Debian-portland-soc March 2013

debian-portland-soc@pdx.debian.net

11 participants
9 discussions

by Benjamin Kerensa

Hi All, OpenStack Summit will be in Portland next month from April 15th - April 18th. I am proposing a special beering close to the convention center on the evening of either Tuesday or Wednesday of that week. Folks from the Debian and Ubuntu community will be in attendance at the event in addition to folks from Canonical so I figured it might be a good opportunity. Thoughts? -- Benjamin Kerensa http://benjaminkerensa.com "I am what I am because of who we all are" - Ubuntu

11 years, 6 months

DebConf14 Bid Decision Meeting

by Patty Langasek

The DebConf14 Bid Decision meeting has been scheduled for Friday, 5 April at 10am PST. That's next week! It'll be on IRC; OFTC - channel #debconf-team. There were some questions/concerns that needed addressed, but I seem to have lost track of them. Steve, do you have them somewhere? If anyone else wants to collaborate before the meeting, there's a channel on OFTC just for us; #debian-pdx We welcome non-PDX people, too. Seattle, Vancouver, LA, San Francisco, whatever. West Coast Represent! -- ---------------------------------------------------------- Patty Langasek harmoney(a)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

11 years, 7 months

Beering is on, really

by Steve Langasek

Debian beering is happening at Lucky Lab, we're sitting up front by the darts (around the corner). Come join us :-) -- 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 Developer http://www.debian.org/ slangasek(a)ubuntu.com vorlon(a)debian.org

11 years, 7 months

Beering This Thursday!

by Patty Langasek

Sound off - who's going to make it to our beering on Thursday? (2 days from today!!) 7pm, Lucky Lab. I'm bringing games this time. -- ---------------------------------------------------------- Patty Langasek harmoney(a)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

11 years, 7 months

DebConf bid prep volunteer needed [moray@sermisy.org: Re: [Debconf-team] DebConf Committee meeting (for DC14): Friday March 22, 17:00UTC]

by Steve Langasek

So according to Moray, in addition to the https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf14/Portland wiki page, the DebConf Committee also wants us to prepare a document that addresses https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/PriorityList point-by-point for easy consumption. Would anyone here like to take care of this? It should just be a matter of extracting the information from the existing wiki page and reordering it. I think it's fine to put this in the wiki as a subpage - https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf14/Portland/PriorityList sounds like a good name to me. Thanks, -- 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 Developer http://www.debian.org/ slangasek(a)ubuntu.com vorlon(a)debian.org

11 years, 7 months

[DC14] Portland team: historical cost comparison

by Allison Randal

I've run a more detailed cost comparison for the Portland bid, projecting for 200 attendees and 350 attendees separately, so it's easier to see the base costs, and also incorporating some changes from the discussion feedback. See the attached ODS file. (The cost per attendee seems radically lower than previous years, but these are base costs, and don't include incidentals like printing signs/badges and t-shirts, video equipment shipping, or optional costs like travel sponsorships.) The "Comparison" tab is using the 4-day figures from the "Rooms" and "Food" tabs. This is based on a projection of sessions Mon-Tue and Thu-Fri, with the Day Trip on Wednesday. But, in previous years DebConf has run sessions Mon-Tue and Thu-Sat, that is, 5 total days of sessions. So, the 5-day projections are included on the "Rooms" and "Food" tabs. The actual food reservations will be made much closer to the event, based on counts of registered attendees, so these are just broad estimates. In general, if confidence is high that DebConf14 will have attendance of at least 250-300, then we recommend including the larger Ballroom in the initial venue reservation. These projections are using a full-day price for the large Ballroom, rather than specific hours for opening/closing plenaries, so the actual venue rental total is likely to be a bit cheaper. (The Ballroom is preferable to Hoffman Hall, because it's in the same building as the smaller session rooms and hacklabs.) We're figuring the decision about whether to run DebCamp will be made later, after sponsorships start to come in. We've talked a bit about alternatives that could provide hacking time at a lower cost than the traditional two-week schedule (all with DayTrip on Wed): * Two full days of DebCamp on Sunday before and Saturday after DebConf * Combine DebCamp/DebConf to run simultaneously Saturday-Saturday * DebCamp on the two Saturdays, and DebCamp/DebConf combo on Sun-Fri At the moment, we're guessing that DebConf14 won't have a Debian Day, but again, figure the wider DebConf team will make that decision partially based on sponsorships. HTH, Allison

11 years, 7 months

[gwolf@gwolf.org: [Debconf-team] DebConf Committee meeting (for DC14): Friday March 22, 17:00UTC]

by Steve Langasek

Please see attached for the announcement of the upcoming IRC meeting for the DebConf 14 bid. "#debconf-team as usual" means "#debconf-team on irc.oftc.net". 17:00 UTC on Friday is 10:00 local time. (Oh, and the DebConf calendar ICS feed (which lists this meeting) moved again; this should be the last time. http://www.debconf.org/calendars/DebConf-team.ics) Anyone who's going to be involved in DebConf 14 in Portland (assuming Portland is chosen) is strongly encouraged to attend this meeting if they're available. You don't need to feel on the hook to speak, but it is important both that the DebConf team see that we have a real team and that the people on that team begin to get a feel for the DebConf organization itself. Also, if you haven't already, now would be a good time to get subscribed to the debconf-team mailing list. :) http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team Thanks, -- 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 Developer http://www.debian.org/ slangasek(a)ubuntu.com vorlon(a)debian.org

11 years, 7 months

Re: [Debian-portland-soc] [Debconf-team] [DC14] Portland team: DebConf in the USA

by Steve Langasek

Hi Gunnar, On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 07:26:26PM -0600, Gunnar Wolf wrote: > And as the mails I just sent, some salient questions for you: > USA, the eternal debate > ======================= > First, there's the obvious issue of going to the USA. Several European > DebConf usual attendees voiced their opposition (and some didn't > travel) to DebConf10, and several non-first-world will probably have a > hard time getting the visa. Thanks for giving us the opportunity to address this question. I am aware that there are Europeans involved in Debian who were conscientious objectors to DC10 being held in the US; and I applaud their opposition to modern oppressive travel regimes and respect their personal choice to not travel to conferences in the US. However, making this a DebConf-level issue is a deplorable double-standard: - Governments and airlines of EU nations are complicit in the enforcement of the US's invasive security rules. - The EU is not more friendly to visitors from (arbitrary) developing countries than the US is. - The (logistical and monetary) costs for getting a visa to the EU if you must apply for one are not substantially different from those for getting a visa to the US. - While the US immigration regime differs in some relevant details from that in the EU, such as the fingerprinting requirement, the broad strokes of the policies are the same. The only thing unique about DebConf in the US has been the vocalness of objections. I'm sure there were people who chose not to attend DebConf11 in Bosnia, who chose not to attend DebConf12 in Nicaragua, and who would choose not to attend a DebConf14 in Venezuela because they disapprove of one aspect or another of these countries' government/policies. However, any such boycotts did not prevent us from holding a successful DebConf in Bosnia, in Nicaragua, or in New York; they would not prevent DebConf from being a success in Venezuela if that's what the DebConf committee chooses; and they would not prevent the success of a DebConf in Portland. None of this is meant to downplay the significance of visa difficulties for those affected. But we should address these challenges pragmatically, not polemically, as part of the broader question of making DebConf a success. When weighed against the cost of gathering people in one place from all over the world, the visa expenses are very small, and there are certainly things that DebConf could do to level the playing field: in addition to the local team providing visa assistance (as Allison has already commented, and which I would consider a normal part of any DebConf bid), we could also consider visa application fees a sponsorable travel expense just like plane tickets are. When you consider the map of Debian developer locations[1], I think it's obvious that we can be more cost-effective with our travel budget by sponsoring visas for developers to come into the US from Latin America, than by sponsoring plane tickets for developers in Canada and the US down to Venezuela. [1] http://www.debian.org/devel/developers.loc Oh, and just to throw in some numbers: according to [2], 825 of 920 active Debian developers (90%) live in countries whose citizens are eligible for travel to the US without a visa. That includes the 37 visa waiver program countries listed on [3], as well as the US and Canada. It does not include Mexico, for which (as you know) the US has its own particular system of visas valid for 10 years. [2] http://www.perrier.eu.org/weblog/2012/06/06 [3] http://travel.state.gov/visa/temp/without/without_1990.html > There is also this tradition we have of not repeating countries. Of > course, being the USA such a large country, and being its Debian > population so large, I would not give much weight to the argument, but > I have seen it mentioned on IRC. There are many good reasons to move the conference around from year to year: it removes the risk of burning out a local team, it gives us an opportunity to reach out to different local sponsors (avoiding to bleed any of them dry), and it lets us make the conference geographically fair to attendees in the aggregate. But these are factors we should consider because *they make for a better DebConf*, and not out of blind adherence to a "tradition" to never repeat a country. A policy to never repeat a country couldn't work indefinitely; sooner or later we would run out of unique countries with credible hosting bids. While we should still try to vary the hosting location, we should certainly not try to to enforce a "once per country" rule. As for Portland in particular, it's been 4 years since the last DebConf in the US. Taken altogether, we've had two DebConfs in South America (Porto Alegre, Mar del Plata); two in "Central" America (Oaxtepec, Managua); and two in "North" America (Toronto, New York). In terms of geographic equality, I think there's no clear reason to prefer one bid over the other. And Portland is over 3,000 km from either of the previous North American host cities; there's no overlap in terms of local teams with the previous conferences, and likely to be very little overlap with "local" sponsors. > Proposed venue > ============== > > I feel the proposed work rooms you mention for the venue somewhat > small. Quoting from the Wiki: > One main plenary room with capacity for 200. This room has > removable partitions that convert it into two talk rooms during > sessions, one @ 98 places, one @ 70 places. > One additional talk room @ 48 places. > Two hacklabs, one @ 90 places and one @ 54 places, for a combined > capacity of 144. > If attendance is higher than expected, we will have the option of > reserving more or larger rooms closer to the date of the event > (subject to availability). > But, if we are looking at a >300 people attendance, there will be many > saturation moments. Do you have an idea of those additional spaces' > fees and capacities? The pdf Allison linked to from the Portland State website provides information about additional rooms available and their (standard) rates. Any of the rooms shown there are potentially available for our use, it just depends how much money we have to spend and how much space we want. Can you clarify what figures you think we should be using for estimating attendance? In preparing the venue quote, I've gone from the statistics on attendance at DC10 in New York: http://debconf-data.alioth.debian.org/stats/old-dc10/rooms-by-date-2.txt - peak attendance (for people with properly-entered data) was 271 - attendance peaked mid-week (Tue-Thu); attendance the day of the opening plenary was 267, attendance the day of the closing plenary was 177 - not everyone who's present will attend the plenary - the plenary room can accomodate a few more people "standing room", beyond the 200 seated capacity - I have assumed the attendance in Portland will be slightly less than what it was in New York, due to geographic considerations. All things considered, then, I have the impression that the listed rooms would suffice for DebConf. But if you would like us to use different assumptions for attendance at different points during the week, we're happy to rework the bid accordingly. In that case, I think the best option would probably be to rent the ballroom (600 person capacity) for just the opening and closing plenaries. I avoided including this in the bid originally because I know the video team prefers not to have to move equipment around between rooms, so it's preferable to not use "special" rooms for only part of the time; however, the ballroom comes pre-equipped with a complete A/V setup, so if we need the use of a larger space for the plenaries we can probably make this work and avoid incurring huge added costs from renting space we're not using for the whole week. -- 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 Developer http://www.debian.org/ slangasek(a)ubuntu.com vorlon(a)debian.org

11 years, 7 months

It's That Time Again - Beering !

by Patty Langasek

It's that time again! Moral number 3: When we meet on the third Thursday of the month, we must drink beer. Or something like that. The third Thursday falls on 3/21/13 this month, which just HAPPENS to be next Thursday. Lucky Lab, 7pm. This time, I bring games. *eyes Kees* -- ---------------------------------------------------------- Patty Langasek harmoney(a)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

11 years, 7 months

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Debian-portland-soc March 2013