Debian Conference ends in Success
July 24th, 2005
Sixth Debian Developers' Conference ends in Success
More than 300 people attended this year's Debian Conference, which took place from July 9th to 17th at the Helsinki University of Technology in Espoo, Finland. The conference has been supported by more than 20 sponsors and featured a lot of talks, workshops, demonstrations, coding marathons and round table discussions on various aspects of the Debian project.
Highlights include a presentation about the large-scale deployment of 80,000 Debian workstations in Extremadura, Spain, along with several talks about popular Debian derivatives such as Skolelinux and Ubuntu. The presentations were captured by the Video Team and are available online at http://dc5video.debian.net.
The conference broke several records, making it the largest Debian conference ever. The number of sponsors and the value of their commitment exceeded that of previous Debian conferences. This year, more than 20 sponsors provided the Debian Conference with a total budget of around 125,000 Euros. This generosity made it possible to, among other things, provide housing and food for almost 200 participants.
The conference was an organisational challenge that required a large team of organisers and volunteers, who were working around the clock to coordinate the event. The Debian Project Leader, Branden Robinson, was impressed with the performance:
The diligence and professionalism of our conference organisers continues to impress. The Debian Conference occupies an increasingly important role for us, and if the attendees are the lifeblood of its success, then the organisers are its heart, getting everyone where they need to be.
Acknowledgement
This Debian Conference was organised in collaboration with Linux-Aktivaattori, the Helsinki University of Technology, and with financial support from HP, Intel, Nokia, Linux Magazine, IBM, SLX-Debian-Labs, NetApp, Movial, Hostway, Linspire, VA Linux Systems Japan, O'Reilly, Progeny, Xandros, Damicon, Univention, Linux Information Systems AG, COSS, Ubuntu, MySQL, credativ, Ropecon, Helsinki Institute of Physics and CSC.
About Debian
The Debian project is an organisation of many developers who volunteer their time and effort, collaborating via the Internet. Their tasks include maintaining and updating Debian GNU/Linux which is a free distribution of the GNU/Linux operating system. Debian's dedication to Free Software, its non-profit nature, and its open development model makes it unique among GNU/Linux distributions.
Contact Information
For further information, please send email to the Debian Press Team press@debian.org or visit the Debian homepage.