On Sunday 17 September 2023, the annual Debian Developers and Contributors Conference came to a close.

Over 474 attendees representing 35 countries from around the world came together for a combined 89 events made up of Talks, Discussons, Birds of a Feather (BoF) gatherings, workshops, and activities in support of furthering our distribution, learning from our mentors and peers, building our community, and having a bit of fun.

The conference was preceded by the annual DebCamp hacking session held September 3d through September 9th where Debian Developers and Contributors convened to focus on their Individual Debian related projects or work in team sprints geared toward in-person collaboration in developing Debian.

In particular this year Sprints took place to advance development in Mobian/Debian, Reproducible Builds, and Python in Debian. This year also featured a BootCamp that was held for newcomers staged by a team of dedicated mentors who shared hands-on experience in Debian and offered a deeper understanding of how to work in and contribute to the community.

The actual Debian Developers Conference started on Sunday 10 September 2023.

In addition to the traditional 'Bits from the DPL' talk, the continuous key-signing party, lightning talks and the announcement of next year's DebConf4, there were several update sessions shared by internal projects and teams.

Many of the hosted discussion sessions were presented by our technical teams who highlighted the work and focus of the Long Term Support (LTS), Android tools, Debian Derivatives, Debian Installer, Debian Image, and the Debian Science teams. The Python, Perl, and Ruby programming language teams also shared updates on their work and efforts.

Two of the larger local Debian communities, Debian Brasil and Debian India shared how their respective collaborations in Debian moved the project forward and how they attracted new members and opportunities both in Debian, F/OSS, and the sciences with their HowTos of demonstrated community engagement.

The schedule was updated each day with planned and ad-hoc activities introduced by attendees over the course of the conference. Several activities that were unable to be held in past years due to the Global COVID-19 Pandemic were celebrated as they returned to the conference's schedule: a job fair, the open-mic and poetry night, the traditional Cheese and Wine party, the group photos and the Day Trips.

For those who were not able to attend, most of the talks and sessions were videoed for live room streams with the recorded videos to be made available later through the Debian meetings archive website. Almost all of the sessions facilitated remote participation via IRC messaging apps or online collaborative text documents which allowed remote attendees to 'be in the room' to ask questions or share comments with the speaker or assembled audience.

DebConf23 saw over 4.3 TiB of data streamed, 55 hours of scheduled talks, 23 network access points, 11 network switches, 75 kb of equipment imported, 400 meters of gaffer tape used, 1,463 viewed streaming hours, 461 T-shirts, 35 country Geoip viewers, 5 day trips, and an average of 169 meals planned per day.

All of these events, activies, conversations, and streams coupled with our love, interest, and participation in Debian annd F/OSS certainly made this conference an overall success both here in Kochi, India and On-line around the world.

The DebConf23 website will remain active for archival purposes and will continue to offer links to the presentations and videos of talks and events.

Next year, DebConf24 will be held in Haifa, Israel. As tradition follows before the next DebConf the local organizers in Israel will start the conference activites with DebCamp with particular focus on individual and team work towards improving the distribution.

DebConf is committed to a safe and welcome environment for all participants. See the web page about the Code of Conduct in DebConf23 website for more details on this.

Debian thanks the commitment of numerous sponsors to support DebConf23, particularly our Platinum Sponsors: Infomaniak, Proxmox, and Siemens.

We also wish to thank our Video and Infrastructure teams, the DebConf23 and DebConf commitiees, our host nation of India, and each and every person who helped contribute to this event and to Debian overall.

Thank you all for your work in helping Debian continue to be "The Universal Operating System".

See you next year!

About Debian

The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of the largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of volunteers from all over the world work together to create and maintain Debian software. Available in 70 languages, and supporting a huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal operating system.

About DebConf

DebConf is the Debian Project's developer conference. In addition to a full schedule of technical, social and policy talks, DebConf provides an opportunity for developers, contributors and other interested people to meet in person and work together more closely. It has taken place annually since 2000 in locations as varied as Scotland, Argentina, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. More information about DebConf is available from https://debconf.org/.

About Infomaniak

Infomaniak is a key player in the European cloud market and the leading developer of Web technologies in Switzerland. It aims to be an independent European alternative to the web giants and is committed to an ethical and sustainable Web that respects privacy and creates local jobs. Infomaniak develops cloud solutions (IaaS, PaaS, VPS), productivity tools for online collaboration and video and radio streaming services.

About Proxmox

Proxmox develops powerful, yet easy-to-use open-source server software. The product portfolio from Proxmox, including server virtualization, backup, and email security, helps companies of any size, sector, or industry to simplify their IT infrastructures. The Proxmox solutions are based on the great Debian platform, and we are happy that we can give back to the community by sponsoring DebConf23.

About Siemens

Siemens is technology company focused on industry, infrastructure and transport. From resource-efficient factories, resilient supply chains, smarter buildings and grids, to cleaner and more comfortable transportation, and advanced healthcare, the company creates technology with purpose adding real value for customers. By combining the real and the digital worlds, Siemens empowers its customers to transform their industries and markets, helping them to enhance the everyday of billions of people.

Contact Information

For further information, please visit the DebConf23 web page at https://debconf23.debconf.org/ or send mail to press@debian.org.