On Fri, May 14, 2021 at 3:39 PM Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton <l...@lkcl.net> wrote: > > > > On Friday, May 14, 2021, Bernelle Verster <bernel...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> >> I think it is possible to have a significant social aspect both on- >> and off-line that complement each other, to have local 'mini-DebConfs' > > > which ensures that local situations and customs are respected and observed > >> >> that are mostly self-organised but with some support from an >> international level, > > > announcements that help reach more people, resources / websites etc that > would otherwise be much more challenging to set up if developed in isolation > etc.
and funding. > >> >> >> The two biggest issues I see are people just not willing to adapt and >> sticking to in-person, which makes it hard to compliment with online. >> Fully online is one thing. Having a combination is hard. > > > true. don't have any thoughts yet on how that would work. > > please, not the mobile WIFI-controlled robots with a tablet embedded in them > :) > > https://www.doublerobotics.com/ hahahaha agreed! I don't know why but those things creep me out so much! I'm wondering if a Sims / avatar in a virtual world sort of thing could work. All the in-person people can strap an augmented reality headset on! ;) For now I think more diverse IRC channels could work - we already have them for the different talk rooms, how about debconf-hallway, debconf-pub, debconf ... I dunno, dorm rooms, and hopefully people in those physical spaces can 'gossip' and share the prevailing thoughts and jokes and energy into the IRC channels. For me it's less about duplicating the obvious things we expect - more interaction with faces through video, for example, and more about finding out the needs we were trying to express/address with the different things we did. We may end up at the same solutions, but getting there by asking different questions may change the quality of the execution and experience greatly. Unfortunately most of these are not obvious at all! Has sociologists done research on this?? An example I remember talking about last year was family video meetings - what a disaster! Because everyone is online and then you have to take turns to speak and it becomes a lecture by that *one* family member. When what people needed in the past ... some wanted to quietly sit in the corner sipping tea while watching the toddlers playing (how many people had access to that on their video calls? just quietly observing them playing?). Some wanted to gossip about something, but the magic happened when someone else 'picked up stompies' - caught half a story and turned it into a joke. Probably everyone wanted to ignore the one member talking too much, which they could do while not letting that person catch on. You can do that on a video call, but it kills the vibe, while in person it's just part of the tapestry. The clinking of things, the smell of the food and the garden ... those are magical, and can't really be duplicated into video, or can it? I thought the T-shirts contributed to filling that function, something you can feel and smell that connects you to the larger community. Maybe we all cook the same thing on one night to mimic a group dinner ... things like that. But this takes a lot more care. And it's true we don't take time off to attend online, we just fit it in with everything else. What could we do to change that, to make it worthwhile to take time off for? Should we? Or should we change the format? (the Linux conf had many more days, but only 4 hours per day or something like that) - B > > l. > > > > -- > --- > crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68 >
