Re: The future of DebConf, online lessons from the pandemic [Was: Re: DebConf21 online, DebConf22 in Kosovo, DebConf23 in India, DebConf24 in Israel]

[Bernelle Verster <bernellev@gmail.com>]

On Fri, May 14, 2021 at 3:39 PM Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
<lkcl@lkcl.net> wrote:
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> On Friday, May 14, 2021, Bernelle Verster <bernellev@gmail.com> wrote:
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>> I think it is possible to have a significant social aspect both on-
>> and off-line that complement each other, to have local 'mini-DebConfs'
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> which ensures that local situations and customs are respected and observed
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>> that are mostly self-organised but with some support from an
>> international level,
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> announcements that help reach more people, resources / websites etc that would otherwise be much more challenging to set up if developed in isolation etc.

and funding.

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>> The two biggest issues I see are people just not willing to adapt and
>> sticking to in-person, which makes it hard to compliment with online.
>> Fully online is one thing. Having a combination is hard.
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> true.  don't have any thoughts yet on how that would work.
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> please, not the mobile WIFI-controlled robots with a tablet embedded in them :)
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> https://www.doublerobotics.com/

hahahaha agreed! I don't know why but those things creep me out so
much! I'm wondering if a Sims / avatar in a virtual world sort of
thing could work. All the in-person people can strap an augmented
reality headset on! ;)

For now I think more diverse IRC channels could work - we already have
them for the different talk rooms, how about debconf-hallway,
debconf-pub, debconf ... I dunno, dorm rooms, and hopefully people in
those physical spaces can 'gossip' and share the prevailing thoughts
and jokes and energy into the IRC channels.

 For me it's less about duplicating the obvious things we expect -
more interaction with faces through video, for example, and more about
finding out the needs we were trying to express/address with the
different things we did. We may end up at the same solutions, but
getting there by asking different questions may change the quality of
the execution and experience greatly. Unfortunately most of these are
not obvious at all! Has sociologists done research on this??

An example I remember talking about last year was family video
meetings - what a disaster! Because everyone is online and then you
have to take turns to speak and it becomes a lecture by that *one*
family member. When what people needed in the past ... some wanted to
quietly sit in the corner sipping tea while watching the toddlers
playing (how many people had access to that on their video calls? just
quietly observing them playing?). Some wanted to gossip about
something, but the magic happened when someone else 'picked up
stompies' - caught half a story and turned it into a joke. Probably
everyone wanted to ignore the one member talking too much, which they
could do while not letting that person catch on. You can do that on a
video call, but it kills the vibe, while in person it's just part of
the tapestry. The clinking of things, the smell of the food and the
garden ... those are magical, and can't really be duplicated into
video, or can it? I thought the T-shirts contributed to filling that
function, something you can feel and smell that connects you to the
larger community. Maybe we all cook the same thing on one night to
mimic a group dinner ... things like that. But this takes a lot more
care. And it's true we don't take time off to attend online, we just
fit it in with everything else. What could we do to change that, to
make it worthwhile to take time off for? Should we? Or should we
change the format? (the Linux conf had many more days, but only 4
hours per day or something like that)

- B

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