[Debconf-team] What is DC to you?

On Thu, Nov 12, 2015 at 4:28 AM, Giacomo Catenazzi <cate@debian.org> wrote:

For me the most important meta discussion is about the concept (and
vision) of DebConf. It seems that you have a different view, but you
have not yet wrote about your Vision of DebConf. Could you tell us more?

My vision is:
DebConf is Debian, it is a "steering conference", so Debian contributors
can meet to set goals, solve problems,.. in general to make Debian going
forward. So no need of huge public relation: our contributors will ask
other contributors to come (really no need to attract attendees with
earlier schedule and "important" talks).
Probably we need a Conference for professional (as we noticed in
DebConf15), but it should be a separate entity from the conference.
I would like to have more DebConf in developing countries (but we need
fancies hotels near airports for the professional conference).

PyCon is faced with a similar problem: different people have different ideas about what the event should be, and there is no unit test to see who is correct.

DC and PyCon are different, so will have different questions, but I see a pattern.

Some bits are well defined questions: Should it try to generate revenue for the PSF or be funded to keep reg price low and deliver more?

Some questions are hard to figure out how to communicate the question: How armature/professional should the event feel or be?

Should talks be selected to give new presenters and projects exposure at the cost of not selecting popular content that more attendees will want to see?

Are we trying to promote the language to new people or help experienced people?

Some of these can be compromised on, some can't. You can't be both a revenue and a cost (and all that is behind those two)

And PyCon is faced with the same meta problem: Who gets to answer these questions? A group of 5? 20? 400? Who gets to be in these groups? Who gets to decide who gets to be in the group?

It's turtles all the way.. up?

I think it would be good to hear what peoples vision is.

I don't think it is good to argue about vision until there is some agreement on how to resolve the conflict.