rc bugs, cloud, and getting involved

This past week-end has been rather intense. In addition to another, non free software related event I was volunteering for, I had the pleasure to participate in the 2nd Paris mini DebConf.

Once again, the organization has been great and the average quality of the talks have been very high. I'd say talk quality is now totally up to par with the yearly full blown DebConf (and yes, talks have been in English :-P ). If I had to single the talk that intrigued me the most, I'd name Joss' talk on large GNOME deployments: it's full of insights on the GNOME architecture and of tips useful to all power users, no matter the size of your GNOME "deployment". For more info on the talks have a look at the program. To catch up with the talks you missed you can peruse the slides there and/or keep an eye on http://video.debian.net, where we usually post conference videos "when they are ready".

At the conference I've also witnessed the usual healthy mix of country origins that I remember from the previous Paris mini DebConf. Once again I've been happy to meet (and host!) Debian friends from many countries including Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Greece, Finland, … you name it. Kudos to the organizers (hi Sylvestre and Mehdi!) and to all the volunteers who made this possible.

On my part, I didn't have any full blown talk scheduled (ETOOMANYTALKS struck me this month…) but I did book two lightning talks slots that I've used for:

  • rambling on RC bugs and the effects of long freezes on Debian
  • presenting the debian-cloud initiative, which is rather new but incredibly active and effective despite its infancy

On the subject of lightning talks, I also recommend to promote Lucas' talk on how to get involved in Debian. It's dense and straight to the point, able to both convey useful tips and point wannabe contributors to the most useful contributions they can make to Debian.