Debconf 25 photos
Debconf 25 photos
Debconf 25 came to the end in Brest, France this year a couple weeks ago.
This has been a very different and unusually interesting Debconf. For me it was for two, related reasons: for one the conference was close enough in Western Europe that I could simply drive there with a car (which reminds me that I should make a blog post about the BMW i5, before I am done with it at the end of this year) and for the other - the conference is close enough to Western Europe that many other Debian developers could join this year who have not been seen at the event for many years. Being able to arrive early, decompress and spend extra time looking around the place made the event itself even more enjoyable than usual.
The French cuisine, especially in its Breton expression, has been a very welcome treat. Even if there were some rough patches with the food selection, amount, or waiting, it was still a great experience.
I specifically want to say a big thank you to the organisers for everything, but very explicitly for planning all the talk/BOF rooms in the same building and almost on the same floor. It saved me a lot of footwork, but also for other participants the short walks between the talks made it possible to always have a few minutes to talk to people or grab a croissant before running to the next talk.
IMHO we should come back to a tradition of organising Debconf in Europe every 2-3 years. This maximises one of the main goals of Debconf - bringing as many Debian Developers as possible together in one physical location. This works best when the location is actually close to large concentrations of existing developers. In other years, the other goal of Debconf can then take priority - recruiting new developers in new locations. However, these goals could both be achieved at the same time - there are plenty of locations in Europe and even in Western Europe that still have good potential for attracting new developers. Especially if we focus on organising the event on the campuses of some larger technically-oriented universities.
This year was also very productive for me—a lot of conversations with various people about all kinds of topics, especially technical packaging questions. It has been a long time since the very basic foundations of Debian packaging work have been so fundamentally refactored and modernized as in the past year. Tag2upload has become a catalyst for git-based packaging and for automated workflows via Salsa, and all of that feeds back into focusing on a few best-supported packaging workflows. There is still a bit of a documentation gap of a new contributor getting to these modern packaging workflows from the point where the New Maintainers Guide stops.
In any case, next year Debconf will be happening in Santa Fe, Argentina. And the year after that it is all still open and in a close competition between Japan, Spain, Portugal, Brazil and .. El Salvador? Personally, I would love to travel to Japan (again), but Spain or Portugal would also be great locations to meet more European developers again.
As for Santa Fe ... it is quite likely that I will not be able to make it there next year, for (planned) health reasons. I guess I should also write a new blog post about what it means to be a Debconf Photographer, so that someone else could do this as well, and also reduce the "bus factor" along the way.
But before that - here is the main group photo from this year:
You can also see it on:
You can also enjoy the rest of the photos:
Additionally, check out photos from other people on GIT LFS and consider adding your own photos there as well.
Other places I have updated with up-to-date information are these wiki pages:
If you took part in the playing cards event, then check your photo in this folder and link to your favourite from your line in the playing card wiki