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DebConf11 in Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina

March 1, 2010 – 8:26 pm by AbsintheSyringe

This moment has finally arrived! Last Saturday (27-th) on #debconf-team decision was made, DebConf11 is coming to Bosnia and Herzegovina! 

Our team and myself were working on this whole candidature for last ~9 months, and even though we put incredibly amounts on energy, hard work, enthusiasm and everything else that goes along with it, suspense and uncertainty were there until the very last minute!  One of our local team members (trip0d’s) wife almost gave a birth to their child gave birth to twins during the decision process that lasted full 4 hours

As a remainder we were competing with Ecuador and Germany to win this bid, whole process was excruciating and very emotionally distressful in every possible aspect for every team member; at one point Germany took a slight lead ahead of Bosnian team, while in the end by “points” Bosnia was in slight lead by 0.25 points, and this is exactly what touched me the most about this whole bid/decision/process.

This is not a great advantage or anything for that matter, but what happened is that in decision process Debian debconf team and its developers picked Bosnia and Herzegovina as a place where they want to have DebConf11!  Our main competitors from München, Germany showed a real fair play and at the end even yielded to our side; really to both of you, Michael Banck (azeem) and Andreas Barth (aba) it was a pleasure and honor to compete with you guys! See you in NYC for proper handshake and possibly a hug?

Also I’d like to thank Jimmy Kaplowitz (Hydroxide), Moray Allan (moray) who had chairs and who did absolutely incredible job … I guess I’ll just have to thank the whole debconf orga team for all their amazing work ( can’t name names individually because I’ll definitely forget someone!)

This bid really reunited whole Bosnia and Herzegovina, this whole process also united all of Balkans and whole of Ex Yugoslavia, which makes me especially happy since today (March 1st) we are celebrating the day we officially separated from Yugoslavia. Now this just one small step forward, since the real work is ahead of us and we’re starting it all as soon as tomorrow since there’s really a lot that needs to be done.

Again thank you all, we’ll give our best for this to be a DebConf you’ll remember (as a great one of course!), in the meantime see you in New York City!

Adnan Hodzic aka AbsintheSyringe team leader on behalf of whole debconf11-team.

DebConf11 Banja Luka wiki

Debconf11 decision log (#debconf-team log)