Debconf24 Busan

DebConf24 was held in Busan, South Korea, from July 28th to August 4th 2024 and preceded by DebCamp from July 21st to July 27th. This was my second IRL DebConf (DC) and fourth one in total. I started in Debian with a DebConf, so its always an occasion when one happens.

This year again, I worked on the fundraising team, working to raise funds from international sponsors. We did manage to raise enough funding, albeit less than budgeted. Though the local Korean team was able to connect and gather many governmental sponsors, which was quite surprising for me.

I wasn’t seriously considering attending DebConf until I discussed this with Nilesh. More or less, his efforts helped push me through the whole process. Thanks Nilesh, for this. In March, I got my passport and started preparing documents for the South Korean visa. It did require a lot of paperwork, but seeing South Korea’s fresh passport visa rejection rate, I had doubts about visa acceptance. The visa finally got approved, which could be attributed to great documentation and help from the DebConf visa team. This was also my first trip outside India, and this being to DebConf made many things easier. Most stuff was documented on the DebConf website and wiki. Queries got immediate responses in the DebConf channels.

We took a direct flight from Delhi, reaching Seoul in the morning. With good directions from Sourab TK, who had reached Seoul a few hours earlier, we quickly got Korean Won, local SIM, T-money card (transportation card) and headed towards Seoul by AREX i.e. airport metro. We spent the next two days exploring Seoul, which is huge. It probably has the highest number of skyscrapers I have ever seen. The city has a good blend of modern and ancient culture. We explored various places including Gyeongbokgung Palace, Statue of King Sejong, Bukchon Hanok village, N Seoul Tower and various food markets which were amazing.

Next, we headed to Busan for DebConf using KTX (Korean high speed rail). (Fun fact - slogan for City of Busan is “Busan is Good”.) South Korea has a good network of high frequency high speed trains. We had pre-booked tickets because, despite the frequency, trains were sold out most of the time. KTX ride was quite smooth, despite traveling at 300 kmph at times through the Korean countryside and long mountain tunnels.

The venue for DebConf was Pukyong National University (PKNU), Daeyeon Campus. PKNU has two campuses in Busan, and some folks ended up in the wrong one too. With good help and guidance from the front desk, we got our dormitory rooms assigned. Dorms here were quite different like:

• Rooms had heated floors. It snows in Busan.
• Each area had card based access (restrictions). There was a separate prepaid card for laundry.
• Each room had announcement systems though we couldn’t decipher any announcement as all of them were in Korean.
• Each room was provided with a dedicated access point and its own SSID inside the room.

Settling in was easy. We started meeting familiar folks after almost a year. The long conversations started again. Everyone was excited for DebConf.

Like every time, the first day was full of action (and chaos). Meet and greet, volunteers check in, video team running around and fixing stuff and things working (and sometimes not). There were some interesting talks and sponsors stalls. After day one, things more or less settled down. I again volunteered for video team stuff and helped with camera operations and talk directions, which is always fun. As the tradition applies, saw few talks live on stream too sitting in the dorm room during the conference, which is always fun, when too tired to get ready and go out.

DebConf takes care of food needs for vegan/vegetarian folks well, of which I’m one. I got to try different food items, which was quite an experience. I tried using chopsticks again, which didn’t work, and I later figured that handling metal ones was difficult. We had late night ramen and wooden chopsticks worked perfectly. One of the days, we even went out to an Indian restaurant to have some desi Aloo Paratha, Paneer, Samosa and Chai (milk tea). I wasn’t particularly craving desi food but wasn’t able to get something according to my taste, so I went there.

For day trip, I went to Ulsan. San means mountains in Korean. Ulsan is a port city with many industries, including the Hyundai car factory, petrochemical industry, paint industry, shipbuilding etc. We saw bamboo forest, Ulsan Tower (quite a view towards Ulsan Port), whale village, Ulsan Onggi Museum and the sea, which was beautiful.

Amongst the sponsors, I was most interested in our network sponsors. They’re National Research and Education Networks (NREN) here. We had two network sponsors, KOREN and KREONET, thanks to efforts by the local team. Initially it was discussed that they’d provide 20G uplink each, so 40G in total, which was whopping but by the time the closing talk happened, we got to know we had 200G uplink to the Internet. This was a massive update from last year when we had a 1G main and 100M backup link. 200G wasn’t what was required, but it was a massive capacity upgrade and IIRC from the talk, we peaked at around 500M in sustained usage, but it’s always fun to have an astronomical amount of bandwidth for bragging rights.

Now let’s talk about things I found interesting about South Korea in general:

• Convenience stores were everywhere. One could see the same brand stores less than a kilometer apart. We even had two of them (GS25(s)), a road cross away. These places were well stocked with almost everything including alcohol.
• There were wide footpaths and pedestrian friendly policies.
• Public transport and intramodal transfer are convenient and easy to figure out. Each metro station connects to multiple nearby buildings through underground walkways, and one never has to go out in the sun (in hot and humid weather). Seoul and Busan metro networks were massive. T-money card worked for buses (almost hop on, tap and hop off at your destination), metro, cabs and in-store shopping.
• South Korea pays special attention to maintaining their historical and cultural buildings. These venues had informational brochures in Korean, English, Japanese and Chinese.
• We got a constant stream of “public safety alerts” on our phones. Some phones even read them aloud for heatwaves and rain warnings, all in Korean.
• Trash was segregated at the source everywhere.
• Public, high speed Wi-Fi was omnipresent in malls, public transport, airports etc. In each metro coach, there was a access point from all three telecom providers (SK Telecom, KT and LG U+) which also had almost similar voice and data plans.
• Police personnel were quite helpful despite the language issue.
• Not many folks here are comfortable in English, but one can always make use of various mobile translation apps.
• Cards are accepted everywhere and there are too many options for them.
• Food situation was a bit difficult for me as a vegetarian. We always have vegan/vegetarian food in DebConf but outside, this whole concept doesn’t seem to exist.
• I couldn’t find any public speed test servers inside Korea. All my fast.com/speedtest.net servers were located in either Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan and even the United States. On the very last day, I got a speed test server in Seoul, inside SK Telecom.

If one has to get the whole DebConf experience, it’s better to attend DebCamp as well because that’s when you can sit and interact with everyone better. As DebConf starts, everyone gets busy in various talks and events and things pick up pace. DebConf days literally fly. This year, attending DebConf in person was a different experience. Attending DebConf without any organizational work/stress was better, and I was able to understand the workings of different Debian teams and workflows better while also identified a few where I would like to join and help. A general conclusion was that almost all Debian teams need more folks to help out. So if someone wants to join, they can probably reach out to the team. Though this would require some patience. Kudos to the Korean team for pulling this off under this timeline and thanks for all the hospitality.

This whole experience expanded my worldview. There’s so much to see, explore and understand. Looking forward to DebConf25 in Brest, France now.

PS - Shoutout to abbyck (aka hamCK)!