Ok, so I spent some time scheduling the top-rated talks today, and we
have a preliminary schedule to start working with. Yay!
Now, the schedule is preliminary if you are very optimist. Some points
we still have to go through, and that will surely change things all
around. So, with no particular order:
• We are scheduling so far on two rooms only. We can add a BoF room if
needed, but it will not have video coverage, and we should only open
it if the schedule gets too full before the confernce.
• I scheduled only the "accepted" talks. To do this, I followed the
usual DebConf guidelines (basically it means no two concurrent
accepted events will ever happen - Of course, unofficial /
not-accepted / whatever-we-call-them-this-time can be scheduled
concurrent to them
• I suggest to have seven hours of talks every day (10:00-13:00 and
15:00-19:00). This can be modified, but seems sensible to me. I
didn't schedule anything at 10:00, as it is the lowest turnout time,
but it is available for any other talks
• Moray suggested to set up all BoFs in the "Second Talk Room", as its
disposition is better suited. So, I scheduled all "lectures" in the
main room, and all "BoFs" in the second. We should try to keep it
this way, but of course, it's not a hard restriction.
• Tracks. That's a point that bothers me... I think this year we did
not manage to organize them as successfully as last year. Excluding
"social activities" (a meta-track where all non-academic talks are
grouped), we have:
‣ Skill exchange — Only one talk, so it's not precisely a track
‣ Debian.org-related webservices — Seven talks (some of them I'm not
sure that fit the topic)
‣ Debian/Society — 10 talks (again, I feel some of them are not
precisely on-topic)
‣ Blends — Only one talk, although there is at least one other that
could be added (debian-med), but it's still too little to be a track
‣ Large-scale deployment — Rhonda, the track coordinator, contacted
me and basically told me the track disappeared due to a missing
speaker and his talk being moved to DebianDay.
So, we have two very short tracks, and two tracks that cannot be
fitted in the schedule I'd set for them (4hr - A full
afternoon-evening session).
I think we can just use tracks to color the schedule for clarity,
and forget about track coordination, even though they worked great
last year... Does anybody have something to say about them?
For the record, I guess this is largely because I (as team lead)
didn't coordinate it dilligently enough, and I expect we can push
them again next year.
• Missing talks that should be scheduled. Of course, all submitted
talks can be scheduled, and I do expect the BoF room to be added,
but some mentions are in place. First, as I said earlier, I didn't
schedule Rhonda's talk "Issues with Deployment in Large
Environments", as I understand it's to be part of DebianDay. Second,
Meike's "Debian-Women BoF" is a second part to her lecture
"Debian-Women - The Past and the Present" — I expect Meike to
request this to be scheduled as well, but I decided to schedule
strictly based on the numbers. In many cases I didn't even look at
what I was scheduling, just put it in the next available place.
• Confirming talks. I expect (just because of probability) that some
of the authors of the scheduled talks will not attend DebConf,
opening some more spaces.
All in all, the schedule does look busy! All days are packed with two
talks in the morning and four in the afternoon, and most have social
activities after them. And DebConf smells each day nearer! \o/
I know not everybody has access to this, and there is no point in
publishing a schedule so likely to change still, but you might be able
to look at the schedule¹ and tell me anything that escaped my
attention.
¹ https://penta.debconf.org/penta/pentabarf/schedule
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