Re: What makes a debconf?
On Tue, May 27, 2003 at 12:04:03AM +1000, Russell Coker wrote: Having a single debconf was a good idea when it was first started in Bordeaux. Since then things have changed, there is more apparent demand for conferences and more reluctance to travel. It appears that I not be in the majority here but I like the excuse to travel and I like meeting developers from farther away. The rotating hemispheres plus mini-confs and Debian days is working out pretty well for me. Even if it is (quite) a bit of a strain logistically and financially. Regards, Mako -- Benj. Mako Hill [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mako.yukidoke.org/ pgp21bA52dmh0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: What makes a debconf?
On Tue, May 27, 2003 at 07:25:19AM -0400, Theodore Ts'o wrote: It's a bit more complicated than that. [...] Thanks for the clarifications. While it may be true that ALS would have gone belly-up anyway along with so many other innocent bystanders to the dot-com bust, I think a the decision to take ALS on the road, and out of the U.S. southeast, was a fundamental mistake. Some of the poorest parts of the U.S. are in the southeast region, and in this time of economic recession, cash-strapped businesses, school districts, universities, and even government bureaus need GNU/Linux more than ever to attain independence from M$ licensing servitude. I admit that my perspective is only informed by what I perceive as opportunities for Free Software (and Debian Developers), and that I understand little of the economics of running a trade show. -- G. Branden Robinson|You should try building some of the Debian GNU/Linux |stuff in main that is [EMAIL PROTECTED] |modern...turning on -Wall is like http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |turning on the pain. -- James Troup pgp8ISlWFtfuf.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: What makes a debconf?
On Sat, May 24, 2003 at 01:41:56AM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: True enough, but since USENIX took over Atlanta Linux Showcase, ran it for one year, and then shot it in the back of a head like a drug kingpin assassinating an unwanted lieutenant, Debian developers in the U.S., particularly the southeast, have been missing a bit of an opportunity for a gathering. I really miss ALS. It's a bit more complicated than that. Jon 'Maddog' Hall strongly encouraged the folks who ran ALS to team up with Usenix, and to try moving the show around to different parts of the country, with the 'A' in ALS changed from Atlanta to Annual. The first such collaboration happened in Atlanta, and the second happened in Oakland, California, in 2001. Unfortunately, at some level, ALS's business model was fundamentally flawed. It relied on the trade show floor subsidizing everything else. This worked fine during the dot.com boom, when money flowed like water, but by 2001, VA Linux had dumped its hardware business and switched to a propietary software model, Linuxcare had gone belly up, Turbolinux was pretty much gone, etc. So I remember going to the show, and noting that one (the only?) Platinum trade show sponsor --- Redhat --- thought the show so unimportant that even though they had paid $$$ to be a Platinum sponsor, their booth consisted of an unadorned table two boxes of Red Hat and Red Hat Advanced Server, with no one even bothering to staff the booth. To make matters worse, the 2001 ALS happened two months after 9/11, which meant a lot of people cancelled travel, and so Usenix wasn't able to make the hotel room block guarantees. The bottom line was that Usenix lost half a million dollars on that show. After that point, a post-mortem was done on the show, and it was pretty much agreed that the ALS business model was pretty not going to work going forward, and that at best, the only thing which made sense was that it go back to its roots as a small regional show. Most vendors don't have much interest in going to a Linux-specific trade show, these days. The last one to exist is Linux World Conference and Expo in NYC and San Francisco, and it's not too clear they will continue to exist 2-3 years from now. Most of the exhibitors at LWCE are companies that also go to Comdex and other big trade shows anyway, and the customers they want to sell aren't necessarily going to be at a Linux-specific trade show. However, the ALS organizers were pretty tired and burned out, and so they decided not to do another show in 2002. It certainly would be great for there to be more regional Linux shows, although my guess is that they will have to be much smaller affairs than ALS has been in the past. If people in the southwest are interested in running one, I suspect the ALS old-timers would be ecstatic, and would be happy to dispense words of wisdom - Ted
Re: What makes a debconf?
On Sunday, May 25, 2003, at 08:10 PM, Jonathan Oxer wrote: Maybe a reasonable compromise would be to have 2 'official' debconfs / year, as 'Debconf North' and 'Debconf South' (as in Northern and Southern hemisphere). I've got no problem with this. I wouldn't really even have any problem with a Debconf East and West, either. The conflict occurs, though, when two such conferences (or opportunities for them) come up in the same area. Such is the issue with the bid for a conference in D.C. vs. my bid for one in Vancouver.
Re: What makes a debconf?
On Mon, 26 May 2003 23:43, Joe Drew wrote: On Sunday, May 25, 2003, at 08:10 PM, Jonathan Oxer wrote: Maybe a reasonable compromise would be to have 2 'official' debconfs / year, as 'Debconf North' and 'Debconf South' (as in Northern and Southern hemisphere). I've got no problem with this. I wouldn't really even have any problem with a Debconf East and West, either. The conflict occurs, though, when two such conferences (or opportunities for them) come up in the same area. Such is the issue with the bid for a conference in D.C. vs. my bid for one in Vancouver. Having a single debconf was a good idea when it was first started in Bordeaux. Since then things have changed, there is more apparent demand for conferences and more reluctance to travel. There's no reason why you couldn't have Debian conferences in both places. Both Canada and the US have decent populations for local attendance and for each one you should get enough people attending from other countries. If you can get a venue, arrange suitably priced accomodation, organize a team of people to do the work of running it, and find enough celebrity speakers then you can run a conference regardless of what else happens. It would be nice if we could have a Debian day before or after OLS... -- http://www.coker.com.au/selinux/ My NSA Security Enhanced Linux packages http://www.coker.com.au/bonnie++/ Bonnie++ hard drive benchmark http://www.coker.com.au/postal/Postal SMTP/POP benchmark http://www.coker.com.au/~russell/ My home page
Re: What makes a debconf?
On Sat, 2003-05-24 at 15:27, Brian May wrote: On Fri, May 23, 2003 at 05:25:29PM -0400, Joe Drew wrote: Do we need some method of deciding what constitutes 'the' Debconf? No, as everyone knows that the only true Debconf are the ones in Australia, with LCA. Hehe, preach it brother ;-) Maybe a reasonable compromise would be to have 2 'official' debconfs / year, as 'Debconf North' and 'Debconf South' (as in Northern and Southern hemisphere). With the last Mini-Conf in Australia attracting more people than any Debconf so far, it's probably not unreasonable for the annual Debian Mini-Conf at LCA to be promoted as Debconf South. That would provide an official Debconf in each hemisphere for people that need to convince their bosses to send them to one, making it more attainable (ie: cheaper) but without leaching too much from each other. Cheers Jonathan signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: What makes a debconf?
On Fri, May 23, 2003 at 05:25:29PM -0400, Joe Drew wrote: Do we need some method of deciding what constitutes 'the' Debconf? No, as everyone knows that the only true Debconf are the ones in Australia, with LCA. ;-). -- Brian May [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: What makes a debconf?
On Fri, May 23, 2003 at 10:02:42PM -0400, David B Harris wrote: The problem is that people who can get expenses reimbursed need to have a focus. Sponsors need to have a focus. There needs to be a major conference for these kinds of things; in other words, it has to be billed as something more than just a bunch of people getting together, even if that's what *all* conferences are at heart. If a Debian Developer's employer is willing to let them go to one trade conference a year, expenses paid or partially paid, and the options are one of a dozen Debian conferences or LinuxWorld, their employers will say LinuxWorld. If, on the other hand, the options are one of a dozen Debian conferences, Debconf, and LinuxWorld, their employers will likely allow either of the last two. True enough, but since USENIX took over Atlanta Linux Showcase, ran it for one year, and then shot it in the back of a head like a drug kingpin assassinating an unwanted lieutenant, Debian developers in the U.S., particularly the southeast, have been missing a bit of an opportunity for a gathering. I really miss ALS. -- G. Branden Robinson|The first thing the communists do Debian GNU/Linux |when they take over a country is to [EMAIL PROTECTED] |outlaw cockfighting. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |-- Oklahoma State Senator John Monks pgpFRE1cdW2o1.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: What makes a debconf?
* Joe Drew ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) [030524 01:11]: It's not entirely clear to me what makes Debconf into 'the' Debian conference. For example, if this conference in the US ends up happening, what's to say it isn't Debconf 3? The defining characteristics, so far as I can define them, are that it is annual, and Debian developers go to it. that it is international, and is focused on debian regarding the topics of talks, surrounding events and such? Do we need some method of deciding what constitutes 'the' Debconf? and we do need THE Debconf. I am all for having as many debian meetings, install parties, debian beer hikes and Debian user group meetings as possible, preferable on a regualar basis. Everyting to let debian become a real-live (vs online/virtual) community, too! the intention of the debconf is to be the regular/annual meetingpoint for the debian developer/user community, where people can get in touch, enjoy the huge bandwidth of face-to-face communication, build relations to people otherwise on the other end of the earth and only met on irc/mailinglist, eat and talk,... in my opinion this servs to inspire and to enthuse people to spend insane amounts of their time on making debian the best operatingsystem. people should realise again that they are part of a greater cause, some kind of crusade, if you will. (c: it does that only if it is significant. it is less significant if it is less focused (as david pointed out in this thread) and less international. It needs to be unique for that. the significant amount of work and time (and money) the preparation of a debconf consumes will by itself ensure that there are not too many in one year. And those wishing and able to invest this time hopefully are enlightend enough to not destroy the debconf experience by creating the debconf3.2.5. it might be possible to have a debconf at several locations (even the US?) at the same time, with high-powered communication links (satellite links for video-tansmission of talks?). This sounds rather advanced and i know nothing about the economic and technical implications.
Re: What makes a debconf?
Do we need some method of deciding what constitutes 'the' Debconf? Or maybe we need to be more freeform. There is no inherent betterness of say the Oslo conference over one held near Washington, DC. Maybe there are 4 of them one year and only one the next. Maybe we start holding one every year in Little Rock, Arkansas and Paris, France. Debconf is about Debian developers trying to meet other devels and users. Its about trying to make us a stronger organization. Its about hacking and all of the other reasons we love Debian. Treating it like a Comdex, a Linux World or anything else just seems wrong. Developers should feel encouraged to declare a conference whenever and whereever they can make one. If one of us can organize a meet and people will show up that makes a conference. (hmm, reading this before I hit send the above may sound confrontational. Joe this is not my intent. Just expressing how I feel about the whole debconf idea).
Re: What makes a debconf?
On Fri, 23 May 2003 17:33:58 -0700 Sean 'Shaleh' Perry [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Debconf is about Debian developers trying to meet other devels and users. Its about trying to make us a stronger organization. Its about hacking and all of the other reasons we love Debian. Treating it like a Comdex, a Linux World or anything else just seems wrong. The problem is that people who can get expenses reimbursed need to have a focus. Sponsors need to have a focus. There needs to be a major conference for these kinds of things; in other words, it has to be billed as something more than just a bunch of people getting together, even if that's what *all* conferences are at heart. If a Debian Developer's employer is willing to let them go to one trade conference a year, expenses paid or partially paid, and the options are one of a dozen Debian conferences or LinuxWorld, their employers will say LinuxWorld. If, on the other hand, the options are one of a dozen Debian conferences, Debconf, and LinuxWorld, their employers will likely allow either of the last two. Developers should feel encouraged to declare a conference whenever and whereever they can make one. If one of us can organize a meet and people will show up that makes a conference. Of course, but Debconf is a specific term. If you're arguing that it isn't, then we need to come up with another one, that denotes an annual Debian conference that's official in nature :) See above. I'm really not trying to say that people can't get together when they want to. Just saying that having something people can *focus* on is a benefit to the community. So an annual or semi-annual Debconf is good, even if all that _really_ distinguishes it from the rest is that we don't call two conferences Debconf within the same six/tweleve-month time frame :) pgpldMJDrEpvJ.pgp Description: PGP signature
