As you say, it was a mistake, so unfortunately no one knew about it to
be able to tell you.
I just thought that a human made the change to the paper's status, and so that person could have realized the implications, and told me.
> Will you reimburse my expenses in that situation?
You don't appear to have been awarded travel, accommodation, or food
sponsorship, so DebConf won't reimburse your expenses in any case; the
deadlines for requesting sponsorship passed a few months ago.
The point is that this mistake costs me time and money. I wouldn't necessarily have taken the time and purchased a plane ticket if I wasn't going to be giving a talk. It was the (big) "straw that broke the camel's back" in the decision to go to a Debian conference. Now, I am going to at least re-consider.
I'd almost be happy to speak to an empty room as I have not given many presentations before and this was going to be practice for me. Actually, I've talked to a lot of people about Debian and Ubuntu and I think there might be a decent amount of interest for a such a discussion.
-Keith