Re: [Debconf-team] Proposed DC14 schedule within: Re: DebConf14 Dates And Upcoming Decisions
Hi,
I was avoiding jumping into this before more people had voiced their
opinion and the local teams' plan was more explicit, but I have to say I
was worried about the schedule since the DC14 tail in Le Camp.
For full disclosure, let me start by acknowledging that I am
disappointed about not having DebCamp as next year will be the first
chance I get to attend DebCamp in a few years. Also, that I have only
participated in DebCamp once (the second time I was local team, so no
time to hack), so I am not the best person to discuss how useful is
DebCamp for the people usually involved.
Now, to the specifics.
On 01/10/13 19:50, Steve Langasek wrote:
> Clarifying something from Patty's original mail, the precise limits on the
> venue are:
>
> - August 21: earliest date that PSU can accomodate us at the venue
> - August 22: earliest date that PSU can accomodate a full set of people in
> the dorms
> - September 1: latest date that PSU can accomodate people in the dorms
> - $late_enough_to_be_irrelevant: latest date that PSU can accomodate us at
> the venue
The first thing that this tells me, even if it is a silly idea, is that
we could have a full DebCamp *after* DebConf, with accommodation sorted
differently - maybe non-sponsored and self-organised, since you say
there is no space in the dorms after 1/9.
> - Likewise, there is not going to be a week-long DebCamp before DebConf.
> This was already the plan of the local team, but venue availability
> confirms it.
I am not sure if this was discussed previously, at least I cannot find
anything on my copy of the archives (blame thunderbird otherwise), but
for me this was a surprise. And I think it might deserve discussion with
the global team (note that I am not asking either local or global or the
chairs to make a decision unilaterally, just to have a discussion and
see what the outcome is).
> Traditionally, DebConf is also preceded by DebCamp. Since we aren't going
> to have a DebCamp, I don't think we should be bound by tradition in other
> aspects of the schedule.
>
> (Also, I'm not sure how true it is that this is "tradition" - it certainly
> seems to me that the DebConf schedule is inconsistent from year to year.)
I am also all for revising some of the DC folklore - for any other name,
- but DCamp has gone for so long that it is taken as an almost necessary
part of DC at this point, and therefore, we need to see if we really
want to get rid of it.
> So the driving factor for the above two discussion points is that I dislike
> the DebCamp / DebConf split and always have. Americans by and large don't
> have the vacation time to take for a two-week event like this, and even
> though I'm fortunate enough to have an employer who will send me to DebConf
> for work, even for me two weeks is too much. And I don't want to be
> responsible for organizing an event that I myself would not be interested in
> attending.
I understand that, and I have not attended DCamp in the past years
because of time issues too (I have had more vacations, but I travel way
too much :))
At the same time, I note a couple of things with the proposed schedule:
- People who don't have much vacations to spend and who have to travel
for many hours (most of Latin America, for example) will probably not
arrive on Friday, and many will arrive late on Saturday. Many will not
be able to stay for the last day of the conference, for the same reasons.
- There is not much time allocated for hacking only, only two half-days.
While there might be extra time for collaboration during the day, with
madduck's proposed long lunch break, I am not sure if chunks of two
hours a day may be as beneficial for people who need long periods of
concentration to work on something complicated.
- This year's schedule was already pretty packed - as opposed to other
years. If this continues, how many tracks will we need to allocate all
the requested time?
> So I believe it's time for us to rethink DebCamp, by taking this back to
> first principles and implementing something that maximizes the benefit to
> Debian within the constraints that we have. From my perspective, the
> purpose of DebConf + DebCamp taken as a whole is to provide a healthy
> mixture of presentations about current/ongoing work in the project, social
> interactions / opportunistic discussions ("hallway track"), and Debian
> development work. Do others agree with that formulation?
Sounds reasonable to me.
> I think to support Debian development work as part of the DebConf/DebCamp
> complex does require *some* explicit separation between talks & development.
> We already have that during DebConf week in the form of hacklabs, but that's
> only spatial separation; we tend to fill the time of DebConf with as many
> talks as we can, which means that there's no temporal separation, and folks
> who are keen to attend talks can easily find themselves with no actual hack
> time.
Again, I don't see that in the sketch you proposed, or not enough of it.
My 2 shekels.
--
Martín Ferrari
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