Re: The future of DebConf, online lessons from the pandemic [Was: Re: DebConf21 online, DebConf22 in Kosovo, DebConf23 in India, DebConf24 in Israel]
Thank you Wouter
On Wed, May 26, 2021 at 11:30 AM Wouter Verhelst <wouter@debian.org> wrote:
>
> Hi Bernelle,
>
> On Fri, May 14, 2021 at 02:35:00PM +0200, Bernelle Verster wrote:
> > Online has significant advantages. The biggest challenge is the social bit.
>
> I think the "social bit" is not to be underestimated. To me, the biggest
> thing about debconf is not the talks, but the meeting of kindred spirits
> in a social setting.
>
> Just before my first debconf in 2005, I was getting demotivated working
> on Debian; I had the feeling that what I was doing wasn't that
> important, and that I should maybe just give up, and let other people
> take care of things. Meeting so many like-minded people at debconf5, and
> seeing the respect people were having for my m68k work at the time,
> reinvigorated my passion for the project and meant I was more than happy
> to continue doing things for Debian. I would be surprised if my
> experience here was unique.
>
> As another anecdotic piece of evidence, at debconf16's debcamp I was
> working on fixing #796633. I got stuck at some point while doing this,
> but then Tollef Fog Heen (who knew systemd better than me at the time)
> sat down with me and helped me think things through, and we managed to
> come up with a working solution in the end. I'm sure I would have been
> able to figure out the issues by myself had I not been at debcamp. I'm
> also sure it would have been in a time frame of months, rather than
> days.
>
> I understand (and support) the desire to have less global flights,
> because global warming is a real thing and it is something we need to
> work on if we're going to sustain life on our planet for the long term.
> At the same time, for *Debian*, the effect of having a global,
> in-person, meeting of minds has side effects for the project the reach
> of which are not to be underestimated, and that we can't (yet?) replace
> by a virtual meeting.
>
> So while I'm all for improving our online debconf experience, and
> believe we should use the new technologies we developed for the online
> debconf to make our in-person debconfs more inclusive for people who
> can't make it, I am absolutely also of the firm opinion that we should
> continue to hold in-person debconfs, until the day comes where we can
> create the same hallway track experience online that we have on
> in-person debconfs.
>
> Because to me, the hallway track of a debconf is way, way, *way* more
> important than the talks. After all, I can watch talk recordings at
> home, but I can't do hallway track meetings at home.
I was thinking about this yesterday, and to perhaps just conclude this
thread, I think the feeling for this is so strong that we will see
online for a long time still. But as others have pointed out too, we
can do better with the integration of social online - having dedicated
social jitsi tracks, for example, which I believe would make both
conferences, and both aspects for a combined conference, infinitely
better. I look forward to helping with that! :)
>
> Thanks,
>
> --
> w@uter.{be,co.za}
> wouter@{grep.be,fosdem.org,debian.org}
Reply to: