Even though some three months have passed since
DebConf11 has successfully ended, I still wanted to give you just a glimpse on how some parts were played through the eyes of a lunatic (read: organizer). Of course, blog post can t come close near of explaining anything but at least it should give some insight and hopefully some pointers to the future DebConf organizers.
If you don t feel like reading this much text you can listen to
last episode of
This Week In Debian podcast and after it just head to Beginning of the end part.
DebConf11
First of all I d like to apologize if I offended or hurt anyone in this whole process as it wasn t my intention and during DebConf organization this is nothing irregular, for you to get hurt or you hurting somebody else. One thing that got stuck with me this whole time is when Mart n Ferrari approached me after I did
bid proposal of Bosnia/Herzegovina for DebConf11 back on DebConf9 and told me
you have no idea what you just got yourself into I played cool and said something along the line
of coure I do and boy did I lie.
During DebConf organization you re bound to make some of your decisions instantaneously in which you ll lose something, the most you can do is assess what s the thing you can cut the cord on, even though if that thing or a person for that matter might have meant something to you. You ll lose things, relationships, friendships, contacts at the times sense of humor and maybe even common logic. Some of it comes back to you, some the very next day and for some it may take longer. Some of it was lost irreversibly, but even in that case it wasn t lost and could even be traced to some other cause.
One thing that I m thankful for is that I didn t
lose, not lose but even get distanced from those close to me, and that I didn t lose guy who was with me in this from very first day, my right hand, my partner in crime Velimir ( aroundthfur ). It s not even losing I m talking about here, because even by losing you re gaining something and this is part of your everyday life, it s just that your life frame kinda gets stuck on fast forward button. So once the ride s over you may feel bit dizzy asking yourself what just happened.
During this time I was also contacted by Google recruiter regrading software engineer internship but to make a long story short I didn t make it due to my heavy involvement and my lack of time (read: fail). But I don t find this as losing either, first time I was contacted by
them, next time they ll be contacted by
me maybe even for different position this time (project manager?
. Even this DebConf wasn t our first bid we lost DebConf7 bid to Edinburgh, but it is perseverance that got us here. The moral I m trying to tell here is if you have a goal never back down from it.
What I found to be our biggest problem and what I personally found as most painstaking in all of this was having and reporting to so many different sides and different groups while trying to keep them in same communication channel. Even my right hand (Velimir) was apart from me (Vienna), then place where two of us are coming from is not the place where DebConf is getting organized in. As in the end we ended up having
all the parties separated and pulling to their own side, from Government of Republika Srpska to NGO to Debian to local team and to those who remained as undeclared . Option of cutting the cord in this case was missing as these were the components that DebCon11 was made of.
Of course this meant you ll be missing workforce and there were days you d wake up driving >= 200 km/h (literally) with one hand on the wheel, other on the phone and your other right hand (Velimir) holding your RedBull. But you wouldn t do this just because you had to and there was no one else to do it, you d do it because you re responsible for the sake of the project and won t be just sitting there because by some unwritten hierarchy rules you re supposed to sit and supervise things. I d advise you do the same thing when you see there s no one else to do something, even if it means making coffee for one of the teams.
I m not trying to scare you away from organizing your own DebConf, on the contrary after all I ve been through in past two years if someone asked me would I do it if I knew it was like this, without a doubt my answer would still be fsck yea . All the previous DebConf organizers told me about all of this, but why didn t I give up? For the same reason you won t give up and for the same reason why we believe in the same goal.
If anything this is one of the stories you ll want to tell your kids about so
When I was your age I used to sleep naked in the snow would turn to
When I was your age I organized DebConf11 in Maybe this blog post wasn t even necessary and some things weren t supposed to be said, I guess sometimes I just can t shut up
For those who were on DebConf11 I hope you enjoyed and had a great time, otherwise I m saying all of this in vein. As organizer all you see is problems and you miss most of the confrence, but by what I know there are 11 candidate bids for DebConf13 and for me hearing that tells me the results of our efforts.
DebConf11 after effects
I could write a whole novel about this, but to keep it as short as possible, for last two years as a side project I was working on an idea of Government or some of its institutions migrating to Linux. At first I was somewhat loud about it, then after Microsoft heard about it and after they tried stopping the idea by trying to scare me by trying to interfere with my private life; as that didn t work its lobbyist came even near of obstructing the whole conference within the Government. For the sake of the conference, I convinced the Government that by supporting DebConf it doesn t mean they need to move to Linux and publicly stopped talking about it. I also convinced them that our only goal was to have successful conference and promote alternative options and open ideas. I wasn t lying as I saw this as new opportunity of them concluding on their own why they should or shouldn t not move, the better conference was the more chances of success we had.
That s why I tried pushing as many representatives from various companies as in this case we would use reverse psychology where basically no one or few know what Linux or Debian for that matter is, but everybody knows who Google is, so if you have participants from i.e: Google or Austrian E-Health care system talking about how they are using your technology is better way to explain what s it all about really. Eventually Microsoft even had their first ever conference in Bosnia/Herzegovina and you wanna take a wild guess where it was held?
In the end we had a great conference, after the conference we were the ones that were approached by some big local companies interested in future co-operation and in the end a meeting with Mark Shuttleworth and President along with the core of Government was scheduled.
Topic? Migration to Linux. For me personally this meeting went better then I could possibly even picture it, many topics were discussed and basically it was up to us/me to make a draft of the project plan and submit request for proposal to the Government. There was still some lobbying but it seemed as it all disappeared, runway was clear and open for the lift off.
Necessary contacts with potential future partners were made and before any meetings were scheduled I announced I ll be taking a short break. I missed this years vacation, for matter of a fact I missed going to a vacation for last two years. I decided going to Dubrovnik for few days, just to recollect my thoughts, recompile my kernel and switch to lower gear as I was stuck in 6th gear for way too long.
Beginning of the end
Being on this vacation , even if it was only for few days this gave me an opportunity to look at it all from a different prospective, different angle and that s when it came to me. I realized that even before I was finished with one project without even realizing I was already involved with another one, one that would take much more time and one that might leave me wondering ~5 years later with question what if? After all if get involved with something I m not going to back out, it s either failure is not an option or I won t start doing it at all. Even if it brought me everything I wanted, how would you know if that s what you wanted if you haven t thought about it first?
Having DebConf for the first time in this region already showed some (positive) results, but for seeing the actual results it may take a bit longer. We sowed the seeds now the best thing we can do is leave them as it is and see if anything grows out. Of course I could lean over them and protect them from any natural or any other type of hazards, this would also mean when I m not around
it wouldn t know how to protect itself on its own. Besides all, interfering with natures way of doing things is rarely a good option. I consider myself to still be relatively young and threatening my well being over safe keeping some seeds and watching over if they grow into something or not doesn t really seem that attractive to me. Maybe one day I ll decide to leave the land, maybe I won t even get to see if anything grows out after all. Maybe some day someone will find this fruit, recognize its worth and claim it as it s own, maybe over time everybody forgets everything and even that this land once was a fertile ground. Maybe, maybe not.
I m still a student, I was supposed to graduate last year but I took less classes last year so I wouldn t snap under all the pressure. That s why this year I have less classes and am supposed to graduate in May, that s less then a year until then and I just want to devote some time to myself, figure out what I want with me life, learn the things I want to learn, do the things I want to do. I want to turn back to working on Eclipse, I have some good plans for Eclipse and Android developers, lately I ve been slacking off way too much but I think I have a good excuse
In the end, all I know is that I still want to change the world, whether it s doing that inside of Google or in my own company, or some third place; or I ll just be laughing at this statement only time will show.
I m hoping that now with all of this out of me I can finally finish the DebConf11 chapter of my life.
One forgotten "full 100%" in last publication: German.
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I attended the Git Together earlier this week. I was tenative about this,
since I'm not really much of a git developer; all my git work is building
stuff on top of it. It turned out great though.
At first it seemed like one of those parties where you don't know anyone.
But then I got to reconnect with Avery Pennarun for the first time since
DebConf 2, and got to know Jonathan Nieder better, and it was also nice
to see Jelmer Vernooij. And the core developers were also very welcoming.
Junio Hamano knew of my work (and I am in awe of his), and Jeff King
thinks my take on SHA1 security issues has value, and has been
expanding on it. Shawn Pearce managed the unconference subtly and well.
Lots of very smart people. At one point I found myself accross the table
from Android's lead developer.
I was very happy that everything I think needs improvement in git was
discussed during the unconference:
![[India at night]](http://www.braincells.com/debian/images/india-at-night.jpg)
Wishing the entire Debian community worldwide a happy and prosperous Gujarati New Year (Vikram Samvat 2068 called Shobhan.)
The picture above, is one that's been making the rounds of the Indian blogosphere. It purports to be a 
After 
this week my activities were split between some freshly-reported pkg-perl
bugs, & looking at some of the older RC bugs. for most of the ones in
the latter category I found again ready-to-be-applied patches, many of them
from Ubuntu again. details:
I just 
For 
Woodchuck and FrOSCon
The last month I was supposed to work on a 