Contribute your skills to Debian in Paris, May 13-14 2017

Sat, 04 Mar 2017 16:33:10 +0000

(There is a French translation of this announcement.)

Join us in Paris, on May 13-14 2017, and we will find a way in which you can help Debian with your current set of skills! You might even learn one or two things in passing (but you don't have to).

Debian is a free operating system for your computer. An operating system is the set of basic programs and utilities that make your computer run. Debian comes with dozens of thousands of packages, precompiled software bundled up for easy installation on your machine. A number of other operating systems, such as Ubuntu and Tails, are based on Debian.

The upcoming version of Debian, called Stretch, will be released later this year. We need you to help us make it awesome :)

Whether you're a computer user, a graphics designer, or a bug triager, there are many ways you can contribute to this effort. We also welcome experience in consensus decision-making, anti-harassment teams, and package maintenance. No effort is too small and whatever you bring to this community will be appreciated.

Here's what we will be doing:

We will test the upcoming version of Debian and gather all kinds of feedback.

We will identify problems about graphics and design in Debian, and solve some of them.

We will triage bug reports that are blocking the release of the upcoming version of Debian.

Debian package maintainers will fix some of these bugs.

Goals and principles

Before diving into the exact content of this event, a few words from the organization team.

This is a work in progress, and a statement of intent. Not everything is organized and confirmed yet.

We want to bring together a heterogeneous group of people. This goal will guide our handling of sponsorship requests, and will help us make decisions if more people want to attend than we can welcome properly. In other words: if you're part of a group that is currently under-represented in computer communities, we would like you to be able to attend.

We are committed to providing a friendly, safe and welcoming environment for all, regardless of level of experience, gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, personal appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, age, religion, nationality, or other similar personal characteristic. Attending this event requires reading and respecting our Code of Conduct, that sets the standards in terms of behaviour for the whole event, including communication (public and private) before, while and after. There will be a team ready to act if you feel you have been or are being harassed or made uncomfortable by an attendee.

We believe that money should not be a blocker for contributing to Debian. We will sponsor travel and find a place to sleep for as many enthusiastic attendees as possible. The space where this event will take place is accessible to wheelchairs. We are trying to organize a translation into (probably French) sign language. Vegan food should be provided for lunch. If you have any specific needs regarding food, please let us know when registering, and we will do our best.

What we will be doing

There will be a number of stations, i.e. physical space dedicated to people with a given set of skills, hosted by someone who is ready to make this space welcoming and productive.

A few stations are already organized, and are described below. If you want to host a station yourself, or would like us to organize another one, please let us know. For example, you may want to assess the state of Debian Stretch for a specific field of interest, be it audio editing, office work, network auditing or whatever you are doing with Debian :)

Test the upcoming version of Debian

We will test Debian Stretch and gather feedback. We are particularly interested in:

feedback about support for universal access technologies, such as screen readers;

feedback about the state of translations into your language;

the top 3 things you like or dislike most in the current version of Debian; the top 3 things you like or dislike most in the upcoming version of Debian;

general feelings about your experience with Debian!

Experienced Debian contributors will be ready to relay this feedback to the relevant teams so it is put to good use. Hypra collaborators will be there to bring a focus on universal access technologies.

Design and graphics

Truth be told, Debian lacks people who are good at design and graphics. There are definitely a good number of low-hanging fruits that can be tackled in a week-end, either in Debian per-se, or in upstream) projects, or in Debian derivatives.

This station will be hosted by Juliette Belin. She designed the themes for the last two versions of Debian.

Triage Release Critical bugs

Bugs flagged as Release Critical are blocking the release of the upcoming version of Debian. To fix them, it helps to make sure the bug report documents the up-to-date status of the bug, and of its resolution. One does not need to be a programmer to do this work! For example, you can try and reproduce bugs in software you use... or in software you will discover. This helps package maintainers better focus their work.

This station will be hosted by Solveig. She has experience in bug triaging, in Debian and elsewhere. Cyril Brulebois, a long-time Debian developer, will provide support and advice upon request.

Fix Release Critical bugs

There will be a Bug Squashing Party.

Where? When? How to register?

See https://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2017/05/fr/Paris for the exact address and time.

Please register by the end of March if you want to attend this event!

If you have any questions, please get in touch with us.