last weekend I attended the Debian SnowCamp at the lago maggiore in north-western italy, a small DIY hacking & socialising Debian meeting in the tradion of Debian SunCamp. – some impressions:
travel
I wasn't aware of how tedious it can be to travel less than 500 kilometers into a neighbouring country by train in 2018. first of all, no train company would sell me a ticket from innsbruck to laveno-mombello, so innsbruck–verona from öbb & verona–laveno-mombello from trenitalia it was.
from the eight trains (yes, 3 changes per direction) exactly 0 had no delays at departure or arrival or both. in the end I "only" lost one connection. – & one direction from-door-to-door took roughly 9 hours.
location
the ostello casa rossa was lovely (& might be even more lovely with warmer temperature which would allow for longer stays in the garden), & the food at the ristorante concordia was mostly excellent. trying new local specialties (like the pizzoccheri) is always fun. & no lunch or dinner lasted shorter than 2 hours.
work
unsurprisingly, my work was mostly focussed on Debian Perl Group stuff. we
managed to move our repos from
alioth to salsa during the weekend, which involved not only importing
~3500 repositories but also e.g. recreating our .mrconfig
setup.
in practice it didn't help alot for my contributions that I was at SnowCamp as the others were not there, & coordination happened via IRC (unlike a team sprint); but at least I had more people who listened to my shouts of joy or frustration than what I would have had at home :)
misc
- on my way back I even had snow while waiting at the delayed train in the unexciting station of laveno-mombello.
- mille grazie to elena & friends for the perfect organisation!
- if you speak german: the respective volume of my archäologie des alltags (also contains links to tweets with photos).
- I see quite some potential for other Debian *Camps, maybe even longer & with more pre-planned team sprints under one roof (or in one garden) …
