August 2017

Stick a fork in it – DebConf 2017 is officially done!

The 18th annual conference, which was located in Montreal on August 6-12, had more than 400 Debian contributors and users from all over the world collaborate, learn and showcase projects. Several meetups popped up during the conference and was a welcome addition to the 165 planned events including 89 talks, 61 discussion sessions or BoFs, 6 workshops and 13 other activities.

Members of the Civil Infrastructure Platform (CIP) attended and presented key Debian sessions that offered tips and shared how CIP uses the Debian systems.

All photos taken by Aigars Mahinovs and licensed by Creative Commons

Jan Kiszka, a member of CIP and senior software engineer in the Competence Center for Embedded Linux at Siemens Corporate Technology, presented with Baurzhan Ismagulov, a developer with Ilbers, about building embedded Debian images with Isar. The Buzz room was filled with attendees who wanted to learn how to use Yocto-like layers for an industrial application and how to use Debian as a foundation.

Yoshitake Kobayashi, the Technical Steering Committee Chair of CIP and leader of an embedded Linux development team at the Toshiba Corporation, gave a presentation to a packed Buzz room of how CIP started the creation of an open source “base layer” of industrial grade software to enable the use and implementation of software building blocks in civil infrastructure projects. He shared why Debian is one of the integral parts of this “base layer,” how CIP adapts Debian for each use case and how CIP can contribute and collaborate with Debian.

For those who weren’t on-site, many of the sessions were live streamed so interested collaborators could still benefit from the knowledge sharing. These videos are also available at the Debian meetings archive website.

CIP spoke with many developers with a passion for Debian and the knowledge to improve the system. In fact, during the entire conference, the CIP team engaged with almost 60 developers to discuss Debian and how to improve support, especially for the Debian-Long Term Support (LTS) project. The LTS support is currently for 5 years but CIP has a goal of 10 or more years, which makes LTS one of the most important aspects of CIP. The gap in between projects is one of the issues and reasons CIP is collaborating with Debian.

Next year, DebConf18 will be held in Hsinchu, Taiwan, from July 29, 2018 to August 5, 2018. It will be the first DebConf held in Asia and CIP members will definitely be there to meet with Debian developers!

Members of the Civil Infrastructure Platform (CIP) will be attending and presenting at the 18^th annual DebConf on August 6-12 in Montreal, Canada. DebConf is the annual conference for Debian contributors and users interested in improving Debian. Previous Debian conferences have featured speakers and attendees from all around the world. Last year’s conference took place in Cape Town, South Africa and was attended by 280 participants from 30 countries.

CIP is a Silver Sponsor this year and will participate in the job fair and host a booth at the conference. Additionally, two CIP members will be giving presentations.

Jan Kiszka, a member of CIP and senior software engineer in the Competence Center for Embedded Linux at Siemens Corporate Technology, will present with Baurzhan Ismagulov, a developer with Ilbers, about building embedded Debian images with Isar. Debian has a long history in embedded usage but many developers don’t know how to use the pre-built, well tested, long maintained Debian packages with the flexibility and reusability of image descriptions via bitbake and Yocto-like layers. This presentation will provide an introduction to this approach, how to use it for “big picture” industrial application scenarios and how to use Debian as a foundation. Jan and Baurzhan’s presentation is on Saturday, August 12 at 10 a.m. in the Buzz room. Click here for more information.

Yoshitake Kobayashi, the Technical Steering Committee Chair of CIP and leader of an embedded Linux development team at the Toshiba Corporation, will give a presentation about how CIP has started the creation of an open source “base layer” of industrial grade software to enable the use and implementation of software building blocks in civil infrastructure projects. Debian is one of the integral parts of this “base layer” and Yoshitake will share why CIP members use Debian, how they adapt Debian for each use case and how CIP can contribute and collaborate with Debian. Yoshitake’s presentation is on Saturday, August 12 at 10:45 a.m. in the Buzz room. Click here for more information.

If you’re going to the conference, stop by the CIP booth to chat with other members about all things Linux, Debian and open source industrial grade software. If you’re not going to be at the conference, stay tuned to this blog and @CIP_Project for event updates.