DebConf17
Aug 23, 2017 · 4 min read

From August 5th to August 14th I was at Debian Conference 2017 in Montreal. I would like to write down my impression in three parts: my talk, lecture experience, and social experience.
- To give a talk at conference was originally Tanya’s idea, my former classmate who has participated in Outreachy program last year. I’m a shy person and I wasn’t eager to speak in front of the audience. I hoped that Tanya would do the most talking and I just would help her with slides preparations. Unfortunately, Tanya didn’t get a visa to Canada and I started panic about our talk. It was like three days before conference when I even tried to cancel the talk, but my mentor Andreas showed support and changed my mind. My talk was scheduled at the 14:30 August, 6 so all morning that day I was extremely nervous, although my mentor continued to cheer me up. Then I started to speak. I told about bioinformatics and my experience with Outreachy, and it wasn’t too hard, because I’m really passionate about those things and I believe that my internship matters. So I spoke honestly and other former Outreachy intern from audience supported my words about awesomeness of internship. Then I answered several questions, one of which was about my plans to stay in Debian after internship ends. At that point I didn’t think about it, but right after this question I started to realize that I don’t want to stop my contributions. After the talk several people came to me and thanked me personally and it was so nice! I felt like my talk was real success! Also I had some further discussions with interested people about particular problems in writing autopkgtests. Now the video of my talk is available at DebConf17 website, I watched it couple of times and was satisfied. I think it went quite well for my first talk in English.
- There was a lot of lectures at the conference and sometimes I wished to be in two places at the same time! Luckily, most of the sessions was recorded at video. I mostly visited talks with broad topics such as “Debian Science — umbrella for scientific packages or dustbin for scientific code?”, or “Passing the Torch: The Future of Free Software” because I wasn’t experienced enough for some of the technical talks. But I enjoyed some of the tech talks too, for example I learned about pypi2deb, which allows to convert Python library into Debian package. I think I really could use this knowledge soon, as python libraries are often used in bioinformatic tools. Also I learned how GnuPG 2.1 works on example of very cute family (that’s what I call interactive talk!), and why it’s important to grow the Web of Trust. I also participated in couple of BoFs, which allowed me to learn more about Debian world and issues that exist. It was very enriching experience for such a newbie as me. I didn’t know much about Debian before conference, but now I have more knowledge and more confidence that I belong to this world.
- Debian People! The most vivid impression of whole conference were Debian People. At first I didn’t know anyone except my mentor, but then he started to introduce me to others. At my second day I met two other members of Debian Med team and we had a nice talk about opportunities in bioinformatics. Then I met former Outrechy interns, also I talked with different people in the queue to the food) At third day was Cheese and Wine party and I just joined groups of people, introduced myself and participated in conversations. All people was super nice, when I told about my life situations everyone tried to help me with advice and it was really important for me. After all these talks I started to see my situation more clear and I finally was able to make a decision. To the end of the conference I never felt lonely, I made some new friends and my mentor always checked up on me, which was really nice of him. I didn’t know all the participants, but we always smiled to each other and it felt like we were a big happy family. There is something magical in a situation, when you may not know the name of the person, but you can be sure that you don’t need to explain him/her why you chose open software.
It’s been a week since I returned, but my thoughts are still there, with my new big family. I’m eager to continue my contributions to Debian, and can’t wait to go to the next DebConf in Taiwan.