Hey all,
One of the things that's confusing me about the bidding this year is
the "do or die" attitude that we seem to have gotten to; I've heard
suggestions from both teams now that if they don't get DebConf 7 they're
going to give up and not try again.
That seems a bit crazy to me -- it's just one year, there'll always be
others. At least from my experience with linux.conf.au [0] if a venue
misses out one year, that just means they come back the next year with
more ideas, more time to prepare, and the advantage of having seen all
the clever ideas the team that beat them had so they can incorporate
them into their own bid. I think the teams that ran the conference in
every year from 2003-2006 had already tried to run it the year before,
but "lost" to another team; and every one of those years ended up running
a better conference than the year prior too.
Personally, I've been to Edinburgh and know a few of the UK guys, so I
figure that whatever they say now, if they don't get DebConf 7 they'll
pretty much keep hosting events like DebianParty2006 [1] and going to
trade shows and otherwise participating, and eventually, though Moray
presumably won't be available, there'll be another bid sometime in the
future anyway. Please, correct me if I'm wrong.
I don't know the Sarajevo team at all, and I've learnt more about
Bosnia and the balkans in the last week or two than the rest of my life
combined, so I'm not really in a position to guess at what will happen
there if DebConf goes to Edinburgh instead. But nothing's stopping me
from asking, right?
One of the things that really struck a chord with me about Sarajevo
wasn't something from the bid itself, but rather the introduction
on Sarajevo University's homepage [2], which describes some of the
phases they've gone through -- the commitment to learning and education
and scientific inquiry in the face of adverse circumstances that that
espouses is... amazing beyond my ability to describe. Personally, I'd
feel honoured to have any involvement with an institution like that.
So I guess what I wonder is why this has to be such a winner/loser
scenario; obviously we're only going to have one DebConf 2007 -- but just
as I expect that if that's in Sarajevo, there'll be another "DebianParty"
of some sort in the UK in 2007; I don't see why there can't be some sort
of event in Bosnia as well, even if Edinburgh has DebConf 2007 -- there
certainly seem to be plenty of people inside Bosnia who are interested
(I count just under 30 people listed as organisers on the Sarajevo page
on the wiki; and I know that a lot of other developers are at least as
fascinated as I am with the opportunity of promoting free software and
Debian in areas like Sarajevo).
And personally, I think Sarajevo could be a much more interesting and
valuable experience if the international participation was small enough
(say 50 people) that we could forego worrying about big venues, and
instead stay with locals, and do smaller events like running tutorials
or hackfests at the university with local students and staff, or offering
some free training in Debian administration, programming, use or community
participation to local schools, businesses or government, or for all I
know going on visits to smaller towns in the country and doing similar
things there.
(I've also heard suggestions that the Sarajevo team would actually like to
run a conference that's about free software in general, as much as Debian
in particular; I don't know if that's true or not, but if it is, it seems
to me like it'd be much easier to achieve that by using the contacts
built up during this process to run a different event to DebConf, that
includes Debian developers, but also involves other projects directly too)
To make this hypothetical a little more concrete, if Debian were to
choose Edinburgh for DebConf 2007, but also commit funds towards travel
costs and other expenses for some different sort of event in Sarajevo
in 2007 -- whether Debian specific or not -- would the Sarajevo team
still be interested in that, or have we got to the point where:
<gwolf> sapphire_sjj: If we chose UK, how do you think your crowd would take it?
<gwolf> Would you still be motivated to push for it on a next Debconf?
<sapphire_sjj> gwolf, we will not bid again, honestly. you given us too much
mud at our face, but we are fighting until the decision
is the final word on that score?
Cheers,
aj
[0] "This is the best conference I've ever been to" -- Keith Packard
http://michaeldavies.org/docs/LCA2004.html
"Since Sunday, the second greatest GNU/Linux show on Earth (after
Linux.conf.au) rolled into Charles de Gaulle airport, just outside
Paris." -- http://lwn.net/Articles/188905/
[1] http://wiki.earth.li/DebianParty2006
[2] http://www.unsa.ba/eng/ouni.php
"The fifth phase (1992 - 1995) is a phase of barbaric devastation
of the facilities and equipment of the University as well as a
decrease of university personnel and an enormous decrease in the
number of students. All this was caused by the war and aggression
against Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Despite all the difficulties of life and work during the
three-and-a-half-year-long siege of Sarajevo and thanks to the
enthusiasm, professional attitude, patriotism and perseverance
of university teachers and associates as well as the students,
the University of Sarajevo managed to retain its continuity
of work and life. This was a specific aspect of intellectual,
academic resistance towards everything that is barbaric and against
civilisation, the University's contribution to the affirmation of
freedom and democracy, the defence against aggression and fascism
and the affirmation of the statehood of Bosnia-Herzegovina."
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