DebConf Organizers blog
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Registration is now open for DebConf10. The dates of the conference are August 1-7, 2010, with arrivals at our group lodging permitted as of 3 PM on July 31 and departures required by 11 AM on August 8. The conference is preceded by DebCamp from July 25-31 including the arrival day. To receive announcements regarding DebConf and DebCamp, please subscribe to the debconf-announce mailing list.
In order to avoid spamming Planet Debian with a long post detailing registration procedure, travel sponsorship, DebCamp info, and cost of attendance, please instead see the DebConf10 website’s registration page to answer all your questions. As always, feel free to contact the DebConf team via email or IRC for answers not provided by the website.
DebConf10 is going to be great. We’re looking forward to seeing you in New York in August!
— the DebConf team
The DebConf10 team just sent out a press release announcing the dates and venue for DebConf10 in New York City. Most of the readers of this blog already saw it through some other list, so I’ll just put the dates here and provide the full text plus other relevant info via links.
We hope to see many of you there!
Hello,
The DebConf10 local team would like to announce availability of visa information at http://debconf10.debconf.org/visas.xhtml
Full information is contained at that page, provided by our lawyer; however some important points are indicated below.
- The United States depends on its tens of millions of visitors annually for its economy to function. Getting approved for a visa is not a rare exception, and it is even easier given our generous free help from an immigration lawyer.
- If you are from a Visa Waiver Program country (see visa page), fill out the ESTA web form to apply for your travel authorization now. You don’t need any information about the conference itself or your means of travel.
- If you will need to apply for a visa, check the visa information page for information on what to do. Carefully check the wait times for your country’s embassy. For most countries there is no *immediate* urgency, but plan to get an appointment well in advance of May 2010.
- Make sure you will have a passport that will expire in February 2011 or later (6 months after the latest possible DebConf date). If not, apply for a new passport.
Special note to Venezuelans: Since the wait time for a visa appointment in Caracas is so long, we have been paying special attention to its visa application process. We have reports that the dates for visa appointments are moving quickly, getting later and later. If you are are applying for a visa in Caracas, you need to make an appointment immediately. You just need to make an appointment now, supporting materials can be assembled later. Also consider applying for a visa in a different US embassy such as the Quito, Ecuador one with a significantly shorter wait time. Consult with our lawyer for advice on the advantages and disadvantages of doing this.The local team hopes that everyone interested can meet us in New York City and have a great DebConf10 experience! Feel free to email us (publicly archived list) or ask in #debconf-team or #debconf-nyc on OFTC with your questions or ideas.
- The DebConf10 Local Team
While DebConf9 is over, there are still things to do, we are not done yet. There is even one thing every attendee can do: Give Feedback!
Did you attend an event during DebConf9? Did you like it? Was the speaker competent? Or could they improve something? Help them by telling it. Just go to the schedule, select the event you attended and follow the link in the “Feedback” box. You can rate the speaker in 5 different ways and even leave a text comment for them. (Please note that your name will not be shown to the speaker).
Have you been a speaker? Want to see what attendees thought about your performance? Go to the submission interface, select your event and look into the “Feedback” tab.
DebConf9 has finally begun with OpenDay today, Information about video streams is available on our wiki and now I need to stop blogging for our daily organisational meeting, which we conviniently timed at lunch time, so we have a good reason to keep it short :-)
We are still looking for volunteers for various jobs: food ticket checking, frontdesk work, videoteam work, announcing the speakers and making sure everything is fine with the talks - so if you are here and can spare a few hours once or on several days, please come to frontdesk and speak with us!
Enjoy!
The basic infrastructure has already been set up: we have internet at the main venue \o/ via a 20mbit symetric connection. Currently cat5 cables are being placed in the venue, the work to setup the wireless APs has begun, we have a basic frontdesk and the catering is also already providing us with food. Even the temperature is still bearable - inside and outside in the shadow ;-)
What we are lacking mostly atm are attendees and volunteers - if you can dedicate some time during DebConf or Camp, please talk to the frontdesk and look at our ToDo list.
The schedule for the upcoming DebConf9 is available. Most of it should be set already, but of course there still can be small changes until the conference starts, and honestly, until it ends :-) But we will try our best to avoid changes less then 48h in advance - and we count on you all here :-)
As usual we offer various ways to access the schedule:
This should leave enough options for you to deal with it, have fun. :)
This blog post is mostly a test to see the engine is still working… :-)
But I don’t think it hurts to mention that the deadline for registration and for submitting talks and workshops is in 8 days, so hurry up, if you haven’t already! Of course you can also register later, but then you won’t get sponsored and maybe won’t get a timeslot for your proposal.
That’s all for now, stay tuned for more!
Like last year, we have a feedback system available again. If you attended an event during DebConf and want to give feedback on it, including free-form text to the presenter, this is your chance!
As in previous years we have a DebConf Gallery running.
We would like to encourage people who have taken pictures around DebCamp, DebConf and DebianDay to upload them to gallery.debconf.org.
The server is open for everyone but accounts need to be activated by admins to avoid spam. If you create an account and it isn’t confirmed within 2 hours, feel free to talk to one of the admins in person or on IRC.
DebConf 8 is approaching and our website is clearly not what we’d like it to be. It turns out that compiling all the useful stuff that travellers might need is not easy, so we kindly ask you —dear lazyweb—, to lend us a hand.
The most important thing we need, is to recognise missing data. When you’re a local, is difficult to know what foreigners might need to know. So, even if you don’t know the country, your different point of view could help.
The second thing is to actually get articles written, some stuff ought to be written by locals, but the majority can be researched from the web (as we already did!). Proof-reading and checking translation is also appreciated.
Send us your patches, comments and suggestions to the website queue at the RT system, or contact Tincho@OFTC. Don’t sweat over formatting: plain text is OK, if you want to provide markup, please use very spartan XHTML Strict.
This year, DebianDay will take place in Buenos Aires, on Monday August 18th, the day after DebConf ends. We are still in need of talks for DebianDay, so, if you are coming to DebConf and you’ll be staying a few more days in Argentina after the conference, you are invited to give a talk on whatever you want as long as it’s Debian related.
Some suggestions for talk subjects for DebianDay:
We are planning on having two tracks, one for newbies and one for advanced talks; talks in Spanish are welcome, but don’t worry if you don’t speak the language, for talks in English, we will probably have a translator.
To submit a talk, just log in to your DebConf account and click in the “New event/Paper” link.
June 15th is the last day to reconfirm your attendance to DebConf8. If you are certain that you are coming, please reconfirm by setting the ‘Reconfirm Attendance’ box in your PentaBarf’s account.
If you have decided not to come to DebConf8, we are truly sorry about it, but we ask you to please state this by unchecking the ‘I want to attend this conference box’.
Currently, 397 people have registered for DebConf8, 340 plan to attend, but only 122 have reconfirmed (live stats).
I finally sent out a flood of mails to those people that applied for Travel Sponsorship for this years Debian Conference in Argentina. We have 58 people who got a position in our sponsorship queue, asking for nearly 60.000 USD in total. We are not yet sure if we are able to reimburse all of them, but we will at least try to.
We also have 24 people rejected from this queue and possibly some people haven’t been able to fill out their settings in our conference management system correctly/in time. While we are sorry for them, we can’t do much here.
Stefano Zacchiroli
proposed the idea of spreading the word about DebConf8 in a recent
blog post, in a way similar to what FOSDEM did this
year. So be a part of the meme! Add this HTML snippet to your blog
posts and help spread the word!
<a href="http://debconf8.debconf.org">
<img src="http://media.debconf.org/dc8/images/debconf8-going-to.png"
alt="I'm going to DebConf8, edition 2008 of the annual Debian
developers meeting" />
</a>