DebConf11: Conference Summary

Last week, the twelfth annual Debian Developer Conference called DebConf was held at the Banska Residence (Banja Luka, Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina). On the first day of the conference, the Debian Day event was held, available to the general public. In the framework of Debian Day, Bdale Garbee presented a report on the “Debian Ideology”, and our friends from Google, Guido Trotter and Jesus Climent, presented a report on “Debian in the manufacturing sector: studying Google cases”. The Debian Day event was a great success; it not only brought the Debian Community closer to the developers, but also, more than ever, interested the general public.


Debianday

The opening ceremony of the conference was attended by Jasmin Komic, Minister of Science and Technology, and Aleksandar Džombic, Prime Minister of the Serbian Republic. In his opening speech, President of the Republika Srpska Milorad Dodik said he was proud of the choice of the Republika Srpska as the venue for the conference, despite fierce competition from other countries.
The DebConf conference lasted until July 31 and included 78 sessions on various topics (excluding spontaneously organized special sessions), during which Multiarch, ports for new architectures, the need for closer cooperation with Debian-based distributions were discussed. In addition, an extensive cultural program was organized. More than 400 participants from 50 countries of the world took part in the conference.
This year, we chose two students - participants of the Google Summer of Code program in the Debian project to present our projects, get feedback and accumulate new ideas, and establish connections with other developers.


Google Summer of Code Heads and Students
Above: Piotr Ożarowski, Ana Guerrero, Sukhbir Singh, Tom Marble,
Below: Samuel Thibault, Sylvestre Ledru, Obey Arthur Liu, Guillaume Mazoyer, Wookey
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DebConf 11 is the first major OpenSource event I ever attended. It's really great to meet people you hang out with every day. The DebConf conference allows you to get a wonderful experience, here we can talk about things that are interesting to us and get a lot of pleasure. I met our Google Summer of Code administrator and talked with him about what we can do to help the project. I was also pleased to meet with my leaders, Tom Marble and Sylvestre Ledru, to get to know them better and work on our project. On July 30, I made a video report on the progress of my project at the conference to show what I have achieved so far in the Google Summer of Code program.
Last week was tense, as I tried to make progress on my project and take part in negotiations that could help me resolve some issues that arose during the course of my work. Before participating in the Google Summer of Code, I was already passionate about Debian, so visiting “DebConf” and meeting with people who love this OS, encourages me to stay in this community for a while. Here we do great things, and together we can learn a lot.
Guillaume Mazoyer, student - Debian Google Summer of Code member

Meeting with people in real life is always better than e-mail or IRC, and the DebConf conference became a living example of this - I took part in it not only to meet with my manager, but also to talk to people from the Debian community. Hooray!
The DebConf conference gave me even more excellent experience than I expected - here you study and discuss the OS you love and use every day, meet new people, make new friends and even try new dishes!
I discussed with my mentor, Andreas Tille, how we could make my Google Summer of Code project better. On July 29, we held a video conference about the project to collect ideas and get feedback from the community. We aim to incorporate ideas from such discussions into our project. After seeing how people relate to Debian here, I’ll probably stay in the Debian Community after the end of Google Summer of Code to help develop it. I heartily thank the people from the city of Banja Luka and the local team for accepting us here, they not only made it possible to hold the conference, but also greeted us in this beautiful city. Debian is truly open and the “DebConf” conference is evidence of this.
Sukhbir Singh, student - Debian Google Summer of Code member


Group photo

The Google Summer of Code project has been working successfully with Debian for the past six years, and Debian is looking forward to even more students in the Debian project and the DebConf conference.
See you in 2012 at DebConf12, which will be held in the city of Managua, Nicaragua!


Original article here

Conference video (~ 65 hours of video) are available here.