Introduction
DebConf23, the 24th annual Debian Conference, was held in India in the city of Kochi, Kerala from 3 September - 17 September 2023. I was excited to attend DebConf in my home country ever since I got to know about it (more than an year ago). This was my second DebConf as I attended one last year in Kosovo. I was very happy that I don’t need to apply for a visa to attend the conference. This time I submitted two talks - one on Debian packaging for beginners and the other on ideas on sustainable solutions for self-hosting. I got full bursary to attend the event (thanks a lot to debian for that!) which is always helpful in covering the expenses, especially if the venue is a five star hotel :)
My friend Suresh, who is enthusiastic about debian and free software, also wanted to attend the DebConf. When the registration started, I reminded him to apply. We landed in Kochi on 28 August 2023 during the Onam festival. Then, we celebrated Onam in Kochi, had a trip to Wayanad and returned to Kochi. On 3 September evening, we reached the venue - Four Points Hotel by Sheraton, Infopark Kochi, Ernakulam, Kerala, India.
Hotel overview
The hotel had 14 floors,a dn featured a swimming pool and gym - these were included in our package. The hotel gave us elevator access only for our floor and public spaces like reception, gym, swimming pool and meals. The temperature inside the hotel was pretty cold and I had to buy a jacket to survive. Perhaps the hotel had tie up with warm clothing sellers :)
Meals
On the first day, Suresh and I went to dinner which was at the eatery on the third floor. At the entrance, there was a staff who asked us about how many people we want the table for. I told her that it’s just the two [of us] at the moment, but we might be joined by others, as we are attending a conference, more people may join us. Even so, they gave us a table for two. Within a few minutes, Alper (from Turkey) and urbec (Germany) showed up and joined us. So we shifted to a larger table, and even more people joined, so we were busy adding more chairs to our table. urbec was already in Kerala since 5-6 days and was very happy already with the quality and taste of bananas in Kerala, and also afraid of the spicy food :)
Two days later, the lunch and dinner got shifted to the All Spice Restaurant at the 14th floor, but the breakfast was still at eatery. Since eatery (on 3rd floor) had much more options than the other venue, this move made breakfast the best meal for me and many others. Many attendees from outside India were not accustomed to the “spicy” and hot food. It is difficult for locals to help because what they find non spicy can be spicy for non Indians. It is not easy to satisy everyone at the dining table but I think the organizing team did a very good job in the food department. Well, it didn’t matter for me after a point and you will know why. The pappadam were really good, I liked the rice labelled “Kerala rice”. I actually brought that exact rice and pappadam home during my last trip to Kochi and everyone at my home liked it (thanks to Abhijit PA). I also wished to eat all types of payasams from Kerala and this really happened (thanks to Sruthi who designed the menu). Every meal had a different variety of payasam and it was awesome, although I didn’t like some of them mostly because of them being very sweet. Meals were later shifted to the ground floor (taking away the best breakfast option which was eatery).
Swag bag was excellent
The debconf registration desk was at the second floor. We got a very nice swag bag. The swag bags were available in multiple colors - grey, green, blue, red. The bag included an umbrella, a steel mug, a multiboot USB drive by Mostly Harmless, a thermal flask, a mug by Canonical, circular paper to put the cup on and stickers. It rained almost everyday in Kochi when we were there so handing out an umbrella to every attendee was a good idea.
Nattie got a gift
One day during the breakfast, Nattie said she wants to buy a coffee filter. Next time when I went to the market, I bought a coffee filter for her as a gift. She seemed happy with the gift and was flattered to receive a gift from a young man :)
Mentoring by me
There were many newbies and they were eager to learn and contribute to debian. So, I mentored whoever came to me and was interested to learn. I took a packaging workshop in the bootcamp but could only cover how to setup debian unstable environment, not how to package (but I covered in my talk). Carlos (Brazil) gave a keysigning session in the bootcamp. Praveen was also mentoring in the bootcamp. I helped people in understanding why we sign gpg keys and how to sign it. I planned to take a workshop on it but cancelled it later.
My talk
My debian packaging talk was on 10 September 2023. I had not prepared slides for my debian packaging talk in advance and I thought I can do it during the trip but I didn’t get time for that. So I prepared them within a day before the talk. Since it was mostly a tutorial, it didn’t need so much preparation for the slides. it was possible to do in a hurry because Suresh helped me with the slides. Thanks to him.
My talk was well received by the audience as implied by their comments. I am glad that I could give an interesting presentation.
A visit to saree shop
After my talk, I went with Anisa and Kristi (both from Albania), whose fascination for the Indian culture is never ending :), (along with Suresh and Alper) as they wanted to buy sarees for themselves. We took autos to Kakkanad market and found a shop with lots of variety of sarees. Obviously, I got a little familiar with the area surrounding the hotel as I was there since a week. Indian women usually don’t try sarees on themselves while buying, they only select the design. But Anisa wanted to put one on along with a photoshoot. The shop staff weren’t ready with a trial saree for this, so they took a saree from a mannequin. It took about an hour for the lady at the shop to get that saree on her. Anyone can tell that she felt in heaven while wearing that saree and immediately bought that one :) Alper also bought a saree to take back to Turkey for his mother. Me and Suresh wanted to buy a kurta which can go along mundu we already had, but we didn’t find anything that we liked.
Cheese and Wine Party
11 September was Cheese and Wine Party, a tradition of every debconf. I brought Kaju Samosa and Nankhatai from home. Many attendees told me they liked the samosa. During the party, I was with Abhas and had a lot of fun. Abhas brought paan packets and put them for the Cheese and Wine Party. We discussed interesting things and ate burgers. But due to the restrictive alcohol laws in the state, it was not the same as in previous debconf because you can only drink alcohol served by the hotel in public places. If you buy your own alcohol, you can only drink in private places like in your room or friend’s room but not in public places.
Party at my room
Last year, Joenio (Brazilian) brought pastis from France which I liked. He brought the same alocholic drink this year too. So I invited him to my room after Cheese and Wine party to have pastis. My idea was to have this with my roommate Suresh and Joenio. But then we permitted Joenio to bring as many people as he wants. He brought some ten people I think and suddenly it was crowded. I was having good time in the party, serving them snacks that Abhas gave me. The news of an alcohol party at my room spread like wildfire. Soon there were so many people that the AC was not cooling anymore and I was sweating. I left the room and roamed around in the hotel for some fresh air. I came back after 1.5 hours, after sitting mostly at the ground floor with someone whose name I can’t remember. And then I met Abraham near the gym (which was my last meeting with him). I came back to my room at around 02:30 AM and nobody seems to have realized that I was gone. They were thanking me for hosting such a good party. A lot of people left at that point and the remaining people were playing songs and dancing (everyone was dancing all along!). I had no energy left to dance and to join them. They left around 03:00 AM. But I am glad that people enjoyed partying in my room.
Sadhya Thali
On 12 September, we got sadhya thali in lunch. It is vegetarian thali served on banana leaf and served on the eve of Thiruvonam. That day was not thiruvonam but we got a special filling lunch. Rasam and payasam were especially yummy.
Day trip
13 September was the daytrip. I chose the daytrip Houseboat in Allepey. Suresh also chose the same and we registered for that daytrip as soon as it was open. This was the most preferred daytrip by debconf attendees (80 people registered for it). Our bus was set to leave at 9 AM on 13 September. Me and Suresh woke up at 08:40 and hurried to get the bus in time. It took two hours to reach the venue where we get the houseboat.
The houseboat experience was good. The trip featured some good scenery. I was having experience of the renowned Kerala backwaters. We were served food on the boat. We also stopped at a place and had coconut water. We came back to the place where we boarded the boat by evening.
Lost a good friend during daytrip
When we came back from the daytrip, we got the news that Abhraham Raji died due to drowning. He went to the kayaking daytrip. I am not sure what exactly happened but the story goes that he jumped into the water for swimming and drowned.
Abraham Raji was a very good friend of mine. In my trip to Albania - Kosovo - Dubai last year, he was my roommate in the apartment in Tirana, had lot of discussions during DebConf22 Kosovo and I roamed around in Dubai with him. In fact, the photo of me on the homepage of this blogpost was taken by Abraham. Then I met him in MiniDebConf22 Palakkad and MiniDebConf23 Tamil Nadu. I also went to his flat in Kochi this year in June. Plus we had many projects in common. He was also a Free Software activist and was the designer of the DebConf23 logo. He also designed logos for other debian events in India.
We all got pretty shocked by the news. As far as I am concerned, I have still not recovered (9 days after the incident) and still cannot believe it happened. Food does not taste anything and sleep is hard to come by. That night, Anisa and Kristi cheered me up and gave me company. Thanks a lot to them. Next day, Joenio also tried to console me. I thank him for doing a great job. I thank everyone who helped me in coping the difficult situation.
Next day (14 September), Debian project leader Jonathan Carter addressed and announced the news officially. Debian project also published it on their website. In fact, Abraham was supposed to give a talk at that time. All the talks were cancelled on that day. The conference dinner was also cancelled. I was totally devastated!
A visit to Abraham’s house
On 15 September, the conference ran two buses from the hotel to Abraham’s house in Kottayam (2 hours ride). I hopped in the first bus and my mood was not very good. Evangelos (Germany) was sitting in front of me and he started discussing with me. The distraction helped and I was back to normal for a while. Thanks to Evangelos as he supported me a lot on that trip. He was also very impressed by my use of the StreetComplete app which I was using to edit OpenStreetMap.
In two hours, we reached Abraham’s house. Obviously, I bursted into tears and couldn’t control myself. Then I went to see the dead body. I met his family (mother, father and sister). I had nothing to say and I felt helpless. I had no energy left, mainly due to lack of sleep since last few days and my shrinking apetite, so I didn’t think it was good idea for me to stay there. I went back by taking the bus after one hour and had lunch at the hotel. I withdrew my talk scheduled on 16th September.
A Japanese gift
I got a nice Japanese gift from Niibe Yutaka (Japan) - a folder to keep papers which had ancient Japanese manga characters. He said he felt guilty as he swapped his talk with me and so it got rescheduled from 12th September to 16 September which I withdrew later.
Group photo
On 16th September, we had a group photo and I am glad this year I was more clear in the picture than debconf22.
Volunteer work and talks attended
I went to training for video team and I worked as a camera operator. The Bits from DPL was nice. I enjoyed Abhas’ presentation on home automation. He basically demonstrated how he liberated home devices which work with internet. I also liked Kristi’s presentation on ways to engage with the GNOME community.
I also attended lightning talks on the last day. Me, Badri and Wouter gave a demo on how to register on prav app. Prav app also got its fair share of advertising during last few days.
17 September night
On 17 September night, Suresh left the hotel and Badri joined me in my room. That night I wore a mundu (thanks to Abhijit PA, Kiran and Ananthu).
Then I joined Kalyani, Mangesh, Ruchika, Anisa, Ananthu and Kiran. We took pictures and this marked the last night of debconf.
Departure Day
18 September was departure day. Badri slept in my room and left early morning (06:30 AM). I dropped him at the hotel gate. The breakfast was at the eatery (3rd floor) again and it was good.
Me, Sahil, Saswata, Nilesh hanged out sometime at the ground floor.
I had a 8 PM flight from Kochi to Delhi. So I took a cab with Rhonda (Austria), Michael (Nigeria) and Yash (India). We were also joined by other debconf attendees at the Kochi airport. We took another selfie at the airport:
Joost had the same flight with me and we sat next to each other. He then took a connecting flight from Delhi to Netherlands. And I went with Yash to New Delhi station and we took our respective trains. I reached home in the morning of 19 September 2023.
Big thanks to the organizers
DebConf23 was hard to organize - strict alcohol laws, wierd hotel rules, death of a close friend (almost a family member) and a scary notice by the immigration bureau. People from the team are my close friends and I am proud that they organized such a good event. None of this would have been possible without the organizers who put more than a year long voluntary effort to produce this. In the meanwhile, many of them had organized local events in the run up before debconf.
Shoutout for them.
The organizers also tried their best to get clearance for countries the ministry didn’t approve. I am also sad that people from China, Kosovo, Iran could not join. Especially, I feel bad for people from Kosovo who wanted to attend but could not (as India does not consider their passport as a valid travel document) as we Indians were well received last year in their country.
Note about myself
I am writing this on 22 September 2023 and it took three days to put up this post. This was one of the tragic and hard to write posts for me. I have literally forced myself to write this. I have still not recovered from the loss of my friend. Thanks a lot to all those who helped me.
PS: Credits to contrapuntus for correcting grammatical mistakes.