Organization of the 1st Debian Conference
1st Debian Conference Organisation Draft
----------------------------------------
Contents :
1. Goals
2. Dates and place
3. Program skeleton
4. Program goals
5. Needed "code"
5.1 Planning program
5.2 Documentation
6. Material details
7. Organization
7.1 Mailing lists for discussion
7.2 Devolution (but _not_ decentralization)
7.3 Sponsoring rules
7.4 Communication
7.5 Organizing my succession
8. Miscellaneous details
-------------------------------
1. Goals
--------
The main goal of the Debian Conference is to gather, one time per year,
the "enterprise" Debian, to materialize it somewhere, in order for the
developers to know each other, to learn from each other, and to learn
how to work more efficiently together.
At the moment --- and, IMHO, it would be a good idea that this remains
---, the Debian Conference is embedded in a more general event, allowing
multiple exchanges with other actors of the libre software mouvement.
The Zeroth Debian Conference has shown that the idea is worth the
effort. The 1st one will try to improve it.
2. Dates and place
------------------
The 1st Debian Conference will be held from 4th to 8th of July 2001, in
Bordeaux (France), during the second edition of the Libre Software
Meeting, more precisely on the campus of the ENSERB and the University
of Bordeaux I (same place as the Zeroth Conference).
3. Program skeleton
-------------------
o Wednesday the 4th :
- (Morning) : official opening, and presentation of the topics ;
- (afternoon) : Speech from the Throne ;
[I'd like to see all the Leaders (present and past) here for the
1st ;)]
- First topics
o From Thursday to Saturday [included] :
- Conferences, discussions, coding parties
o Saturday [end of the afternoon] : debian synthesis
o Saturday night : fiesta ! [outside, cheap, friendly, near the sea if I
can organize the transport]
o Sunday :
- morning : presentation of the synthesis, conclusion ;
- install party [? Proposed by the LSM organizers ; I do not
really like the idea...]
- afternoon : touring [We will see ;)]
4. Program goals
----------------
The goals are : to learn, and to work (and to have fun, but this is
partially outside of the scope of the organization ;).
We can consider Debian via 3 aspects :
0) Debian and the others (end users);
1) Debian and the libre software community;
2) Debian for itself (Debian internals);
Somewhere between 0 and 1, one can find the topic "cooperation between
the main distributions" : deb2 as sketched by Wichert should be a whole
topic, using the presence of other distributions (for example Mandrake).
Somewhere between 1 and 2, one can find HURD. For the 1st Conference,
demonstrations of a running HURD, but also, mainly, technical conferences
about the HURD programmation should be considered.
For Debian by itself, one can consider 3 levels :
0) User level ;
1) Maintainer level ;
2) Developer level ;
The level 0 is not addressed by the conference. Remain levels 1 and 2.
For level 1, it might be a good idea to organize "maintainer classes",
explaining how to use the tools (the deb* tools, specially debconf),
explaining policy and so on. The classes should _not_ run through the
whole Conference : half a day, or one day maximum.
For level 2, the development of Debian tools (HURD is, of course, a
level 2 topic) : boot-floppies, packages-pools, apt, HURD, etc...
These are only ideas. The principles are that there are conferences, but
also impromptus : a conference is an "emergent" event ; but discussions,
coding parties and so on can be organised on demand (we had, and will
have at least a room dedicated to Debian impromptus), continuing --- or
not --- the conferences.
The 1st Conference will be a multi-threaded one : there could be a
conference of level 1 and level 2 at the very same time.
The trick is to organize the Debian Conference, embedded in the LSM, so
that one can find and attend the maximum of conferences of interest for
him, Debian but also not Debian ones.
This leads to the "code" needed.
5. Needed "code"
----------------
5.1. Planning program
---------------------
In order to improve the organization of the whole LSM and of the Debian
conference, a "planning" program (allowing to generate a sensible
schedule for the conferences) could be useful.
As a side effect, this kind of program could help to introduce libre
software in schools. There are three pointers found by Pierre Jarillon
(President of the ABUL, one of the organizers of the LSM) :
http://www.duke.edu/~pat4/think/
http://slug.ctv.es/~luis/l-linux/l-linux-1997-04/0062.html
http://spyder.cstp.umkc.edu/personal/tschnell/cs457/project/project3.htm
If somebody knows better projects, or is interested in contributing to
the development of such a beast, please contact me ;)
5.2. Documentation
------------------
Secondly, Sebastien Blondeel, member of APRIL, is, at the moment, doing
a huge work : trying to retranscribe a part of the tapes in order to
reconstitute some conferences.
As he has suggested, for the next time, it would be better that every
speaker prepare and give the text of his conference before the event, so
that the documentation remains (killing to birds with one stone :
recording his speech for the history, and improving the documentation
about some technical topics). The text will be available for attendees,
easing the understanding for the attendees not speaking the language of
the speaker, easing notes.
6. Material details
-------------------
For recall, the prices were these ones (next year, they will be, I
think, comparable) :
- breakfast : 7 FF or 12 FF
- lunch : 35 FF
- room in the students hall of residence : 55 FF/night.
7. Organization
---------------
7.1 Mailing lists for discussion
--------------------------------
The discussions about the Debian Conference take place on one main
list : debian@lsm.abul.org. To subscribe, just send a message to
sympa@lsm.abul.org, with the Subject : "subscribe debian".
There is also a list for discussing general problems or ideas for
the whole LSM : lsm@lsm.abul.org (same procedure).
7.2 Devolution (but _not_ decentralization)
-------------------------------------------
There is one main organizer, whose main task is to coordinate, and
take the decisions --- generally not the pleasant ones...
For the next conference, the 1st one, this will be Thierry Laronde
<thierry.laronde@polynum.com>. But I will _not_ organize the next
ones (see 7.5).
Because Debian is a world wide organization, we need a kind of
devolution, that is the main organizer needs to delegate the
gathering of the developers by country to kind of local debian
organizations, because :
- if developers gather themselves by country, they can have group
prices for the transport (combining early reservations and group
reductions) ;
- it's far more easy to organize the transport from the
airport | railroad station to the place where the Conference is
held for groups than for a gaz of individuals ;
- it will be more easy for the organizer to have a tree
organization, that is, not to handle directly every individual
case.
Please try to see if someone can be, by country, the local interface
to the general organization. TIA.
The "top" organization still need volunteers !
7.3 Sponsoring rules
--------------------
Don't suppose that we will have enough money to sponsor everybody :
this will _never_ happen ! So help yourself, and the organization
will help you ;)
The main part of the budget is for the transport. As said before, to
reserve early and to group will decrease the prices : start looking
at this right now.
Every individual can be sponsored by an enterprise, etc... The
event, and the LSM as a whole, can be considered as a part of
technical training. This is good for every attendee, so this is good
for every enterprise employing such a guy ;)
I will organize something in France for the search for funds, and
will explain it later, so that one can take this as a basis for his
own reflections.
7.4 Communication
-----------------
We do need to communicate, via newspapers and the net... Not to
mention _debian events page_... The event must be known, advertised,
and this is the task of everybody, at every moment ;)
7.5 Organizing my succession
----------------------------
As said before, I will not organize the 2nd Conference. I want to
put in place the framework so that the job will be easier in the
future. But I want to find a successor, and the best way to ease the
succession is to find somebody, this year, joigning the staff,
who will see the problems, and will have an overview of the task.
The main qualities required are mine : never happy, never kind,
morally and physically unpleasant so that we are sure he is single
and will remain so (well, this is not guaranteed to work : I know
several wives who correspond to the portrait, but who, unfortunately
for their husbands, are not single :-^ ; say this is the feminine
part of my personnality ;).
8. Miscellaneous details
------------------------
We will try, every year, to make a group photography of Debian, like the
photography taken in the schools, with the list of the members : faces
matching emails ;)
--
Thierry LARONDE <thierry.laronde@polynum.com>
Membre de l'APRIL - http://www.april.org/
10, rue du Bel Air, 74000 ANNECY / Tel.-Fax : 33.(0)4.50.67.46.61
/home du SDF (Site Debian Francophone) : http://www.polynum.com/debian/
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