Fri, 22 Jun 2007
Hi from DC7
The journey to Edinburgh on Wednesday went pretty well. The only problem I ran into was that after landing at Edinburgh airport we had to wait in the plane for a few more minutes because the airport's doors wouldn't open.
I felt pretty beaten when I finally arrived at the venue and just exchanged a few greetings and took a look around before going to the hostel and finishing my night's sleep. When I got up again it was almost time to go for dinner and then pick up Tolimar who got here on a later plane, since his appclication for travel sponsorship got accepted much earlier. (He's giving a talk and a BoF, so he had a higher priority.)
On Thursday I saw a few talks and attended the debian-women BoF, which I think was very productive and - most importantly - gave us back some of the momentum we'd lost over the last years. We've got a whole lot of plans for new things to do now and I am looking forward to getting to work on them when I get back. The day ended with the DebConf Ceilidh which was pretty fun altough it was quite obvious that geeks may not actually be the best dancers around. Lack of rhythm was easily made up with enthusiasm though and the slight lack of women was also easily compensated. I think that Ceilidh band will remember us. We even contributed a few musicians of our own! Once the Ceilidh was over I pretty much fell right into bed.
Although it's good to be here and meet all the people, only being at DebConf for the last few days generally tends to be rather frustrating. Firstly it's always weird to join a group that has already been together for a while and also DebConf really just isn't something that can be condensed to a few days. I've just about started to get into the flow today (Friday) and tomorrow I'll already be leaving again. Shame.
Anyway, only being here for a bit is still better than not being here at all and I very much hope to have more time next year when we meet in Argentina. For now I'll just enjoy my remaining last day at DebConf and hope for a better time next year.
Posted at: 14:47 in /english/debian/events/debconf7
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Wed, 20 Jun 2007
Off to EDI
It's now shortly before 5am (Argh!) and I'll be leaving home now. If
everything goes as planned this will be my journey:
5:20 - Bus to station
5:43 - Train to Hanover
6:21 - Train to Cologne
9:21 - Train to the Airport (CGN)
10:50 - Plane to EDI
Around noon - Arrival at Teviot.
If I don't show up, something went wrong.
Bye bye for now ... *yawn*
Posted at: 04:59 in /english/debian/events/debconf7
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Sun, 17 Jun 2007
Just when you are about to give up ...
It actually seemed as though I wouldn't be going to DebConf this year. I didn't get to work much the last two months, since I wanted to spend all my time on the near completion of my thesis so I didn't have the money to pay for a flight (or train) to EDI and back myself. Due to that same thesis I also didn't have the time to prepare a talk this year so I was also not a speaker. Since I am also neither a DD nor in NM I was pretty sure I wouldn't be eligible for travel sponsorship this year. And, as expected, I was indeed very far down the queue, so when I still hadn't heard anything about being sponsored until about a week before DebConf was starting I had pretty much given up on the whole thing and resigned to the fact that this year's DebConf would happen without me.
However, on 10 June I had a mail in my Inbox. Subject: "Your travel cost sponsorship request for DebConf7". It seems the DebConf team was able to dig up some more money and do another run on the sponsorship queue. This was three days before I had to get my thesis to the print shop and I wasn't really doing anything else except for frantically going over my proof readers' annotations, doing last minute additions, changes etc. and occasionally lie down for a few hours of rather uneasy sleep. So my first reaction was something along the lines of "What?! Now?! I don't have time for this now! Go away!" and I was pretty close to answering the mail saying "Thank's but that's too short notice. I won't be coming, have fun, see you all next year." Luckily Tolimar prevented this though and actually managed to find a flight for me that not only goes on the actual days that I had originally planned to arrive and leave but that is also not far over my travel sponsorship!
So, long story short, I'll be flying to EDI on Wednesday. It'll only be for the very last few days and I am probably already missing out on lots and lots of stuff, but at least I'll be able to attend for a few days. And in time for debian-women's third birthday! :)
I just hope everything will go well, it seems there's a lot of trouble with flying to DebConf this year, at least judging from what I read on planet and heard on irc.
See you all soon!
Posted at: 11:19 in /english/debian/events/debconf7
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