The Debian project is excited to announce that we are now accepting presentations, discussion sessions and tutorials for our DebConf14 conference which will take place in Portland State University, Oregon, USA from 23 to 31 August.

Submitting an event

To submit an event, first register as an attendee for DebConf14 in the conference management system. If you have any doubts or have problems with the registration process please check the Registration FAQ.

After registering, go to the event submission page, or click on the Create an event option from the management system. Describe your submission in the web form. The most common event types are Lecture or Open Discussion (BoF). Please include a short title (to make it easy to produce a compact schedule) and an engaging description of the event.

Tracks

We will organize some talks into thematic tracks. If you have a proposal for a DebConf track, such as "Debian ARM", "Debian Infrastructure", or "Community Outreach" please contact talks@debconf.org.

If you would like to be a track coordinator, please volunteer on the given mail address.

Format of the events

A regular session will be 45 minutes long, including time for questions. There will be a 15 minute breaks between events.

Submissions are not limited to traditional talks: you could propose a performance, art installation, debate, or anything else. If you have any specific requirements for your event, please send an email to talks@debconf.org with the details of your requirements and be sure to mention your event title in the subject.

Deadline

While we ask speakers to submit their events before the deadline of 7 July 2014, 23:59:59 UTC, late submissions will continue to be accepted for scheduling until the end of DebConf. All attendees will have an opportunity to schedule ad-hoc events during DebConf itself if we have space for them. Very promising late submissions may be considered for inclusion in the main conference. Note that ad-hoc events have a much lower chance of video archiving, and streaming, so if you want these services it's better to get your submissions in early.

DebConf official events will be broadcast live on the Internet when possible, and videos of the talks will be published on the web along with the presentation slides and papers.

For private communication regarding your talk, or for more general ideas, or questions about the event and talks, please mail us

We hope to you see you and share some good times with you this year in Portland during DebConf14!

We're excited to announce that19 students have been selected to work with Debian during the Google Summer of Code this year!

Here is the list of accepted students and projects:

• Abhishek Bhattacharjee: AppStream/DEP-11 for the Debian Archive
• Alexander Ovchinnikov: Debian built with clang
• Andrew Schurman: Recursively building Java dependencies from source
• Arthur Marble: Debian built with clang
• Brandon Fairchild: Debian Continuous Integration - Web Interface
• Clément Schreiner: Provide some metrics in Debile
• Dionysios Fryganas: Project import/export for Alioth (FusionForge)
• Floris-Andrei Stoica-Marcu: Get Muon ready
• Ian S. Donnelly: Improve Configuration Upgrade Mechansim with Elektra
• Joseph Bisch: Debian metrics portal
• Juliana Louback: WebRTC portal for the Debian community
• Kumar Sukhani: Integrate Debian with Android
• Lucas Kanashiro: Debian Continuous Integration
• Pavol Rohár: mhonarc replacement for lists.debian.org
• Peter Pentchev: Bootstrappable Debian
• Plamen Aleksandrov: Improve Debian on mipsel
• Sergey Davidoff: Package elementary software
• Sphinx Jiang: Improve Debian on mips64el
• Xilin Sun: Improve Debian on mipsel

As always, you will be able to follow their progress on the SoC coordination mailing-list

Congratulations to all the students and let's make sure we all have an amazing summer!

The Debian Project Leader election has concluded and the winner is Lucas Nussbaum. Of a total of 1003 developers, 401 developers voted using the Condorcet method.

More information about the result is available in the Debian Project Leader Elections 2014 page.

The new term for the project leader will start on April 17th and expire on April 17th 2015.

This post was an April Fools' Day joke.

In accordance with its constitution, the Debian Project has just elected Javier Merino Cacho as Debian Project Leader. More than 80% of voters put him as their first choice (or equal first) on their ballot papers.

Javier's large majority over his opponents shows how his inspiring vision for the future of the Debian project is largely shared by the other developers. Lucas Nussbaum and Neil McGovern also gained a lot of support from Debian project members, both coming many votes ahead of the None of the above ballot choice.

Javier has been a Debian Developer since February 2012 and, among other packages, works on keeping the mercurial package under control, as mercury is very poisonous for trouts.

After it was announced that he had won this year's election, Javier said: I'm flattered by the trust that Debian members have put in me. One of the main points in my platform is to remove the "Debian is old and boring" image. In order to change that, my first action as DPL is to encourage all Debian Project Members to wear a clown red nose in public.

Among others, the main points from his platform are mainly related to improve the communication style in mailing lists through an innovative filter called aponygisator, to make Debian less "old and boring", as well as solve technical issues among developers with barehanded fights. Betting on the fights will be not only allowed but encouraged for fundraising reasons.

Javier also contemplated the use of misleading talk titles such as The use of cannabis in contemporary ages: a practical approach and Real Madrid vs Barcelona to lure new users and contributors to Debian events.

Javier's platform was collaboratively written by a team of communication experts and high profile Debian contributors during the last DebConf. It has since evolved thanks to the help of many other contributors.

It's again that time of the year for the Debian Project: the elections of its Project Leader! Starting on March 31st, and during the following two weeks, the Debian Developers will vote to choose the person who will guide the project for one year.

Among this year's candidates there is the current DPL, Lucas Nussbaum, who admits that "the workload involved in being the DPL is just huge," and motivates his nomination with the need for stability in the project in this release cycle, especially after the difficult decision about the default init system. In his platform, Lucas speaks of technical and social steps to improve the project: from reproducible builds for a more secure archive to a renewed effort to run Debian on new platforms (especially smartphone and tablets); from a more welcoming approach to prospective contributors to an easier collaboration with organizations.

The only other candidate left after Gergely Nagy withdrew his nomination, is former Release Manager Neil McGovern. Neil's platform focuses mainly on the need to "ensure that we cater to our users, and there's millions of them. From those running the latest software in unstable, to people who simply want a rock solid core release." In his opinion "the size of Debian is increasing, and will reach a point where we're unable to guarantee basic compatibility with other packages, or the length of time it takes to do so becomes exponentially longer, unless something changes." To fix this problem, Neil proposes the implementation of PPAs (Personal Package Archives), the modernisation of the current build and infrastructure system as well as generally supporting the various teams.

The campaigning period will last until March 30th: the candidates are already engaged in debates and discussions on the debian-vote mailing list where they'll reply to questions from users and contributors.