 Please welcome, with a warm, long applause, the head of organization of this year's DEBConf, Andreas Schulte. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Yeah, well, I am really glad that we actually arrived at this day, that we finally can start this year's Steven Conference after we had a DEB camp already for the last few days here and, yeah, well, we didn't prepare much for talk now. We are just going to give you some more or less interesting details about DEBConf and how everything worked out and hopefully will work out. We won't need the time really, so you can't see what happens when a speaker is extending his time. You will have to wait for that show for later then. First, I would like to tell a little bit about the teams we have this year who worked hard to prepare everything. First of all, I would like to ask Jesus to get up, now, Jesus to get up, and... I'm the one supposed to tell you to get up. Jesus is the local guy who found or made sure that we get this auditorium, the dorms, the network stuff. Of course, there are more people here in Helsinki or Espoo involved in the organization. There are also Riko. Is he Riko here? No. And Arto and Thero and... Yeah. There are lots of people even in the car team from here. And Jesus is the one who keeps picking up people from the airport and is helpful in any way. He keeps also shopping for us. He buys me milk, stuff like that. Very important. Please don't clap now because we have more people coming. Then there's Linux Activatory, which is Azure is the head of Linux Activatory. They are providing the legal umbrella this year. Last year, we had ASL, what's that called? The organization in Brazil. ASL, they helped us last year with money and preparing stuff. Before, we had Nuke in Oslo. Every year, we have a local umbrella. This year, it's Linux Activatory. And Ashwin will say some words afterwards. We also have a video team this year, which is working really hard to record everything, which makes the microphone work. And they are also working on extending the talks. That was a joke. Then we also have a team of people who help the speakers to deliver a smooth and well-prepared talk who help them to not extend their talk too long. Tero is heading them and he talks to the speakers. Then also, we have a reception infodesk team, which most of you met already. I don't actually know all the names by now because it's growing all the time. We also had an artist or two actually involved this year who created the posters and logos and everything. We are working on the corporate identity of Dapcon to have more of that. We also need a jingle for the video team. If someone has an idea for that, that's good. We had a web team, which Marcela worked with. I'm not sure if it's Fishe. And some other people were involved there too. We have a network team and Levy is heading that and Holger was also involved. Many people were involved actually setting up the whole stuff. I'm pretty sure that I forgot some teams by now. Now I would also like to mention all the sponsors that we got because they also helped somewhere to make this happen. We have HP, which faithfully provided money for us this year too. They are still the biggest sponsor, but we are working on that too. Well, they might be the biggest sponsor for a long time, but they are, what do we call it? They are shares decreasing actually because others are picking up. So HP gave 50,000 US dollars this year and they are our biggest sponsor. Intel is close on their heels and they paid all the food. They also provided the access points and engineer setting them up. Two engineers, right? The engineer actually didn't want to leave anymore because he wanted to stay some more and see the conference. Tough luck. But he wanted to come to Mexico next year because we of course want to keep Intel involved. Nokia is giving us quite a bit of money. They are both paying for example the van and they are paying part of the dorm bill which we have. IBM is there. There are some companies which paid labor time, actually Linux Activatory provided the legal umbrella and also they didn't provide any time really, well time lots of time, but no money. They are just helping a lot. While SLX, Debian Labs and Movial, how do you pronounce them? Movial actually paid people to help prepare the conference. We have Linux magazine who give us a full page ad in all their Linux magazines worldwide where we have already with all the sponsors on it and saying thank you and great that you helped and stuff. We hope that motivates sponsors to be faithful with us. We have Hostway and Ubuntu of course, Linspire via Linux. MySQL is helping us progeny to creative even Xandras, lots of all these Linux or Debian distributions. Crossfeed as a Finnish open source initiative which supports us. Linux information systems, NetApp, is also based on Debian. Project one that's actually a Debian developer who helped with SMS messaging application and gave us SMS credits so that we could use it. It's not working really. Anyway, yeah, that's all the sponsors. We have 18 sponsors this year and no actually the work talks are supported provided by a role playing conference which is here in Finland, it's Ropecom and they are one sponsor too. Yeah, and this also in retrospective it's very interesting to see how Debcon developed over time because Debcon 2 in Toronto had about 80 people attending and had a budget of about 5,000 US dollars and the formal dinner was I think 1,000 US, I'm not sure. Debcon 3 and also had 120 people attending and then at that point HP started pitching in and we had 3,000 US. Debcon 4 in Brazil had 150 people almost exactly and we had about 70,000 US. Debcon 5 has about 300 people and it's 150,000 US. Debcon 6 has about 600 people and a quarter of a million. Yeah, sure. Brandon is asking how it comes that Debian is dying. Yeah, if Debcon is growing and Debian is growing. I know. Right, we are drinking too much. Now my wife is calling. Oh, it's not my wife. Well, I think it's actually a sign that Debian is not dying. I'm pretty sure that the support that we get from the sponsors is actually a sign that people are really interested in us and that people... Intel is sending 6 people to watch Debcon. They are obviously interested. The first Intel person was a success already. I told you about that because he wanted to stay. Some quick facts about the housing and stuff. On Monday after Debcon we need to leave the house in about 2 hours. When we said you should leave the house by 10 o'clock we really mean it because we have to hand over the house at 12 o'clock and we need to remove mattresses, pack in computers, what not, clean and the cleaning teams will be there. So please be prepared. Please have your bags packed the night before. We have a really tight schedule and if I asked you on the mailing list not to use your stoves that's for the same reason because we just don't have time to clean the ovens afterwards. So if you can find other means of preparing food get a grill and grill outside or whatever but please keep the house in as good a shape as you can. That's really vital for us. We paid a deposit for the house and we wouldn't get it back and we would like to use the money afterwards for reimbursing people. Thank you. Another thing that you could try to take care of is other doors. There's a special closing mechanism which you can abuse to keep the snapper out so the doors won't close. In that state you shouldn't bang the doors because then the snapper hits the door frame real hard and the door frame will suffer and so you should please close them slowly then. That is to keep the door open helps both your roommates and other people to get into your room and pick up stuff for you. You should also try to eat and drink outside of the auditoriums to help them stay clean. I think that's it. Do you have any other windows? Try not to break the windows. They have a special closing mechanism or opening mechanism which makes sure that they are not opened too far. I'm not sure why that is. I think it's some Finnish winter thing. Ventilation works as desired. You can unhook those windows which you should do carefully and slowly without hurting it or yourself. Some people manage to break them already so take care. Now I would like to ask Eshwin to say a few words. Here's a microphone for himself. Isn't it lovely? Does it work? I guess it does. As you might know from my name that I'm not a Finn while I do live in Finland. I'm just a silly Dutch guy that ended up in Finland and we started Linux Activatory about five years ago, four years ago. What I would like to talk about is how Debian changes the world. We have all sorts of politicians talk about with big words like globalization and that sort of stuff. But I think they don't know what they're talking about. I think the Debian people do know what globalization actually is. So globalization has been for the last 500 years more or less driven by economic reasons to conquer the world, to gain wealth and that sort of stuff. And I think what Debian has the future in this regard because Debian represents not just a global effort to make an operating system but I also think that what Debian promises is that all these different people from all around the world with different cultural values and different ideas on how the world would work I think that what Debian represents is a global change in how we live together on this small globe. And that's the promise of Debian and of course it's about technology and of course it's about convincing people to use this technology but I think there's also another aspect to it. I think there's this social value that Debian can bring to the world and I think that's much more important. So what does Linux activity do? We are a small organization in Finland that we do our own little part. We are focused on just Finland and Debian is focused on the wider community on the world, on this little pinprick in the universe that we are. And what Debian represents is not so much the economical shift that takes place. On the contrary, I mean, people can download Debian for free and that changes the mindset of people that are involved. I mean, that's a concept that a traditional businessman just can't grasp. It's something they have a difficult time understanding and that's something we can bring to the world. How does economy combine with social values and still have an interesting world that is not based on gaining power, gaining wealth and that sort of stuff. And Linux activity is really happy to be able to help get Debian going just because we also believe that Debian has the future. And by helping the Debian community to be present at Debian, we hope that we have our own little contribution to what globalization truly means. So I would say Debian is growing. And I think, yes, that's a very good thing. And I'd say to all Debian developers, keep on going. We're not there yet. People still need to be shown that there is another way we can live together. But I think we are slowly getting there. So what does Linux activity have been doing to introduce ourselves a little bit? We started in 2001 and we have had a small Debian event in Turku which was for about 20 people. We have a local Turku user group and Turku is a city that is in the southwest of Finland. We have a Linux Blondit list which is basically for people. I think it was started by a couple of women. And it is basically a list that people can just ask all sorts of questions, no matter how dumb they might seem and such. And Debian was the first big event that we helped organize. And I think we have done an excellent job to provide you the basis, legal basis, but also help you with all the organizational aspects that are involved. I mean, there's a lot of money involved. There's 150,000 US dollars involved to keep track of all of that has been an interesting challenge, I think, and to make sure that we don't go over budget. So those are the things that Linux activity has been helping with. So to provide all those legal aspects, we have an understanding on how the Finnish legal system works and what things are needed and so on and so on. So that's what Linux activity provides this year to the Debian community. And of course, we hope to gain more contacts by being here and by talking with you and so on and so on. So I would like to conclude my presentation by saying keep on going. I think it's important what you do. And I think that we truly know what globalization means. I forgot to mention we are the volunteers. We have about 30 volunteers by now, I think. Those are working all over the place, both in the reception or in the video team or other teams we don't see. There's also a team taking care of the garbage, which you produce. You can help them, by the way, to return bottles, to bring trash bags to the nice containers and stuff. Yeah, there are two big things making Debcomps tick. One are the volunteers. Without those, nothing would happen. And then there's also some money involved, which helps. Yeah, we are now 20 minutes short of the time and we would like to stop now. Thank you.