DebConf 11 -- Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina
I'm writing this on my way back from my fifth DebConf, waiting in the
Frankfurt Airport for my flight to Munich then another wait for a
flight back to Los Angeles.
DebConf is the annual convention of
Debian Developers and other interested in
how Debian Linux (or Debian BSD) works, and want to help make it
better. Debian is an international volunteer project, and Debconf is
held each year in a different city, normally not on the same Continent
two years in a row. Only one so far has been held in the United
States, last year Debconf 10 was in New York City. (Mexico and Canada
have also hosted Debconfs.)

DebConf is a week long conference, with one day designated as "Debian
Day" with more introductory level talks, frequently in the local
language, and local people are invited to learn about Debian. The
rest of DebConf is held in English. This year had over 350 attendees
from a couple of dozen countries.
Unlike most computer conferences, DebConf is free to attend.
(Professional and Corporate memberships are available for those who
would like to financially support DebConf.) If you apply early
enough, you can request help paying for food, lodging, and travel as
well, but such support is limited and you have to justify it. This is
all make possible by our generous sponsors, who include some major
corporations who use Debian.
This year DebConf was held in
Banja Luka, Bosnia and
Herzegovina. The Bosnian bid won
partially based on the generous support of the Bosnian government, not
only financial and letting us use one of their buildings for the
conference, but also help with getting visas and other such aid.
(Visas are not required from the US or most of Europe, but they are
from some other countries.)
I arrived on Saturday about 24 hours after I left home, starting with
too little sleep. I actually managed to eat dinner before passing out
in my hotel bed. The hotel room I had in Hotel Vidovic (accent on the
c) was nicer than any I have stayed at in Europe (although I always
chose by price), and the conference price was less than half what a
similar room goes for at a US hotel. There was a nice breakfast
buffet included in the hotel cost. (Hot omelets and sausages as well
as the usual cold cuts, cheese, fruit, juice, coffee, tea, cereal,
yogurt, etc.) The in-room ethernet connection worked all the time
except one morning, although it was not particularly fast. The hotel
is relatively new, the Lift (elevator) had a date of 2005 on it and I
suspect that is when the building was constructed.
Sunday was Debian Day, and I went to a couple of sessions before
deciding to take a nap in the afternoon. My nap wound up being from
3pm to after 11pm, sleeping through dinner. I was awake for an hour
or so checking my email, and then slept till 4am. That was the
morning I made it to breakfast before 7am. This was the first time I
ate breakfast at normal breakfast hours for a full week for many
years.

After breakfast Monday, I spent several hours at the front desk
helping give out badges, conference bags, and t-shirts. Lunches and
dinners were in the Hotel Bosna, across the street from venue. For
lunches we were served soup, salad, a plate of food, and desert. For
dinners there was a buffet. The food served at Bosna was fairly good,
but repetitive from day to day. (I've had much worse hotel food in
the US for much more money.)
Tuesday was more or less a repeat of Monday, with me opening the front
desk by myself and not nearly as many new arrivals. The sessions
varied of course, and I played "Debconf Experimental 5-card Mao".
(Mao is a card game, popular in Cambridge and at DebConf.)

Wednesday was the Day Trip. One day at DebConf is dedicated to
socializing while seeing some of the local culture of the hosting
city/country. This year there was an option of rafting (with some
white water) or visiting a historical monastery and hiking to a
waterfall with several grain mills powered by diverted water. This is
the first time I had seen one actually grinding grain. (It's mainly a
historical tourist attraction, but I don't know what happens to the
flower made.) We then met at the rafting location for a BBQ lunch.
Apparently there was some miscommunicaiton and the rafting place was
not prepared for 70 or 80 people who wished to go rafting, so some did
not get to raft until after lunch, and I'm not sure all that wanted to
did. Dinner was back at Bosna.
Thursday was another normal conference day, with the new wrinkle of
distributing food tickets since Bosna was not willing/able to follow
our instructions on who should be allowed to eat at Debconf expense.
Those who wished to dine with the other Debconf attendees could
purchase the tickets from the front desk, although this was not well
publicised and few people took us up on it. The special "Conference
Dinner" was Thursday night. This was held at a restaurant on the 14th
floor of a building a few blocks away, and was a fancier buffet.
There didn't seem to be much difference between the first and second
course, and they ran out of desert before many people got any. This
one was not as memorable as the one in Mexico, but that one was for
the wrong reasons, including an unplanned indoor waterfall. After the
dinner I played Mao again, this time till 2am.
Friday was the only day I did not arrive at the venue in time for the
first session (10am).

Saturday I opened
the front desk by myself again. In the afternoon was the "Debbugs
Skills Exchange" that was requested by several people, so Collin
Watson, Ian Jackson and I gave some information about it and Don
Armstrong (who has done most of the recent coding on debbugs)
participated via voip. (Debbugs is software for the Debian Bug
Tracking System, often called the BTS.) Collin and Ian are emeritus
members of the BTS team, and not active in it, while I am handling the
spam filtering and haven't done much with the rest of the BTS. This
was in the small "Meeting Room" (rather than the Auditorium or the
round room) so we don't have to worry about video archives of it being
available. (All the sessions is the two main rooms were streamed live
on the internet, and will be edited and archived on
http://meetings-archive.debian.net/pub/debian-meetings/2011/debconf11/.)
We created a mini intro to the BTS document at that session that
should be cleaned up and published. Less than two hours after that
talk, the conference was over and teardown was started. As usual, the
teardown and cleanup of what we had set up over several days was done
is several hours, with many people helping.

Sunday was leaving day. I was one of the people on the 11am charter
bus to Zagreb DebConf arranged. The two such charter busses were an
excellent idea, since the normal busses and trains would not have been
able to manage that many extra passengers. This actually took longer
than the planned 4 hours due to the long lines at the border crossing
on Sunday afternoon. Both Bosnia and Croatia check passports both
coming and leaving, so it is checked on both sides of the river that
is the border between the countries. The check is pretty cursory
unless you are from a country that needs a visa. I then had a plane
flight to Frankfurt, and am currently in the middle of my 11 hour
layover here. After that I fly to Munich early in the morning, have
an 8 hour layover, and fly to Los Angeles. This schedule was in order
to get flights at something resembling reasonable cost when I did it.
From what I saw of Banja Luka, it's a nice place to visit, although
most of the people do not speak English. Vegetarians may have a hard
time finding meals, and sometimes they try to serve fish to them.
(Assuming vegetarian means "no meat".) Transportation to Banja Luka
is a bit hard, there are only six or so flights per week to the local
airport, and one of the airlines is not on the international ticket sites.
Most DebConf attendees flew to Zagreb then took busses, trains,
vans, or taxis to Banja Luka (a 2.5-5 hour ride depending on border
lines, road construction, etc.). The weather was rainy off and on
throughout Debconf, but the day of the Day trip the rain held off
until most of us were back and we had a lovely day. Temperatures were
warm but not overly hot, and I never needed my jacket.

There are many large alarm clocks in Banja
Luka, (such as the one pictured here, across the street from the
venue) but there doesn't seem to be a way to change the time setting
or put them on snooze.