Mini-debconf in Cambridge, UK. Thursday 10th to Sunday 13th October 2024

Contents

Mini-debconf in Cambridge, UK. Thursday 10th to Sunday 13th October 2024

The Plan

2 days for a mini-DebCamp (Thursday and Friday), with space for dedicated development / sprint / team meetings for up to 40-ish people
2 days for a more regular mini-conf with space for more general talks

The Location

We have space provided by Arm at their offices in Cambridge, UK. (Postcode: CB1 9NJ)

Here's a map, courtesy of OpenStreetMap; we're in Arm C, on just to the west of the centre of what's labelled there as ArmABCD:

Live video

The ever-awesome DebConf video team are planning set up live streaming during the conference.

See https://onsite.live.debconf.org/player.html to watch us live!

Covid safety

As we're going to have a lot of people travelling from all over and sharing space, there is a heightened risk here. Consider the safety of yourself and others: please make sure you have a negative LFT before you arrive, and apply common sense in general. If you're feeling ill, don't mingle closely with others, and we will have some tests available. Especially: respect other people's personal choices and needs.

But you know this already...

Partners and Sponsors

Many thanks to all our partners and sponsors for helping to make the miniconf possible!

Arm are hosting the conference, providing infrastructure etc. for us.

We're always looking for more sponsors to cover costs. See /SponsorLevels for more information.

Getting there

Cambridge is easy for access by

Road (M11, A14)
Rail (45 mins to 1hr from London King's Cross station)
Air (30 minutes from Stansted Airport Code: STN)

Once you're in Cambridge, there there are several ways to get to Arm. It's a couple of miles from the city centre or railway station, so it's walkable if you're keen or you might prefer something else.

There are lots of taxis (if you need to call for one, Panther are normally good - +44 1223 715715) and Uber operate in Cambridge too.
There are regular bus services that go along Cherry Hinton Road straight past Arm - look for the C3 bus.
There are also several companies offering cycle rental for easy travel around the city.

Visa/travel documents

Generally, one can check, if a Visa is required to travel to the UK on the government's website at https://www.gov.uk/check-uk-visa

People from the EU don't need a visa to attend the conference, but a passport is required. An ID card is no longer sufficient.

Example information for Germany: https://www.gov.uk/check-uk-visa/y/germany/work/six_months_or_less

Accommodation

There are quite a few Debian people who live in and around Cambridge, so we should have lots of locals to help show people around and (if you're lucky!) offer free accommodation / crash space for visitors.

Arm is in the SE corner of Cambridge, next to Cherry Hinton, a couple of miles from Cambridge City centre.

If you'd prefer a hotel or B&B over dossing/crash space, here's a map showing accommodation locations and prices where known. No URLs yet.

There are 3 hotels and 18 B&Bs within reasonable distance. Mostly clustered on Cherry Hinton Rd, about halfway between Arm and the town centre. The closest hotel is the Holiday Inn Express but it's a km or so from any evening facilities. The Sorrento is about the same distance.

There are loads more (mostly expensive) hotels in the middle of town.

Catering

We're planning on eating at the Arm campus each lunchtime. On Thursday and Friday the normal Arm canteen / food facilities will be open and there is a wide range of food on offer to suit most tastes.

On Saturday and Sunday we'll order in sandwiches, pizza or similar. There are plenty of shops within 10 minutes' walk if you would prefer to do something different, of course.

For evenings, we'll most likely organise into smaller groups at the time - 40+ people in one pub is likely to be difficult! Cambridge is quite a cosmopolitan city with all sorts of restaurants - ask if you need recommendations.

Talk to us

We'll be using the IRC channel #debconf-cambridge on oftc for chat during the mini-conf, and especially for anybody watching video and wanting to join in.

Codes of Conduct and Anti-harassment

Debian and Debian event organisers are committed to a safe environment for all participants. All attendees are expected to treat all people and facilities with respect and help create a welcoming environment. If you notice behaviour that fails to meet this standard, please speak up and help to keep this event as respectful as we expect it to be.

If you are harassed and requests to stop are not successful, or notice a disrespectful environment, the organisers want to help. Please contact us at community@debian.org. We will treat your request with dignity and confidentiality, investigate, and take whatever actions appropriate. We can provide information on security, emergency services, transportation, alternative accommodations, or whatever else may be necessary. If mediation is not successful, organisers reserve the right to to take action against those who do not cease unacceptable behaviour.

See the DebConf Code of Conduct and the Debian Code of Conduct.

Registration

See the separate Registration page

Schedule

Sprint/debcamp sessions - Thursday and Friday

We will be hosting these in the Arm Lecture Theatre and a couple of nearby meeting rooms. Each day we will have our space available from 09:00 to 17:30-ish.

Look for the front desk in the reception area at the front of the Arm ABCD building; we plan to have people there from 08:30 each day. Turn up and sign in directly there please. You'll also need to sign in for a Vistor badge with Arm's reception. Be aware that visitor parking might be tight.

Some people will be discussing and working on the Arm ports and other Arm-related topics on these days, but of course other plans are welcome. Especially be ready to share your plans and encourage other people to work with you - this is a great opportunity to invite new contributors!

Please ensure that you hand your name badge in as you leave the site - this is essential to help us track who is still around.

Talks - Saturday and Sunday

Please turn up from 08:30 onwards. Again, we'll have a front desk in the reception area in Arm building ABCD. Parking should be easy over the weekend with a mostly-empty campus. See the front desk and collect your badge before heading in.

Talk slots are nominally 60 minutes long, but talks should fit into 50 minutes maximum, including questions, demos, dance routines, whatever. If talks run shorter, we will leave a gap and stick to the schedule, for the sake of any external participants who might be watching via video feed.

Here's the initial schedule, subject to change. All times are in BST (UTC +1).

A live stream is available at https://onsite.live.debconf.org/player.html.

Saturday

08:30 Front desk open for arrival and registration
09:15 Steve McIntyre - Welcome to Cambridge!
09:30 Andreas Tille - Updated Bits from the DPL
10:30 Steve Capper - An intro to Guarded Control Stack and its current status
11:30 Emanuele Rocca - Live Images
12:30 Lunch
13:30 Lightning talks
14:00 Simon McVittie - Cross-compiling GObject-Introspection
15:00 Dave Hibberd - Packet Radio
16:00 Christoper Walker - End to end network monitoring using perfSONAR
17:00 Steve McIntyre - Close

Sunday

08:30 Front desk open for arrival and registration
09:15 Steve McIntyre - Updates
09:30 Paul Gevers - Meet the Release Team
10:30 Vincent Sanders - NetSurf Past as Prolog
11:30 Nathan Willis - I control my own data! ...now what do I do with it?
12:30 Group photo
12:35 Lunch
13:30 Lightning talks
14:00 Steve McIntyre - Don't Fear the Secure Boot
15:00 Andrew M A Cater - Accessibility
16:00 Kartik Kulkarni - The current state of PQC
17:00 Steve McIntyre - Close

Lightning talks

To schedule a lightning talk, please add yourself to the schedule in an available slot. Standard rules are:

Maximum 5 minutes talk time
Maximum 3 slides

Lightning talks for Saturday

5 slots:

Steve Capper - C/C++ Unit test failures with floating point? Try -ffp-contract=off ! miniconf-lightning-fp-2024-10-12.pdf
Roland Clobus - RFH: Testing your favourite Desktop Environment
Phil Hands - Gitlab & Coverage
Ian Jackson - tag2upload progress report
available
Video
- Lightning talks: Saturday - High Definition
- Lightning talks: Saturday - Low Definition

Lightning talks for Sunday