Upcoming conferences

I have a number of upcoming talks at conferences in the next few weeks and months that I thought I'd mention in case people want to attend or meet up:

• Debian Quality Assurance, Free Software World Conference 3.0, 7-9 February 2007, Badajoz, Spain. I will briefly give a summary of QA activities in Debian and of the work accomplished at the Debian QA meeting in Extremadura in December 2006.
• Running Debian on Inexpensive Network Storage Devices, FOSDEM, 24-25 February 2007, Brussels, Belgium. I will mainly talk about installing Debian on the Linksys NSLU2 and Thecus N2100, both very interesting devices.
• Compiler testing using Debian as a real-world testcase, Gelato Itanium Conference and Expo, 15-18 April 2007, San Jose, California. I will talk about the work I did testing GCC 4.2 and Osprey by compiling the entire Debian archive on Itanium (and other architectures).
• Release management in free software, Google, 19 April 2007, Mountain View, California. I will present some results from my research. I'll probably present good and bad practices found in large free software projects.
• I'll probably tour Norway in May to talk about my research on release management but details have not been finalized yet.

I will update my talks page as more details become available. I hope to see some of you at these conferences.

LSM, FrOSCon, FLOSSWorld

Well, I've been conferencing again. I'm currently sitting in a train with Andreas Barth, returning from the Libre Software Meeting in Nancy, France. We attended the conference to take part in a workshop organized by EDOS, an EU-sponsored project which focuses on challenges the makers of Linux distributions are facing. Andreas, Enrico Zini and I gave overviews of various issues in Debian and the EDOS folks (which includes a number of people working on Mandriva) presented their work. Some of it seems pretty interesting and can potentially be integrated into Debian but time will tell. Andreas posted a summary to get a discussion going.

Last week I attended FrOSCon near Bonn to present the keynote speech. I really liked the conference because it was a true community event, with lots of effort put in by the local organizers, and the event was pretty relaxing (at least for me, probably not for the organizers who did a great job hiding all the work that is required behind the scenes). Just before attending FrOSCon, I met up with a friend from high school and spent a few days in Amsterdam.

A few weeks ago I attended FLOSSWorld in Brussels to talk about skill development in FLOSS communities. FLOSSWorld is a project to study free software communities all around the world as an extension of the work done a few years which focused on Europe. One of the nice things about FLOSSWorld was that my hotel was a few minutes on one side of the cathedral in Brussels and the conference venue a few minutes on the other side. So I finally managed to visit the cathedral, something I never managed to do in all the years I attended FOSDEM in Brussels.

Vienna

I spent Monday to Friday in Vienna, visiting some friends from school. Quite a few people I know moved to Vienna after finishing high school (or later), so I thought I'd go there for a few days to meet up with some of them.

On Monday evening, I gave a talk at Debienna, the Debian group in Vienna. I started with one of my presentations about quality issues in free software, but given that we were a small and informal group we often interrupted the presentation for discussions. During these discussions the generic issues I mentioned were applied to Debian and we discussed a number of problems in Debian and what we could do about them. I think it was quite interesting, although it stretched the talk quite a bit and some people were getting restless towards the end. This was also the first talk I gave in German. I originally planned to give it in English but then thought I'd try to do it in German. It went pretty well, although I couldn't think of a number of words on the spot and just used English words instead. (Not counting technical terms, obviously, which I didn't even try to translate.)

On Tuesday and Wednesday, I mostly stayed in bed working on my laptop. This was, after all, only a pseudo-holiday and I had plenty of work to do. On Wednesday evening, Veronika (the friend I was staying with), maks (Maximilian Attems) and I went to B72 to see a concert by Das Bo. There was also a DJ from Waxos who was great. Das Bo was pretty good too, although he talked too much crap between songs.

On Thursday, Veronika and I went shopping and I bought lots of new clothes. Friday morning, just before leaving, I met with Stefan Holek to do an interview about release management in Plone for my research. He raised a number of really interesting issues.

FOSDEM 2006

FOSDEM is one of the events I really enjoy. Unfortunately, I couldn't attend last year because I was at a conference in China. However, this year I was back, and the event was bigger than ever. There's so much going on that it's really hard to keep up. There are a number of people I'd really like to have talked to more but there just wasn't time in those two days which were fully packed. It was nice to meet a number of people again, though, in particular the usual suspects, including Michi Banck (aka Hurd illusionist, "it supports two wireless cards now"), Guillem Jover (Spanish mafia boss living in exile), and Jordi Mallach ("World Domination for Catalan^WValencian"). I also hung around the Spanish free software research people with whom I'm going to spend a few months soon. Crazy Spaniards... I've no idea how I'm going to survive there. Oh, and Neal Walfield, who still stinks, and who thinks I have a British accent now (which he thinks is a bad thing while I took it as a compliment).

Regarding new people, I had the great pleasure to meet and talk to Lennert Buytenhek. I talked to him on IRC a bit recently because he's involved in the big-endian ARM port and I've been hacking on the ARM based NSLU2 device. Lennert is quite frustrated because joining Debian is so hard. As it turns out, there's currently a six month wait to be assigned an Application Manager. I haven't really followed NM recently, but when I acted as Front Desk I tried to keep it less than approximately six weeks. Unfortunately, a great number of AMs resigned in the last few months and years, and it has been quite hard to find good new people as AMs. Lennert is the kind of person we really want to have in Debian since he's extremely kind, smart and productive. Given that the current situation seems really bad I decided to act as Application Manager again, but I only intend to do that temporarily.

I'm sure I forgot lots of other things. But the summary is that it was a great weekend, with way too much stuff going on at the same time. And while I wish I could have devoted more time to my research, I gained some important insights and did one interview which was really informative.

Kraków, sightseeing

I spent a few days in Kraków, Poland for the CALIBRE workshop on Quality, Security and Safety and for KKIO 2005 and I used this opportunity to do some sightseeing. After the workshop on Tuesday, Matthijs den Besten and I wandered around the city for a a few hours, then went back to the hotel for a swim, just in time to go for dinner with the CALIBRE people. We went to a restaurant which served traditional food from the 17th century. It was a really amazing place with animal fur and carpets on the wall, big wooden tables and menus which had nice drawings on them. We had a selection of different food which we shared and it was really great. The following day, as part of KKIO, dinner was served in the Wieliczka salt mine after we went on a tour of it. It's pretty amazing what kind of art you can make out of salt.

On Thursday, I did some more sightseeing, basically walking around the city center and looking at some of the nice attractions. Which turns out to be churches, given that this is Poland. I particularly liked the basilica of the holy trinity but many other sights, such as Wawel castle, were pretty impressive too.

Bentota, FLOSSschool

Unfortunately, it was raining on Sunday so I didn't get to do as much as planned. Chamindra, one of the organizers and the person who invited me to Sri Lanka, came to Bentota with his family and we went for a swim. I was planning to (try to) waterski for the first time but decided against it since it was starting to rain. Still, a nice, relaxing day.

On Monday, I went back to Colombo, visiting a Buddhist temple on the way. In the afternoon, I attended FLOSSschool. As part of the national FOSS week, they had some talks for pupils in the morning and for university students in the afternoon. I gave an overview of how free software projects work and I had a chance to meet some members of the LK LUG, some of which seem quite enthusiastic.

Doha, Sri Lanka, Bentota

On Friday evening, I went to Heathrow for my flight to Sri Lanka where a national week on free and open source software will take place next week. This national free software week will include various events, such as a CodeFest (in which a number of Asian Debian developers will participate), a conference, some talks for schools, etc. I'll give a tutorial on contributing to Debian, an introduction talk about the organizational structures of Debian and another talk at the event for students.

My flight went via Doha and it was a bit delayed because some passengers got on late. That wasn't a problem, however, since I had plenty of time to catch my connecting flight. The amazing thing was that it was something like 32 degrees C when I arrived in Doha at only seven in the morning. I only spend a few seconds outside on the way from the airplane to the bus but I felt sticky already.

On the way to the airport I started reading Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver, the first part of his baroque cycle. He talks about Newton and Leibniz and stuff and it's really fascinating. I hadn't much time to read books recently but I'm really looking forward to reading all three books of this series (each of which have something like a thousand pages). On the first flight, I watched Kingdom of Heaven, which was great. I just love movies that play in the Middle Ages or so.

On the second flight, I managed to sleep a bit and after I while I arrived in Colombo. I have gotten quite used to luxury of being picked up from the airport but this time someone waited for me before immigration. This is getting really scary. ;) She took me to the VIP lounge where Pradeeper, one of the organizers, kindly met me. Having expressed my interest to spending some time at the beach before the conference, the organizers reserved a hotel room south of Colombo (where the beaches are best) for the first two nights. A driver took me to Bentota, about two hours south of Colombo. The hotel is really amazing. It's right at the ocean. I can hear the waves in my room and the sea is about 30 meters away from my balcony. This is one of the few hotels in this area which experienced little damage during the tsunami. On the way here we saw quite a number of houses which got destroyed and a larger number of newly re-built houses. Anyway, I just had a foam bath and I'm about to head to bed. This place seems really nice and I'm looking forward to exploring it tomorrow. (This would probably be a good place for a honeymoon; they even had a candle in the bathroom, although I guess the bathtub isn't quite big enough for two.)

Spain, Jornades, Vilanova

On Wednesday evening, I went to Vilanova i la Geltrú to attend the Jornades de Programari Lliure. I gave a talk about quality in free software, which was well received, and spent the rest of the time talking to other people or working on stuff. My initial plan was to spend significant time at the beach. Unfortunately the weather wasn't good enough to go swimming, so I only had a walk on the beach one day and spent a few hours in the sand another day.

Spain, Libre Software Summer School, research meeting

On Monday, I went to Barcelona. The weather wasn't too good but I spent a few hours at the beach before going to Castellón where I gave lectures on project management and Debian at a Libre Software Summer School the following morning. In the afternoon, I went to Benicassim with some PhD students from Spain and Greece where we would have a meeting to talk about how to work together more closely. We went swimming in the sea and the pool of the hotel; the next day was similar with the addition of discussions about our research. We talked about the possibility of me going to Madrid for a few months. I'm interested but I've to check how this fits into my schedule. In any case, I really had a great time in these 1.5 days... I haven't been to the beach for too long and going swimming for a few hours was so much fun and refreshing. beach + sand + water -> happy Martin

Munich, neither Hip-Hop nor Medieval Festival

After briefly returning to Innsbruck, I went to Munich to meet up with Michi (and Dogi and Mako). Our original plan was to go to a Hip-Hop/turntable party but unfortunately they wouldn't let us in. Instead, we went to another party and danced for a few hours. That was quite refreshing given that I haven't gone out to dance for quite a while... on Sunday, I wanted to go to a medieval festival but I couldn't convince Michi and Mako that this was a good idea. They wanted to visit a Biergarten (in Andechs), followed by visiting the lake in Starnberg.

Italy, Trento, Alma Master's in Bologna

Originally, my plan was to stay in Innsbruck for a week but when some people in Italy heard about my plans, they promptly invited me to give talks. Therefore, I went to Trento on Wednesday, followed by Bologna on Thursday. In Trento, I gave a talk about my research at the university and in Bologna I gave a guest lecture at Alma's free software Master's. I also spent some nice time with Zack and went out to dinner with him and KAlfa.

LinuxTag, Social Event, quality talks

The rest of LinuxTag was fun too, especially the Social Event. Apparently, the organization wasn't too good last year (for example, there wasn't enough to drink and eat) so they paid a professional catering service this year. This certainly paid off since there was plenty to drink and eat. In fact, there was probably too much; when I wanted to get some more wine, they asked if I wanted a glass or a bottle... I spent the evening talking to Dogi, eventually staggering back in the middle of the night. On Friday and Saturday, I listened to workshops on quality assurance in the OpenOffice.org project and IssueZilla which were both very interesting. During the conference, various people put stuff on my head and took photos. Scary how easily things get out of control...

LinuxTag, KLUG party

What would you want more — a nice and warm evening, sitting in the grass and looking at the stars, followed by booze, interesting discussions and rants about life, the (free software) universe and everything.

LinuxTag has been fun so far. It was good to meet most of the German Debian crowd again plus various guys from various other countries. Getting up at 4 in the morning to catch my flight wasn't fun though, but I'm sure I'll get copious amounts of sleep RSN now so I'll be fresh to do some interviews with GNOME, Gentoo and OpenOffice.org people for my research tomorrow.

The best/worst trip ever?

After our trip to Amsterdam, which was incredibly fun, we returned to Germany. For a few hours I wandered around Neuss, the city my friend lives in these days, and visited a number of churches. Greg later picked me up again and we went to his place and had some food. I got to check my mail and we sort of watched some TV, although it was more of an excuse to take a nap.

Greg's flat, which he's sharing with his girlfriend, is really nice and comfortable. They moved in fairly recently, bought new furniture and decorated it quite nicely. While it was really good to see that he's doing well, I'm really getting nervous about everyone around me actually growing up…

The following day, Greg had to work so he dropped me off somewhere in Köln (Cologne) and I did some sightseeing. I visited the cathedral of Cologne (which is quite famous), walked around the city center, had some Chinese food and went to a number of other churches (again, for those not paying attention, I'm not religious at all, I just like old/Gothic buildings). Since I had enough time, I also decided to go to some hi-tech and music stores, something I haven't done in ages. It's amazing how cheap computer equipment has become. While I follow hard drive prices and know that storage is really cheap these days, I was amazed to see that things like DVD burners, wireless access points, scanners and flat screens are all affordable now. I remember the days when I paid over 500 GBP just for a 17″ screen alone, and that would get you a nice system now… I listened to loads of CDs and ended up buying some of them. I finally bought Funkmaster Flex vol. 4!

In the evening, Greg dropped me off at the Düsseldorf airport and apart from the plane being 1.5 hours late everything was supposed to go smoothly. I checked in and waited, doing some stuff on my laptop. At the time we were supposed to leave, nothing happened and people started getting nervous. More than half an hour later, they announced that we couldn't leave from this airport anymore because the airport doesn't have permission for departures after 10 o'clock. They said they'd transfer us by bus to Cologne airport and we'd leave from there. Fine. Unfortunately, some time later they announced that they didn't manage to find a crew in Cologne. The new plan was to get us hotel rooms and fly out in the morning. By then, many people were terribly pissed off since they could have updated us and/or transfered us to Cologne or hotels much earlier; we were also promised food which never arrived… a main problem was that the people at the gate weren't actually working for Air Berlin, so communication between all the involved parties wasn't easy. Anyway, all the important business men were worried about being late for meetings and stuff, but I didn't terribly mind, except for having wasted a number of hours… after some more waiting we finally got tickets for new flights (either one at 6 in the morning or one at 10, guess which one I took), and then got transferred to a hotel.

In summary, not the best experience, but not too bad either since I should be back home in time to visit the guest lecture of Daniel Dennett (one of the most famous contemporary philosophers in the area of theory of mind, consciousness and evolution) and meet someone this evening. Nevertheless, Air Berlin and the airport weren't really prepared for cancelled flights, although some of the staff was incredibly nice. At least now I know what we're paying the "plane cancellation fee" for when we buy tickets. Finally, having said all of this, the flight from Stansted to Düsseldorf went smoothly. (Update: today's flight back was fine too and I only had to wait 15 minutes for the next bus to Cambridge.)

Amsterdam

A friend of mine from high school and I safely arrived in Amsterdam, after taking a brief detour to Eindhoven where I met a researcher who is interested in communication and collaboration in virtual teams. Debian was a main case study in her PhD thesis and she wants to focus more on free software and open source again, so we discussed some aspects of Debian for a paper she is working on. When we arrived in Amsterdam, I discovered that there's great wireless connectivity at the place we're staying. I've no idea where it is coming from, but it works. ;) And now we're going to head out… should be fun; I haven't seen my friend for one and a half years or so.

By the way, it's Friday the 13th, and I love it — just to be different. ;-) And I saw a black cat…

Beijing: MontaVista, shopping, dinner

On Wednesday, my last day in Beijing, I first met Haitao Zhang who wanted to take me to the MontaVista office to introduce me to his colleagues. I talked to his boss for a while and we went through the standard picture taking routine. We then went back to the city because I still had to do some shopping but the traffic was crazy again and I arrived much later than expected.

I managed to meet Alex Lau, whom I met at the Debian mini-conference, at a shopping mall. I figured that it would be really helpful to have a local with me to help with bargaining and with translations. The first item on my last was new shoes. I should've replaced my sneakers a year ago but never found the time but I figured China was the ideal place to buy some new shoes. I found a pair I liked, and bought two of them (in different colour) since they were so ridiculously cheap compared to Europe. Then we got some souvenirs, some sweets and some cooking stuff. After we were done with the shopping, we went out to dinner and Anthony Fok, a Chinese developer, joined us. We had some really good conversations on China, and I'll probably summarize my thoughts about this at some point in the future.

In any case, it was a nice evening. I really enjoyed my trip to China and I'm seriously considering going back soon for a while. I'd like to thank the organizers of the conference again for all their efforts as well as everyone else who spent time with me and helped me getting around. I had a great time here!

Shanghai: keysigning, sightseeing

My flight arrived in Shanghai only a few hours after the train would have arrived so I was just in time to meet Peng Yong who is in the NM queue and who wanted me to sign his key. He drove me around the city for a while, took me out for lunch and then we met Johnny Ko who is also interested in joining Debian. We talked for a while, did keysigning and then went our own way. I checked into the hotel, relaxed for a bit, checked my e-mail and then walked around the city for a while.

I spent the next two days doing sightseeing. I visited the Bund, the TV tower (but I didn't go up), went to some shopping places and some other random stuff. It was really interested, especially the big contrast of Beijing and Shanghai. Shanghai is the big commercial center and it is very westernized. And Shanghai is so much warmer than Beijing! The weather was really nice.

The hotel I stayed in was from Eastern airlines and they had huge reductions on their tickets. I asked them what a flight to Beijing would be so I could decide whether to take the train or a flight and it turned out that a flight was cheaper than taking the train! Now, we have low cost airlines in Europe which are significantly cheaper than trains, but to get good rates you usually have to book months in advance. However, I booked a ticket in the morning for a flight leaving in the evening and I only paid about one third of the original price. Really nice. I arrived in Beijing and went to the office again to stay for the night.

Lunch, traditional Chinese medicine, missing a train….

On Saturday, I checked out of the hotel and went to Sun Wah's office in Beijing with Alex Banh. Their main office is not in Beijing, but they have rented an apartment which they use as an office and as a place to sleep when they are in Beijing. I left my big suitcase at the office and then we headed for lunch (again to some really fancy restaurant).

After lunch, Roger and Yorick went around the city with me. Coincidentally, Yorick had to go to a famous place for traditional Chinese medicine and this was the place my Chinese friend from the UK recommended that I should go to to have a traditional Chinese check-up (which mainly works by feeling the pulse to figure out what's wrong). It was a really interesting and funny experience… (with Roger translating what the doctor said). The doctor thought that my life cycle isn't regular enough and that the quality of my sleep is not very high either… I guess I'll try to do something about that, and she also gave me some Chinese medicine. Let's see how that works out… but it was definitely an interesting experience.

Afterwards, we did some shopping. It's amazing how cheap (legal) CDs and DVDs are here… at some point, I asked one of the guys what time it was because I had a train to catch at 19.28 to Shanghai. He said it was 17.45 but after walking around for a few minutes we heard a bell ringing, looked up and saw that it was seven! We immediately got a taxi to the railway station, arrived there at about 19.25. I went into the station but it was really crowded and it took me a while to figure out where to go and by the time I went there, the train had left already… When I left the station, Roger and Yorick weren't there anymore since they assumed that I made my train. I took the underground to get back to the office. While I remembered the building and how to get to the apartment, I wasn't sure on which floor it was on… so I thought I'd just try my luck and ring at some apartments. The first one didn't answer and the second one opened and spoke some English. I asked if I could use the phone and they were really nice and invited me in. I phoned one of the organizers and got the right floor number. I went there but nobody was there! So I went up again, rang some organizers to find out the number of Yorick and phoned him to tell him that I was waiting at the apartment. After about 20 minutes, he and Roger arrived and they had already made arrangements on the way to get me a flight to Shanghai the next morning.

I stayed the night at the office and since all beds were occupied I just said I'd take some cushions and sleep on the floor. Yorick immediately offered to sleep on the floor so I could use his bed, but I reassured him that it was really okay. While it's nice to have five star hotels and stuff like this, I don't need it, and I'm perfectly willing to sleep on the floor. In fact, the cushions were really comfortable and I had a good night of sleep.

Beijing sightseeing: Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven

On Thursday, I took a day off from the conference (since it was mainly the different Asian economies giving reports and I didn't really have to be there) and did some sightseeing together with Scott Dier, Alex Schmehl and Andreas Tille.

We first went to the Forbidden City. It was pretty impressive, and in particular, extremely huge. I took several dozens pictures of stone mosaics on the floor but unfortunately my memory card decided to have errors and so I lost all of them. Fortunately, I asked Scott to take some too (since his camera is much better and he's a much better photographer). Afterwards we went to the Temple of Heaven which was quite nice too. Unfortunately, the weather was quite cold and I was freezing the whole day (while Alex was not evening wearing a jacket). Maybe I should really stop wearing summer trousers all year round and dress properly during winter…

In the evening, we were looking for a place to have dinner. We approached some restaurants and asked whether they had a menu in English but after blank stares we figured they didn't and moved on. After a while, we got really hungry and Andreas suggested we should just go to some place and randomly choose something. However, Scott and I prefer actually knowing what it is that we order so we continued to look. Fortunately, we soon found a place where they spoke some English and had a menu we could understand. While we were studying the menu, our first surprise came. They brought a big bowl of steaming how water and we figured out that this is some kind of fondue place (it's called a hot pot). We ordered some meat and vegetables and then put them into the water. Since the water was so hot, the meat was ready pretty quickly so it was really nice; unlike most fundue I know where the meat always takes ages and by the time it's ready you have eaten all the bread and side dishes and are full already. Anyway, I'm glad we found this place since it was a really good experience.

Another crown, funny food and scorpions

After the conference on Monday, Sun Wah took everyone from the conference (including speakers and attendants) to a restaurant to sample some real (instead of boring hotel) food. At one point during the dinner, one of the organizers thought that I, as the VIP guest, should go to every table so they can take pictures. One table was sitting next to a potted plant and they suggested that I had to put it on my head… I guess I've found another crown.

On Tuesday, I attended the second day of the conference and in the evening we went into the city to sample some "funny food". There was this street where they offered all kinds of interesting food. I ended up eating a scorpion which was really very tasty and a fairly big bug which was okay but not as tasty as the scorpion. They also had starfish and I really wanted to try them but I seem to recall that they are endangered so I didn't do it in the end. (On the other hand, I think all of the animals offered there were bred particularly for the purpose for being eaten.)