Re: [Debconf-team] DebConf14 Dates And Upcoming Decisions
On 09/27/2013 03:47 PM, martin f krafft wrote: also sprach Patty Langasek harmo...@dodds.net [2013.09.27.1928 +0200]: 2. DebCamp - yes or no? We do not have official venue (talk rooms) for the week prior to our reserved dates (or the week after). If we do have DebCamp, it will need to be restricted in number and time (it won't be a week long). I think we should stick with DebCamp and we should try as hard as possible to make it as long as possible. We do not need talk rooms for that, but we do need hack space for 80 people or thereabouts (with whiteboards ideally). And accomodation and food. I also think we should try to retain debcamp if at all possible. As someone who has worked on the network infrastructure for debconf in past conferences, debcamp is when much of the custom/specialized network setup and testing actually happens. If we only get access to the facilities the first day of debconf, i suspect that we will have a conference network much poorer than people have grown to expect. We will probably also have a much grumpier network team (is that possible?) because setup work will take them away from the other scheduled activities of the conference itself. If we have no debcamp, does the PDX team have a proposal for how to get the conference network in place effectively starting on the first day? --dkg signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] DebConf14 Dates And Upcoming Decisions
On Tue, Oct 01, 2013 at 03:12:48AM -0400, Daniel Kahn Gillmor wrote: I also think we should try to retain debcamp if at all possible. As someone who has worked on the network infrastructure for debconf in past conferences, debcamp is when much of the custom/specialized network setup and testing actually happens. If we only get access to the facilities the first day of debconf, i suspect that we will have a conference network much poorer than people have grown to expect. We will probably also have a much grumpier network team (is that possible?) because setup work will take them away from the other scheduled activities of the conference itself. If we have no debcamp, does the PDX team have a proposal for how to get the conference network in place effectively starting on the first day? We have already precleared accommodating a small team to arrive early for essential setup and preparations, knowing that networking and video teams were going to need access to the facilities to get prepped for the conference. Patty -- -- Patty Langasek harmo...@dodds.net -- At times, you may end up far away from home; you may not be sure of where you belong, anymore. But home is always there... because home is not a place. It's wherever your passion takes you. --- J. Michael Straczynski ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] DebConf14 Dates And Upcoming Decisions
Hi Patty, On Dienstag, 1. Oktober 2013, Patty Langasek wrote: We have already precleared accommodating a small team to arrive early for great, how small? cheers, Holger, who still needs to read the beginning of this thread... signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
[Debconf-team] Proposed DC14 schedule within: Re: DebConf14 Dates And Upcoming Decisions
Thanks for this thread. Given that the university has said they can start signing contracts for this in October, and October is only 3 days away, we really want to get these dates finalized ASAP. We probably also want to start having regular IRC meetings again. Monthly frequency should probably be sufficient for now, right? 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 So this has several implications. - The week of DebConf is the last week of August, 2014; the week before that, Thursday is the earliest day we can be there, so DebConf will definitely *not* be the third week in August. - 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. - The venue *does* have some availability for a few days before the target week, so we need to decide if we think we want to make use of this, and how. On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 09:47:07PM +0200, martin f krafft wrote: also sprach Patty Langasek harmo...@dodds.net [2013.09.27.1928 +0200]: Good morning, everyone! Good evening. Right now, we know we have the dates 24 Aug - 30 Aug, with departure of no later than 1 September 2014 for our official venue. Traditionally, the conference starts Sunday morning (24 Aug) and ends Saturday night (30 Aug), with departure on Sunday (31 Aug). 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'd think this is wise specifically due to Labor (Mon)Day, which will make travel a hassle and expensive too. Labor Day is not a major air travel event in the US. I don't believe that this will have any impact on anyone who books their travel a reasonable amount of time in advance. The entire conference falls in high season for the airlines; the impact of Labor Day itself should be negligible. 2. DebCamp - yes or no? We do not have official venue (talk rooms) for the week prior to our reserved dates (or the week after). If we do have DebCamp, it will need to be restricted in number and time (it won't be a week long). I think we should stick with DebCamp and we should try as hard as possible to make it as long as possible. We do not need talk rooms for that, but we do need hack space for 80 people or thereabouts (with whiteboards ideally). And accomodation and food. 3. Separate Hacking Time - yes or no? One thing the organizers would like to see is hacking and collaborating time (different from DebCamp) that doesn't conflict with the Talks Schedule. Isn't that what starts at 18:00 every day? But see below: especially with three talk tracks and maybe a schedule that runs until 19:00, make 12:00–16:00 be lunch+collaboration time. 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. This is not to say that I think we should have only talks at DebConf. Quite to the contrary, I think collaborative hacking is an important part of the DebConf experience - I just think the temporal partitioning of DebCamp vs. DebConf is misguided. I also don't think that DebCamp has been fulfilling its stated purpose, lately: originally, this was conceived as a way to support teams in hacking collaboratively, but it's largely been replaced by team sprints in recent years: the workplans submitted for sponsorship to the most recent DebCamp included mostly solo projects, not teams getting together to work. I don't think DebCamp, as it currently exists, is the optimal use of our sponsors money - and I know there are others on the team who agree. 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
Re: [Debconf-team] DebConf14 Dates And Upcoming Decisions
On Tue, Oct 01, 2013 at 03:12:48AM -0400, Daniel Kahn Gillmor wrote: On 09/27/2013 03:47 PM, martin f krafft wrote: also sprach Patty Langasek harmo...@dodds.net [2013.09.27.1928 +0200]: 2. DebCamp - yes or no? We do not have official venue (talk rooms) for the week prior to our reserved dates (or the week after). If we do have DebCamp, it will need to be restricted in number and time (it won't be a week long). I think we should stick with DebCamp and we should try as hard as possible to make it as long as possible. We do not need talk rooms for that, but we do need hack space for 80 people or thereabouts (with whiteboards ideally). And accomodation and food. I also think we should try to retain debcamp if at all possible. As someone who has worked on the network infrastructure for debconf in past conferences, debcamp is when much of the custom/specialized network setup and testing actually happens. You'll certainly get no disagreement from me about the importance of having reliable infrastructure for the conference, but sponsoring 80 people to come in for a week and manually stress-test it before DebConf is a poor way to accomplish that. We can do much better - we have deep and broad professional knowledge in Debian when it comes to infrastructure, and we have a lot of time to get this figured out. The venue is open to the public, and we could start working with PSU's network team *immediately* to identify any infrastructure shortfalls. We just need someone with experience running the DebConf network to lay out for us what the requirements are, in black and white. In fact, wiki.debconf.org seems like a nice place to record such things. ;) I've created a blank page with some open questions; I would appreciate it if those who have experience running the DebConf network would help fill it out. https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/Requirements/Network If we only get access to the facilities the first day of debconf, i suspect that we will have a conference network much poorer than people have grown to expect. We will probably also have a much grumpier network team (is that possible?) because setup work will take them away from the other scheduled activities of the conference itself. If we have no debcamp, does the PDX team have a proposal for how to get the conference network in place effectively starting on the first day? DebCamp is NOT about DebConf setup. We will ensure that the network and video teams have all reasonable access for setup before the start of the conference, and are prepared for the local team to act in an advanced reconnaissance role wrt the venue facilities. But let's not conflate that with the question of DebCamp. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developerhttp://www.debian.org/ slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org signature.asc Description: Digital signature ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] DebConf14 Dates And Upcoming Decisions
On Tue, Oct 01, 2013 at 05:18:45PM +0200, Holger Levsen wrote: Hi Patty, On Dienstag, 1. Oktober 2013, Patty Langasek wrote: We have already precleared accommodating a small team to arrive early for great, how small? We didn't discuss precise numbers. How big of a team do you *need*, and for how long? -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developerhttp://www.debian.org/ slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org signature.asc Description: Digital signature ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] DebConf14 Dates And Upcoming Decisions
On Tue, 1 Oct 2013 11:18:53 -0700 Steve Langasek vor...@debian.org wrote: On Tue, Oct 01, 2013 at 03:12:48AM -0400, Daniel Kahn Gillmor wrote: On 09/27/2013 03:47 PM, martin f krafft wrote: also sprach Patty Langasek harmo...@dodds.net [2013.09.27.1928 +0200]: 2. DebCamp - yes or no? We do not have official venue (talk rooms) for the week prior to our reserved dates (or the week after). If we do have DebCamp, it will need to be restricted in number and time (it won't be a week long). I think we should stick with DebCamp and we should try as hard as possible to make it as long as possible. We do not need talk rooms for that, but we do need hack space for 80 people or thereabouts (with whiteboards ideally). And accomodation and food. I also think we should try to retain debcamp if at all possible. As someone who has worked on the network infrastructure for debconf in past conferences, debcamp is when much of the custom/specialized network setup and testing actually happens. You'll certainly get no disagreement from me about the importance of having reliable infrastructure for the conference, but sponsoring 80 people to come in for a week and manually stress-test it before DebConf is a poor way to accomplish that. We can do much better - we have deep and broad professional knowledge in Debian when it comes to infrastructure, and we have a lot of time to get this figured out. The venue is open to the public, and we could start working with PSU's network team *immediately* to identify any infrastructure shortfalls. We just need someone with experience running the DebConf network to lay out for us what the requirements are, in black and white. In fact, wiki.debconf.org seems like a nice place to record such things. ;) I've created a blank page with some open questions; I would appreciate it if those who have experience running the DebConf network would help fill it out. https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/Requirements/Network Video Team has something in a wiki page [0] can be useful to know what video team needs. I checked the DebConf Manual [1] but there is nothing about the Network. If we only get access to the facilities the first day of debconf, i suspect that we will have a conference network much poorer than people have grown to expect. We will probably also have a much grumpier network team (is that possible?) because setup work will take them away from the other scheduled activities of the conference itself. If we have no debcamp, does the PDX team have a proposal for how to get the conference network in place effectively starting on the first day? DebCamp is NOT about DebConf setup. We will ensure that the network and video teams have all reasonable access for setup before the start of the conference, and are prepared for the local team to act in an advanced reconnaissance role wrt the venue facilities. But let's not conflate that with the question of DebCamp. Right, DebCamp is not about DebConf setup, as it is in the debian wiki[2], is about hacking, so IMHO it would be really great to have DebCamp as usual :) Regards, [0] https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/Videoteam/Network [1] https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/Category:DebConf_Manual [2] https://wiki.debian.org/DebCamp -- Norman García Aguilar nor...@riseup.net ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] DebConf14 Dates And Upcoming Decisions
On Tuesday 01 October 2013 12:19:47 Steve Langasek wrote: [DebConf Manual:] Even though I now see that it's in the sidebar of every page, it's rather far down the sidebar and the name never grabbed my attention. I wonder if we could do something to improve the navigation to make this more obvious? Would it be reasonable to include a link to the manual on the wiki's main page? Since the main purpose of the wiki is planning and organising, I think it is more than reasonable to have a link to the DebConf Manual on the main page, and have now done so. -- Regards, Kaare ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
Re: [Debconf-team] DebConf 2014 Networking
Hi, adding Jörg to the loop... actually, no, I'm adding debconf-t...@l.dc.o to the loop :) On Dienstag, 1. Oktober 2013, Kees Cook wrote: Hi! I'm helping to coordinate networking for DebConf 14 between us and the network team at Portland State University. Mostly, I'd really like to understand the requirements, which have started to get written here, with an eye toward required vs preferred items: https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/Requirements/Network What have past glitches been, what things do we need to keep in mind, etc? Who else should I be asking about this? I've been shown this as well, though it read more like a before list than a this is what we had list: https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf13/Teams/Tech Thanks, -Kees might reply with more substance tomorrow, cheers, Holger signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
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. --
