My first DebConf was DebConf4, held in Porte Alegre, Brazil back in 2004. Uncle Steve did the majority of the travel arrangements for 6 of us to go. We had some mishaps which we still tease him about, but it was a great experience. So when I learnt DebConf19 was to be in Brazil again, this time in Curitiba, I had to go. So last November I realised flights were only likely to get more expensive, that I’d really kick myself if I didn’t go, and so I booked my tickets. A bunch of life happened in the meantime that mean the timing wasn’t particularly great for me - it’s been a busy 6 months - but going was still the right move.

One thing that struck me about DC19 is that a lot of the faces I’m used to seeing at a DebConf weren’t there. Only myself and Steve from the UK DC4 group made it, for example. I don’t know if that’s due to the travelling distances involved, or just the fact that attendance varies and this happened to be a year where a number of people couldn’t make it. Nonetheless I was able to catch up with a number of people I only really see at DebConfs, as well as getting to hang out with some new folk.

Given how busy I’ve been this year and expect to be for at least the next year I set myself a hard goal of not committing to any additional tasks. That said DebConf often provides a welcome space to concentrate on technical bits. I reviewed and merged dkg’s work on WKD and DANE for the Debian keyring under debian.org - we’re not exposed to the recent keyserver network issues due to the fact the keyring is curated, but providing additional access to our keyring makes sense if it can be done easily. I spent some time with Ian Jackson talking about dgit - I’m not a user of it at present, but I’m intrigued by the potential for being able to do Debian package uploads via signed git tags. Of course I also attended a variety of different talks (and, as usual, at times the schedule conflicted such that I had a difficult choice about which option to chose for a particular slot).

This also marks the first time I did a non-team related talk at DebConf, warbling about my home automation (similar to my NI Dev Conf talk but with some more bits about the Debian involvement thrown in):

In addition I co-presented a couple of talks for teams I’m part of:

I only realised late in the week that 2 talks I’d normally expect to attend, an Software in the Public Interest BoF and a New Member BoF, were not on the schedule, but to be honest I don’t think I’d have been able to run either even if I’d realised in advance.

Finally, DebConf wouldn’t be DebConf without playing with some embedded hardware at some point, and this year it was the Caninos Loucos Labrador. This is a Brazilian grown single board ARM based computer with a modular form factor designed for easy integration into bigger projects. There;s nothing particularly remarkable about the hardware and you might ask why not just use a Pi? The reason is that import duties in Brazil make such things prohibitively expensive - importing a $35 board can end up costing $150 by the time shipping, taxes and customs fees are all taken into account. The intent is to design and build locally, as components can be imported with minimal taxes if the final product is being assembled within Brazil. And Mercosul allows access to many other South American countries without tariffs. I’d have loved to get hold of one of the boards, but they’ve only produced 1000 in the initial run and really need to get them into the hands of people who can help progress the project rather than those who don’t have enough time.

Next year DebConf20 is in Haifa - a city I’ve spent some time in before - but I’ve made the decision not to attend; rather than spending a single 7-10 day chunk away from home I’m going to aim to attend some more local conferences for shorter periods of time.