Dear DIVA members, As Alexander has already answered to you, even though we would also really like to have Mark Shuttleworth here, that's something clearly beyond our control - Mark is not part of Debian, and requesting us to come to DebConf would be similar to requesting Emir Kusturica to film our work sessions: There is nothing we can do to achieve it if he does not want to.
We understand the importance the government sees in having a formal session with Shuttleworth, but please bear in mind we didn't promise or offer he would be here. It would also be a great pleasure for us to host him; usually, his address in Debian is important and enjoys a very good attendance, but we cannot do anything beyond the request you already saw. Now, given the reality (that he says he cannot come and there's nothing we can do about it), I can just hope this not become a childish game again. We thought our communication problems were basically over, and were very happy to have a constructive meeting yesterday (which I could not attend, as I was still on the way). We need to be able to work with you as a team. If we go back to fighting about issues we cannot control, and this affects the attendees' experience, it would surely end up in -as you put it- DIVA being seen as an incompetent partner and a liar. Despite problems such as the cancelling of the shuttles from Zagreb or Shuttleworth's cancellation, we surely still have the opportunity of making this confernce a great success. Please trust our experience. Debian has run a DebConf for eleven years already, and the chairs of the conference (Moray Allan, Holger Levsen and myself) have been part of the organizer team for at least the past five years. Please, lets cooperate, lets deal with unforseen issues as they arise - and lets not boycott each other's work. _______________________________________________ Debconf-team mailing list Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team