Ubuntu Developers Summit Paris, Day 2
Art house
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.
20 June 2006
Lest you think that my trip to Paris was all fun and games, I assure you that it wasn't. We worked really, really hard and I was always exhausted by the end of the day. Maybe I should describe what an Ubuntu Developer Summit is like.
We woke up early to show up for the 9:00 presentation. Each morning, someone would have a little presentation about something Ubuntu-related, and it was always profitable to show up. Then we'd break into small groups for one-hour meetings. There were about eight of these sessions every day.
Each meeting was meant to deal with one of the specifications targetted for the summit. These would range from informational discussions about what philosophy we'd use to track bugs, all the way to in-depth design of new features for the Edgy Eft release. I'm still new at this, so I decided to sit in on any session that seemed relevant. What I realized early on is that almost everything is related to Quality Assurance. Which meant that I was going to be in more than one session at once.
Still, I got to lead several of these sessions myself. That was an interesting experience, as I hadn't moderated an open discussion in a while. But I think I managed to keep a handle on the topic and we hammered out some fairly good results. As part of these discussions, we were supposed to chat over the Internet, so other people could join in, but this worked rather poorly. Especially since the microphone port on my laptop has decided to stop working.
After eight hours of constant human interaction, I'd be pretty tired. But I wasn't going to waste my first trip in Europe sleeping! Oh no, that's why I took afternoon naps instead of eating lunch. Immediately after every session was over, I'd go over my e-mail and then hop on the next shuttle bus to the train station.