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Fun at Debconf - And redefining targets

For some days at Debconf, I’ve been somewhat stressed and frustrated. You see, the first DebCamp/DebConf I took part in (Oslo), I was really productive - Besides meeting lots and lots of people and having a great time, during DebConf3 I learnt a scary lot about the project in many aspects and, although I was already a DD, it really decided me to get more involved.
When we were at Brazil, I had a great time as well, but (code-wise, bugs-wise and so on) I was much less productive - I started peeking at the processes that involve running such a strange and intensive conference, I was more active talking with other Latin Americans, and so on.
So, for DebConf5, I was a full orga team member - Man, did that make me feel powerful! Of course, as there was so much orga work to be done, I basically didn’t hack into anything. During the day it was organizational work, and during the night time-after-22:00 (how do you people live without a night!?) it was sauna. What a great invention of the Finns! After getting relaxed by sauna, nights were socially intensive
About DebConf 6… Well, it was hectic and chaotic. It is probably the most stressful two-week period (two week? Two months at least! Well, anyway) period of my life. It is the only Debconf so far I don’t even remember having had much social interaction. But still, for reasons I fail to understand, I am really happy we held DebConf in Mexico. It is one of the best, most exciting and (hopefully!) unrepeatable experiences in life.
What about this year? Well, I took a couple of steps back, and while I’m formally still part of the always-great orga team, there are way too many things I don’t know or can answer. Partially, I blame that impossible dialect of English they speak in the UK - Please, next time you feel a bit tired, lock yourself in a room with six hurried English and Scottish people, add a couple of Germans to the mix (no, I don’t have problem with the other accents spoken in there), and try to get the general lines discussed. Impossible.
As I took a couple of steps back, I thought I would be able to hack a bit. There were some great ideas of things to work on - But so far, I’ve practically not started with any! I wanted to do some QA rounds in the pkg-perl repository, kill a couple of long-standing bugs, and then there is thismetainit idea we have been discussing… So we held the MetaInit BoF, and Nomeata has been actively hacking it - But I must recognize I have done little besides documenting and cleaning a bit a minor module of it. The second day I was here, I started working on something that was completely outside of my plan (hacking up a subsystem for Pentabarf to help the video team, as I previously complained). Just after we finished with it, DebConf properly started - So I’ve been basically taping the talks, reviewing the files, in the orga and video meetings… Until yesterday, I was quite frustrated not to have been able to work a bit on the couple of things I wanted to do. I have not yet been able even to work on three things I need for my Real Life, which still counts, even at DebConf.
But then, yesterday I read a post by Wouter - Man, you are completely right, and I must keep this in mind at all times: DebCamp to me isn’t about being productive, so much as it is about meeting people and getting to know the environment. Well, I’ve terribly even failed to get to know the environment (I’ll reserve some time on Thursday or Friday, I hope), but so far this has been quite fun, and completely out of what I usually do. And, even without me considering this, DebConf has been quite productive for me in ways I didn’t expect - I’ve met and had a couple of beers with the pkg-perl group (and today I’ll meet with the pkg-ruby-extras group), have plotted several things with the Spanish-Speaking group (which, by the way, has tremendously grown since we were at Oslo), I even started hacking a bit my way into Pentabarf, which will be very useful once I get back to work!
Anyway, in short: Wouter, you made me reconsider, you made my day - Thanks! And now, I’m a happy man again :)

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