For me, this is the year of the conference, mostly because I am helping to organize Debconf10, which so far has been quite fun, though I know that as we approach August, the planning will become more all encompassing. It is also the case that my piece on the hacker conference has finally been published by Anthropological Quarterly (and thanks to those who help be hunt some of the mistakes and typos). If you have university access you can get it via the traditional (and closed) routes but you can find a copy via my department web page or here.

For those that did not catch my last post about this piece, it is a rare specimen for academia: a feel good piece or so I think and so I have been told. If you have been to Debconf before and liked it, it is a good piece for reminiscing. If you have not been and are thinking of going, I would also recommend it (and btw the deadline for the end of registration is fast approaching.

Now that I am organizing the event, I know the experience of the conference will feel, look, and be quite different from what I have portrayed in the article. So maybe at the end of August, when I am worn, torn, and deflated from months of hard work, I will write a piece poking fun at my feel-good description, a nice counter-weight to what is admittedly a bit of a romantic piece.