Debian Conference Demonstrates Importance of Real-Life Meetings

This year's Debian conference was a great success and demonstrated the importance of real-life meetings even for virtual communities. About 140 people attended the conference, which took place from July 18th to 20th at the University of Oslo, Norway. Of these circa 90 people attended the first Debian working camp which preceded the conference from July 12th to 17th.

During debcamp more than 200 bugs were fixed in the future debian-installer, which demonstrates the success of this type of developers meeting. Thanks to strong sponsorship from HP, NUUG Foundation, Lindows, Trolltech, O'Reilly, Linpro (with Dell) and the University of Oslo food, facility, abundant computing power and accommodation were free of charge for attendants. Many developers both from Europe and abroad could be supported in their travels as well. The strong support from the Norwegian Unix User Group (NUUG) in planning and organisation made the event go smoothly and left a professional impression. The current Debian Project Leader, Martin Michelmayr was eminently impressed with debcamp: "This year's debconf and especially the preceding debcamp were a great success. The idea of having a debcamp in which people can work on various projects together was born during last year's debconf and got realised this year. We have seen that it is very effective when you can put people who normally work together via the Internet into a single room.

Many design and implementation issues have been discussed and have successfully been resolved. We will try to hold more debcamps in the future, possibly smaller ones in different countries.". Debian's coordinator for the conference, Andreas Schuldei, concluded: "Especially communities that work together through the Internet need this kind of gathering to become more successful. I think that this event has fulfilled its goal to inspire and motivate everyone attending. This was a striking example of Debian's vibrant community and amazing variety. ".