey in the open source world (from
 installation to community behind code).
 And give them a feeling of welcome and belonging.

Great initiative, I hope for your success here! :)

 I think would be fun and interesting to make a video conference call with
 community and give them a general explanation about Debian, introduce them
 to the community and get them welcome to the world of Debian
 and encouraging women for technology

Maybe you would prefer having a local Israeli to make it a closer
experience? We have several Debian-related people (some developers,
some contributors) in Israel, so this might be quite achievable! Do
you want me to put them (in private mail) in contact with you?

___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] PSU Network Requirements

[Gunnar Wolf]

Kees Cook dijo [Wed, Jun 04, 2014 at 06:33:55PM -0700]:
 Hi,
 
 I talked on the phone today with the head of the PSU network. I can't say I
 have good news at all.

Umh, right. Although they can be seen in a good light: This saves us
from the work of setting up the network :)

 They don't want us setting up our own wifi network because it will
 collide with theirs. The /16 they'd mentioned is for their entire campus,
 not just for our conference. Their guest wifi network is a captive
 portal that needs email registration on a per-MAC per-day basis. All
 externally-initiated traffic is blocked. Their wifi and wired networks are
 separate segments.

The main thing that worries me here is that I've seen very few Wifi
setups where the infrastructure is adequate for the density we usually
handle. Yes, also in DebConf we have saturation problems, but at least
we know our guys know their way setting up APs in the right channels
to minimize the problem (and whatever other configmagic I do not know
about). Can PSU provide at least the facility for their network admins
to do the needed changes if they are pointed out? How many APs do they
have per working space?

We could consider having enough switches and cables for people to
connect, in order to avoid starvation syndrome.

 What they can do:
 
 - light up 1 port per conf room with access to their wired network
 - disable port security for our rooms so we can add our own switches
 - add hardcoded MACs to the wifi guest ACL that avoids the captive portal
 - support thousands of people on their wifi network

If this is so (and *done properly*), I think we won't have much
problems. If they can set up *more than* one port, that would be great
— If for nothing else, to separate video streams from regular
traffic.

We can ask attendees to provide their MAC addresses beforehand, so we
are all on the ACL whitelist by the time we get there?

I don't see the captive portal as much of a problem, unless it's one
of those captive portals that kicks you out and drops your connections
too often (but if you say it requires one login a day, it's not that
bad).

 (...)
 Do we _need_ to have arbitrary inbound access? If so, why?

It's nice to have, but we don't _need_ it, and we have often not had
it.

 Do we _need_ wired switches in all the rooms? If so, why? (I suspect I can
 answer this one, but I want to hear other voices.)

I'd say, yes. Because wireless is much fail-prone. Also, because
several people come with devices other than laptops they want to work
on, and those devices don't always have a wireless interface.

 Do we expect to host an archive mirror or other services somewhere on
 the wired network? If so, why?

It would be good. Because having a mirror strongly reduces network
load — Some hundreds of Debian people working on Debian time will be
hammering ftp.us.debian.org otherwise.

 If we bring in an ISP, it's going to get messy and costly. I would
 really like to avoid this, but it seems to be our only fallback if we
 can't live peacefully on their existing infrastructure. IIUC, they peer
 with at least with Integra. Possibly ComCast. I'm getting an up to date
 list shortly.

I don't think we will need an external ISP.
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] A proposal about scheduling for DC14

[Gunnar Wolf]

Clint Adams dijo [Wed, Jun 04, 2014 at 01:13:14AM +]:
 On Tue, Jun 03, 2014 at 11:52:39PM +0100, Moray Allan wrote:
  Personally, I preferred the original Portland proposal of trying a
  more interleaved schedule -- for me, having blocks of three days for
  talks / hacking and BOFs just recreates the DebConf/DebCamp split the
  same as in other recent years, wasting the opportunity to experiment
  with how a different format works.  If an interleaved format *doesn't*
  work as well, we wouldn't need to repeat it, but I was ready to
  believe that it might indeed be better -- we won't find out if we
  never try it.
 
 I concur.

I also concur with Moray's reasoning. However, again: if we allow
people to schedule ad-hoc talks during the quiet days, even though
the official pre-schedule might look as we intend it to, I believe the
_real_ schedule will look approximately as it always has.

So, yes, if we have to decide between three days of mostly-hackning
(read: What was previously known as DebCamp) and three days of
mostly-conference (read: What was previously known as DebConf), I
think the point pushed by the local team about DebCamp not being a net
benefit for Debian would defeat itself. Interleaving mostly-talks and
mostly-hacking days would at least introduce a change that could in
some way be evaluated.
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] [rmayo...@debian.org: Summit - Propose a event form fields]

[Gunnar Wolf]

Carl Karsten dijo [Mon, May 26, 2014 at 06:16:45PM -0500]:
 As the new Video team lead, (no worries Holger is still here)
 
 Do we need to ask the presenter permission to email them things like
 please review your title slide: http://...png; and later your video is
 here:  http://;

I would say that permission is well within the interested in the
conference umbrella, and your mails should not be seen as spam.

But OTOH, please look at the other thread on debconf-t...@l.dc.o and
evaluate whether the video team can accomodate three official
simultaneous events.
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] A proposal about scheduling for DC14

[Gunnar Wolf]

I won't argue more on this, as it will start becoming a flamewar if we
don't control ourselves ;-) Whether or not we are having a DebCamp
should already be decided, and we should work based on that. So I
won't fan the bug/regression flames anymore. And please, I invite the
others to do likewise.

 The only issue I've seen that might be a problem is the suggestion that
 the video team may not be able to cope with 3 talk streams going on. It
 would be good if someone could confirm that's not a problem, but in the
 absence of yelling I'm going to assume that this is doable.

Please wait for a formal answer from them, it will be much clearer. I
have just requested Carl to comment.

 So I think this rough format is what we should try for DC 14. It's not
 going to keep everyone happy, but takes on board a range of
 considerations that have been mentioned. I've emailed the venue to try
 and get some meal times nailed down and will follow up when I've done
 so.

OK. But, even after your explanation, and the others' input: I feel
the proposed format effectively cuts the conference to three days,
reinstating a three day long soft-DebCamp (with very few BoF slots
around). During DebConf, we usually carry a wholly-packed schedule for
the full length of the conference (five/six days). Cutting it back to
only three days of talks, with 3:1 concurrency... Does not feel very
nice to me. I would prefer having a full two-room schedule, with a
potentially empty room for scheduling ad-hoc BoF sessions. And people
that want to devote time to hacking can, of course, take advantage of
the sprints feature.

I understand the rationale for pushing this change. But, on pushing it
while back-pedaling? :(
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] A proposal about scheduling for DC14

[Gunnar Wolf]

Didier 'OdyX' Raboud dijo [Sun, May 25, 2014 at 12:22:56PM +0200]:
 Le samedi, 24 mai 2014, 18.22:51 Steve Langasek a écrit :
  If the only way they're interested in coming to DebConf is to have a
  week's vacation at Debian's expense, then I don't see a problem here.
 
 Given that not everyone can work on Debian during work-time, I do rather 
 consider it a feature that Debian supports undisturbed collaborative 
 work.
 
 I do also find the continued assumption that DebCamp attendees only 
 attend for a free vacation quite shocking.

...Specially if the proposed time split favors having three days of
such an arrangement.

FWIW, I do consider a bug we have lost DebCamp for this year, and a
feature we are likely to recover it for the next one.
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team

Re: [Debconf-team] A proposal about scheduling for DC14

[Gunnar Wolf]

Hello world, 

Jonathan McDowell dijo [Sat, May 17, 2014 at 01:34:58PM -0700]:
 It doesn't look like we yet have a shape for how the days should be laid
 out over the conference. Steve put forward a strawman in
 
 http://lists.debconf.org/lurker/message/20131001.175026.0a50b91b.en.html
 
 and AJ countered in:
 
 http://lists.debconf.org/lurker/message/20131002.135054.6fb41220.en.html

Great thing that you start driving this. Thanks!

 (...)
 I liked AJ's suggestion about a sort-of DebCamp after the day trip day
 but thought that perhaps we could mix some of the BOFs in with this. If
 we have a BOF session before + after lunch on each of these days it
 hopefully doesn't break flow of concentration too much (assuming you'd
 break for lunch anyway) and potentially provides a bit more focus for
 hacking in terms of providing time near the BOF to go off and work on
 stuff related to it.

I understand and also like somewhat AJ's idea and your implementation,
but I'd like to make a few buts here and there.

 Fri, August 22:   Arrival day. Dorm check in available after noon.
   Minimal hacklabs. No talks.
 Sat, August 23:   First day of conference. Opening immediately 
 after
   brunch. Slots for 4 talks afterwards (inc DPL).
 Sun, August 24:   Full day of talks; start post brunch,
   15 slots.

Hmm... I would assume most people travelling from far will travel
during the weekend, as taking time off work is better explained when
it is constrained to a week. This might be related to the fact that
it's what I will be doing — And my travel is among the shortest for
the international attendees.  I would use Saturday as a soft-day, that
is, a hack day + BoF day for people that already arrived, but a buffer
day for the rest. Yes, we often have an arrival day marked as such,
but have people dripping in during all of DebCamp... So I think having
a soft day at the beginning would be more suited to what we have come
to expect.

At least, what I have come to expect. But, of course, I'm trying not
to make this day about myself (and rather, make it about the whole
group).

Right, you set Saturday as a day with four talks only... But I would
push strong talks, such as the DPL's to Sunday.

 Mon, August 25:   Full day of talks. 18 slots.
 Tue, August 26:   Full day of talks. 18 slots.
 Wed, August 27:   Day trip
 Thu, August 28:   Hack day. BOFs either side of lunch (6 slots).
 Fri, August 29:   Hack day. BOFs either side of lunch (6 slots).
 Sat, August 30:   Hack day. BOFs post brunch (3 slots).
 Sun, August 31:   Last day of conference. Post brunch lightning
   talks (1hr30?), closing plenary, done by 4pm.
   Hacklabs open.
 Mon, September 1: Leaving day. No hacklabs, leave rooms by noon.

...And what I don't really feel comfortable here is with the lack of
balance. If we have the rooms available, of course, people will
request ad-hoc sessions, so I doubt we would _really_ use only 6
slots. We would most probably use over 15, as history has shown when
we have an empty room.

Having the 18 slots on three rooms during Sun/Mon/Tue would put much
more pressure not only on the video team (they would be covering three
and not just two rooms), but on attendees. Having to choose among
*all* of our selected talks over three days can lead to insatisfaction
with the overall program.

 I think the important people who need to say that this works for them
 are the talks and video teams. Getting a quick agreement on this will
 help those trying to get their tickets booked; I will assume if I don't
 hear anything in the next week that this works for everyone.

Well... I understand AJ's point, but I think that finding hacking
time/space will rather be a personal issue. And having a day of
hacking interrupted by one or two very good talks you don't want to
miss... well, it is not as disruptive as following the whole day.

It's not a strong opinion... but I'm not that thrilled with the
proposed time. It might lead to many people just sticking around
until Tuesday and then going, as there's nothing interesting
programmed anymore. And if we decided to sacrifice DebCamp this time,
I don't think it should be made in prejudice of the conference time
proper. Yes, seven days of talks might be a bit too much, but a strict
three day-three day separation is also harsh. I'd do the
differentiation softer, or alternate between the hack and talk days.
___
Debconf-team mailing list
Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org
http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team