 Hello, everyone. And welcome to Portland. On the stage we have, you should know everybody up here already, but we have... I don't want to introduce myself. This is Patty. We have Steve Longasheck, Gerald Turner, and Case Cook. They are the reason for everything that goes right. Anything that goes wrong, you can blame him on sledge. Well, you can blame it on Steve anyway. I don't know if you should blame him particularly. That's it. That's it. Okay. Yeah, so Patty had the honors of welcoming you all to Portland. Welcome to Portland. Welcome to DebComp 14. It's so good to see you all here. How's the weather? Getting enough rain? Does it meet everybody's expectations? So, who all arrived yesterday? Who came in yesterday and got a chance to... So, people have started settling in, acclimatizing, dealing with jet lag. Everybody got some farmer's market this morning enjoying the coffee out from the coffee cart and everything good. So, yeah, it's really great to have everybody here and hopefully you're ready for some great sessions this week. We've got quite the lineup. As you may have seen, the schedule this year is different than it's been in the past where, rather than having a DebCamp beforehand and a DebConf week as two separate weeks, we're doing something where we're kind of intertwining the two and so we've got a schedule that allows for a full set of talks but also some dedicated hack time. So, take advantage of that. Do great stuff. Enjoy the talks. Talk with people. Socialize. All that goodness. Hopefully you'll find the format to your liking and if you don't, we want to hear that feedback as well. But, yeah, enjoy the conference. What else can I say? You stole my introductions which I was going to introduce a little bit of the local team here for a bit. So, Gerald Turner, all-around great guy, awesome community member here in Portland who is our cheesemeister, which is one reason why you should see his face. So, coming up, we have the Cheese and Wine Party, the traditional social event going on on Monday. So, if you don't want your cheese to melt on the way to the venue, you probably want to get it to him before the evening of Monday. So, there will be information going out about that but this is Gerald. When you see him, thank him for all his great work on this conference. And Case Cook, who's been the mastermind behind getting us a network. Working for this conference. As you see, we're actually embedded into the Portland State network. So, you're actually using standard PSU network infrastructure rather than DebConf infrastructure this year. Hopefully, that's holding up for everybody. We've also got wired hack labs and other stuff as well if it's not working for you. But, you know, he's trying to pass the credit to Matt Taggart, who I don't see in the audience. Matt, if you're here, stand up. Matt, also part of the local team who, he's local in that he's in Seattle, where the rain actually falls. Let's see. So, other members of the local team, if you could just stand up now and show your faces. Pietro, I know you're here. Vagrant, Tony, yes. We've got a very committed team that has put this conference together and thank you all. They should be standing up here with us. We don't need to punish everybody. Anyway, what else can I say? I do have a list of announcements. Will the owner of a white Chevy, no. I think they have cars in other countries, too. That joke might play. I don't know. So, announcements. First of all, if you're sitting in this room, you are not in the off-camera area. So, just so you know, all of the setup this year, due to the orientation of the rooms and whatnot, in order to be able to see audience members speaking on camera as well, effectively, the actual rooms are 100% you may be filmed. So, if you are concerned about being filmed, we do recommend that you take advantage of the hack labs, because we do have live streams for all of those talks. So, you should be able to participate remotely. In theory, if you are concerned about being not captured on camera, you also are not going to be standing up and asking questions. So, hopefully this works for everybody. If there are any concerns about that, you can come talk to me about it and we can try to figure out how to make it work for you better if that's not a solution. Ad hoc talk scheduling. So, part of what's going on here is we do have, during our blocks of hack time, we know that hacking is not a solo activity necessarily, and so we want to also give you opportunity to schedule spaces where you can sit down and have, you know, small group discussions and whatnot. So, all of the talk rooms will be available for that during the periods of time which are blocked as hack time on the schedule. The scheduling for those rooms will be done on the wiki. The pages will be open for scheduling 24 hours in advance in order to make sure that it is in fact ad hoc and not people, you know, squatting the rooms for those kinds of things. So, but it is available. So, if you have things where you think, oh, gee, it would be good to have a place where we can actually have a meeting about this thing, that's available to you as well. DebConf discuss. If you're not subscribed to that, it is recommended that you be. Just in terms of flow of information during the conference, we do send out, we try to get major things sent out to DebConf-announce. Sometimes there's a little bit of delay before those things get out. So, DebConf discuss also, you know, there's a lot of information going around that doesn't necessarily come from the organizers as organizers, but that's useful for people to know about. So, if you want to tap into the what's going on, DebConf discuss, please make sure you're subscribed. It's a very useful resource during the conference to keep track of what's going on. Other stuff, you know, if there's anything that you're not sure about the front desk, which I'm not sure, are there front desk people here in the audience? Yes. Right back there, there's front desk people. So, give them a round of applause. They do a tremendous job every year of making sure the conference runs smoothly and they're the only fixed point within the entire system that people can actually go to and coordinate. So, if you're not sure where something is or where someone is or what's going on, the front desk is there, it's just down the hall, it's labeled front desk, et cetera, and it's the nexus of, it's the brain of the conference right there. So, we've had a couple of changes to the schedule which happened late, which I want to make sure people know about. There was some confusion about available meal times, which led to a late change in our dinner schedule as well as our evening talk schedule. So, rather than having the last talk of the day be it from five to five forty-five, it turns out that dinner at the University cafeteria is going to be served from five to six thirty. So, rather than having everybody rush to get served dinner in a forty-five minute block right after the last talk, the last talk of the evening each day is going to be from seven p.m. to seven forty-five and that takes effect starting today. So, we will have dinner at five and an after dinner talk at seven. You may have noticed as well if you are in sponsored food that there was a bit of a problem this morning with the brunch opening times. My apologies, there was some communication issues with the University about that. We believe we have this straightened out. So, going forward, the meal times are as documented on the wiki and on the schedule. Brunch starting is at eleven. It should run from eleven to one thirty, I believe is the correct time. Don't take my word for it. The wiki and the schedule know better than I do. There's also the coffee. I think I alluded to that earlier. We've organized coffee to be made available to all attendees if you show your badge. The drip coffee and espresso and loose leaf tea which is down at Ole Latte which is just two blocks and I'm going to point the right way. Two blocks that way. It's a nice little coffee cart if you've never been to Portland before. Carts are a thing here. Food carts, beverage carts, it's the way to go. And so there's a coffee cart under the parking garage. Serves great coffee. Who here has had the coffee already? Who's disappointed with it? Oh, nobody's disappointed. Alright. Or nobody will admit to it in front of Patty. So yeah, I mean, take advantage of that. It's sponsored by the conference. Choice of drinks, etc. And they give you a discount if you want something other than those basic drinks as well. Okay, I need to ask about volunteers for the cheese and wine party. I just wrote ask for volunteers for cheese and wine party. So I'm asking for volunteers for the cheese and wine party. We do need people to help with, I believe it's mostly the moving of things and set up. So if you're going to be available Tuesday, Monday, Monday, 6 p.m., then we want some volunteers for that and Gerald is going to be the person to coordinate with as well. And I believe we're going to have some announcement males with more details going out today, tomorrow-ish, to try to solidify the details on that. Oh, last thing I have is then that the, we do have two hack labs. If you've only seen this floor of the building so far, well, we have two hack labs and then we have the balcony and we have the park and we have all these with other wonderful spaces that are available on the PSU campus where you can absolutely feel free to hack. But if you've only seen this floor, you should be aware there is a second hack lab which is downstairs. The room number is 238. If you go down the stairs, it's basically, it's this way and it's called the browsing lounge. You'll see that sign first. But that's available to you, especially since this hack lab over here, which is room 333, there's some issues with the climate control in there. We've got a shade missing in one corner of it, so it's getting a lot of sun in the afternoons and it is, it's supposed to be rather warm this week. So you may find yourselves getting rather warm. Be aware the air conditioning is working great down in room 238, as far as I can tell. So that's available to you and all it costs you is a short walk down the stairs or a short elevator trip to get there. All right, yeah, this was, this has been announced on the DEBCOMF announced as well, I think, but the late night hack lab. So this building closes at 10 p.m. every day. They're keeping it open for us past normal hours so that we're able to make use of it. Normally it closes at 6 p.m. on Sundays. We're keeping it open till 10 p.m. for the conference, so you will have access to this space. However, after 10 p.m. everybody has to be out of this building, which means obviously since hacking doesn't obey time zones or schedules, we need to make sure that we're providing for you and the solution we have in place is the Broadway residence hall, which is where most of the people who are staying on campus are staying. That building on the second floor, which you get to through the Jackson Street, no, the 6th Avenue entrance instead of the Jackson Street entrance. So not the residential entrance, but the other entrance where you checked in. That whole second floor is basically available for our use. There's various lounge chairs. There's actually classrooms that are available if you want a more sturdy hacking space. Feel free to make use of that in the evenings. If you are not staying on campus, you will not be able to get into that building on your own after 8 p.m. I trust that you are all capable of organizing a solution. I have never known Debbie and people to have any difficulty organizing their way around anything. So, you know, buddy up with somebody who is staying in the dorms. Feel free to come by, whether it's just a matter of you won't be able to get in the building, but you are welcome to come over there and make use of that space. Everybody who's attending the conference has access to that space after, well, 24 hours. And that is all I have. And I think we had Steve McIntyre had some sort of an announcement. Anything else before? I think that's it. So, yeah, well, once again, welcome to DebConf and I handed over to Uncle Steve. What? Oh, this thing is on. Wow. So, a lot of people probably have noticed we've had some quite heated discussions in Debian in the last year or so. Hands up anyone who hasn't. There's been a lot of discussions going on. Some people have got very, very tired of it. There's been some strong words. In the middle of all of it, however, there has been at least one person who seems to have been able to keep his head has not really, well, lost his cool at all that we can see. I know from discussing, from talking to him in other venues as well. He's been going through a massive amount of stress at work. I know he's just changed employers and everything recently. But that hasn't spilt over tall in terms of how he's dealing with other people in Debian. And I know I've been very impressed. Lots of the rest of us have. And so we have a little, well, a little something to show appreciation. Russ, are you here? Please come up. So this is very much instigated by some of the folks in the UK, in particular, Lars Rosenius, who unfortunately can't be here this week. So he entrusted this to me. Vince, my good friend from the UK as well, was responsible for actually doing some of the manufacturing of this. But, Russ, in, well, commemoration of your massive patience, we would like to present you with the debcon. I'll let him read it out. Well, this is this is great, because now I don't have to figure out what to say. Discussions happen. Threads are short. Decisions are made. Threads get long. Arguments get repeated. Links to threads get posted on reddit and HN. Right. This is debcon level five. Ah, debcon. Okay, so debcon level five. Discussions happen. Threads are short. Decisions are made. Threads get long. Arguments get repeated. Debcon level four. Links to threads posted to reddit and HN. LWN writes about the discussion. Debcon level three. Trolls show up. Listmasters ban people. Debcon level two. UN Security Committee meets. GRs are proposed and voted on. Debcon level one. Laser cannons are launched in the planetary orbit. Russ gets mildly annoyed. Thank you very much. And I think that's it for us. In preparing the welcome talk, I was a bit confused because I wasn't sure what to say. And when consulting with people, it turns out that this is really it, which is how I've managed to actually miss the welcome talks, the last three debcon's running, because it's short, sweet and out of the way. So welcome and have a good conference.