Debian 30th Birthday: Local Group event and Interview
Inspired by the fine Debian Local Groups all over the world, I’ve long since wanted to start one in Cape Town. Unfortunately, there’s been many obstacles over the years. Shiny distractions, an epidemic, DPL terms… these are just some of the things that got in the way.
Fortunately, things are starting to gain traction, and we’re well on our way to forming a bona fide local group for South Africa.
We got together at Woodstock Grill, they have both a nice meeting room, and good food and beverage, also reasonably central for most of us.
Cake
Starting with the important stuff, we got this Debian cake made that ended up much bigger than we expected, at least we all got to take some home too! (it tasted great too)
Yes, cake.
Talk
This event was planned very last minute, so we didn’t do any kind of RSVP and I had no idea who exactly would show up, so I went ahead and prepared one of my usual introduction to Linux and Debian talks, and how these things are having an impact on the world out there. I also talked a bit about the community and how we intend to grow our local team here in South Africa. It turned out most of the audience were already experienced Linux users, but I was happy to see that they were very enthusiastic about the local group concept!
While reading through some material to find some inspiration for this talk, I came across an old quote from the original Debian Manifesto that I found very poignant again, so I feel compelled to share (didn’t use it in my talk this time though since I didn’t cover much current events):
“The time has come to concentrate on the future of Linux rather than on the destructive goal of enriching oneself at the expense of the entire Linux community and its future.” –Ian Murdock, 1994
Debian-ZA logo
Tammy spent some time creating a whole bunch of logo concepts, that she presented to us. They aren’t meant as final logo choices, but as initial concepts, and they worked well to invoke a very lively discussion about logos and design!
Here are just some of her designs that I cherry picked since they were the most discussed. We still haven’t decided if it will be Debian ZA or Debian-ZA or Debian South Africa, although the latter will probably cause least confusion internationally.
Personally, the last one on this image that I referred to as “the carpet” is my personal favourite :-)
Happy Birthday Song
John and Heila wrote a happy birthday song. After seeing the lyrics (and considering myself an amateur lyricist) I thought it was way too tacky and I told John to put it away. But when the cake came out, someone said “we should sing!” and the lyrics quickly re-emerged and was handed out to everyone. It’s also meant to be a loopy clip for the upcoming DebConf23. I’ll concede that it worked out alright in the end! You judge for yourself:
Mousepads
People still use mousepads? That was my initial reaction when Heila told me that she was going to make some commemorative 30 year Debian mousepads for our birthday event, and they ended up being popular. It’s probably a safer surface to put dev boards on than on my desk directly, so at least I do have a use for one!
Group Photo
The group photo, complete with disco ball! We should’ve taken this earlier because it was already getting late and some people had to head back home. Lesson learned for next time!
30th Birthday Interview with The Changelog
I also did an interview with The Changelog for Debian’s 30th birthday. It was late, and I haven’t had a chance to listen to it yet, so I hope their producers managed to edit something coherent out of my usual Debian babbling:
More later
There’s so much more I’d like to say about Debian, the last 30 years, local groups, the eco-system that we find ourselves in. And, Lemmy! But I’ll see if I can get an instance up over the weekend and will then talk about that some more another time.
