Wed, 27 Jul 2011
A day in the life of me, at Debconf
On Tuesday, July 26, I was in Banja Luka, Bosnia.
I am here for Debconf 2011, this year's meetup of contributors and enthusiasts of Debian. I am a developer in Debian.
In the morning, I wake up late still feeling a bit of the effect of the Wine and Cheese birds-of-a-feather session.
I manage to make it to the talk by the Debian System Administration team. I chatted with dkg. We both decide to take naps.
I wake up at about 2:45 PM, at which time I realized I had missed lunch. I had been hoping to be at lots of talks during Tuesday, but things aren't working out well for that. Having missed both lunch and breakfast, food seems important enough to delay my walk to Banski Dvor, the conference venue.
I walk around the venue. I have exactly 1.30 KM (Bosnian currency) in my pocket and no ability to understand the Bosnian language. I find an ice cream stand on a street corner that is generally packed with and surrounded by commerce of that kind. It looks more like a gelato stand than an "ice cream" stand.
I wait in a confusing non-line, and finally am at the front. I ask if the young lady behind the counter speaks English; she doesn't. I put my 1.30 on the counter and ask, "How many scoops?" She mulls over the question, and raises two fingers.
I point to strawberry and chocolate-hazelnut-with-pieces-of-hazelnut. She gives me a cone with two scoops of delicious, although not shocking, ice cream. The strawberry pieces are sort of oddly crunchy due to being frozen. The hazelnut chunks are the highlight of the purchase. I eat this and walk toward the venue. I stand at the front door of the venue, finishing my ice cream because food is not allowed indoors. As I eat the bottom of the cone, I marvel at the spherical shape of the scoop of hazelnut-chocolate ice cream.
I attend most of a BoF (birds of a feather session) on the interest Debian has in tracking how people are using our websites. We mostly all agree that knowing more about what people do on debian.org would be nice. During the BoF, I also handle IMs about some bills that have to be paid in our house.
At the publicity BoF, I learn that the Publicity team in Debian is doing a particularly good job, but is having trouble growing. During that time, the housemate and I come to a good set of conclusions about how to best proceed. I am pleased that we successfully identified current and future processes that avoid this problem in the future and also retain a great deal of clarity for the other people who didn't plan the process.
We talk about the booths that Debian runs at various conferences and meetings during the Events BoF. I learn that I am not the only booth staffer who has stood in front of the booth, making it hard to tell the booth staff from the visitors.
At 7 PM, we all go outside for the group photo. I missed the group photo in New York in 2010. The group photo from 2008 shows how much fun I was having (lots). I remember (possibly mis-remember) having used it, the summer of 2009, in a presentation to prospective funders of OpenHatch.
So I take special care to not miss the group photo. I am standing next to Jonas Smedegaard. He maintains the UW IMAPd package; it shares a lot of code with the package I most actively maintain, alpine.
When I find him and walk toward him, Jonas says to me, "You know, it's very important who you are standing next to in the group photo!"
I replied, "Yes -- I had better get away from you, then!" He doesn't understand the joke; I explain it.
Then we see Aigars standing on the balcony facing us, moving his camera around as he took a few photos of us. We all laugh a lot as he waited while a flag blew in front of his camera. blocking his view of us.
He tells us, "Everybody say: squeeze!"
The result is fantastic. Herbert even looks great. As we walk toward dinner (across the street), I think imagine he will stitch the photos together with Hugin.
Dinner that evening, as with the other evenings, was sponsored; it was at the hotel restaurant. A mix-up involving different types of meal tickets means that I wait in line twice. After the small wait, I eat and chatted with Niels, where I learn about an important (and amusing) but in lintian. Then I go to the hacklab and work on Debexpo, a web app that Debian has been trying to build for three years. I appointed myself the task of finishing that about a year ago. I thought Debconf would be a good time to finish doing that; in an email that evening, I indicate that I was not going to work on it much more after Debconf.
That evening, I don't take part in the PGP keysigning. I stay in the hacklab and mostly work on Debexpo.
After one particularly frustrating issue involving my lack of knowledge of PostgreSQL and the disappointing fact that I have to retain users' data rather than just drop the database, I pop upstairs for a short game of Mao. I am late, as I expected, but I am eager to learn the rules by playing. However, within about ten minutes, one player was argues with another (Joachim) about a rule. Joachim had created the rule; the dealer simply asked Joachim, "Are you correct?"
"Yes," answered Joachim. "I'm quite sure I am applying the rule consistently."
This satisfies Ian Jackson, the dealer. It isn't enough for the arguer. Ian looked increasingly upset as this circular discussion continues for about thirty seconds. Finally, sharply, Ian tells us the cards were his, and this is no way to play, and that he is going to do something else! Without any argument, the cards return to him.
As we pack up the chairs and move the table back to where it belongs, Ian asked me, "Was that the right thing to do?"
I pause for a moment. I wouldn't have done what he did, but I am impressed by the self-actualization and clarity of his action. "One of a few possible right things," I answer with conviction.
Ian is someone I had met the night before. It was after the cheese and wine BoF had ended. I vaguely remember somehow still having a drink in my hands. I could be mistaken.
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Tue, 25 Dec 2007
Tokyo Thursday
At the start of the summer, I read an article by a journalist who successfully worked for his U.S.-based company while wandering South America for a month. No one knew that when he interviewed them over Skype, he said, he was thousands of miles away.
That sounded pretty good, so I wanted to try it. I was invited to speak on behalf of Science Commons, and Herbert had been to Japan but I hadn't, so I thought that this trip to Tokyo would be a good one to start with. Some basic notes (more later, hopefully):
- Weekends are really useful. If you're working in the daytime, you'll miss out on lots of great things that can only happen in the afternoon.
- You'll miss people from home. Some of them might miss you too, but you'll have less way of knowing that.
- Plans are useful. Guide books that have walking tours with lists of places to go, marked on the map of the walking tours, are immensely helpful.
- Seeing people takes time. If you're lucky (or if you're smart), you can arrange to see people in places you actually wanted to go in the first place. Maybe you can do what I'm doing today, which is (hopefully) seeing an act of a Kabuki play somewhere before meeting up with people, or maybe you can manage to chat with people as you walk through some nice park. Otherwise, be aware that you're adding to the places you have to go see.
- Speaking French is fun, and it's one of the few activities where if people compliment you don't have to feel bad accepting the compliment.
Just before and after committing to my plane tickets, as I remarked that I was leaving Tokyo on a Saturday, I wondered, Maybe I should extend this so I have the weekend in Tokyo. The big lesson from this trip is, Yes, you need weekends. You weren't really able to use the weekend of the conference, and you could have predicted as much way earlier.
