Events Archives - credativ®

On Thursday, 27 June, and Friday, 28 June 2024, I had the amazing opportunity to attend Swiss PGDay 2024. The conference was held at the OST Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences, Campus Rapperswil, which is beautifully situated on the banks of Lake Zurich in a nice, green environment. With approximately 110 attendees, the event had mainly a B2B focus, although not exclusively. Despite the conference being seemingly smaller in scale compared to PostgreSQL events in larger countries, it actually reflected perfectly the scope relevant for Switzerland.

During the conference, I presented my talk “GIN, BTREE_GIN, GIST, BTREE_GIST, HASH & BTREE Indexes on JSONB Data“. The talk summarized the results of my long-term project at NetApp, including newer interesting findings compared to the presentation I gave in Prague at the beginning of June. As far as I could tell, my talk was well received by the audience, and I received very positive feedback.

At the very end on Friday, I also presented a lightning talk, “Can PostgreSQL Have a More Prominent Role in the AI Boom?” (my slides are at the end of the file). In this brief talk, I raised the question of whether it would be possible to implement AI functionality directly into PostgreSQL, including storing embedding models and trained neural networks within the database. Several people in the audience, involved with ML/AI, reacted positively on this proposal, acknowledging that PostgreSQL could indeed play a more significant role in ML and AI topics.

The conference featured two tracks of presentations, one in English and the other in German, allowing for a diverse range of topics and speakers. I would like to highlight some of them:

At the end of the first day, all participants were invited to a social event for networking and personal exchange, which was very well organized. I would like to acknowledge the hard work and dedication of all the organizers and thank them for their efforts. Swiss PGDay 2024 was truly a memorable and valuable experience, offering great learning opportunities. I am grateful for the chance to participate and contribute to the conference, and I look forward to future editions of this event. I am also very thankful to NetApp-credativ for making my participation in the conference possible.

Photos by organizers, Gülçin Yıldırım Jelínek and author:

 

 

   

On Wednesday, June 5th, I attended the Prague PostgreSQL Developers Day 2024. It is the premier PostgreSQL conference in the Czech Republic, and this year marked its 16th iteration. The event was held in the modern and convenient environment of the Czech Technical University and was attended by almost 270 participants.

During the conference, I presented my talk, “GIN, BTREE_GIN, GIST, and BTREE Indexes on JSONB Data.” This talk summarized the current findings of my project at NetApp (credativ), which I initiated to deepen our understanding of these indexing methods and their performance results. Our goal is to provide relevant and valuable solutions to our customers, who often struggle with implementing JSONB columns and operations into their applications and find the available information insufficient. Even existing AI models fall short as they rely on the same limited publicly available data. The project is focused on JSONB data; however, the results have already shown applicability beyond just this type of data. The positive reactions from the audience indicated that my presentation was well-received. The conference is a bilingual event, with presentations in both Czech and English. Being from Czechia, I delivered my talk in Czech but used English slides.

The conference also featured seven other insightful talks throughout the day. The first talk by Jan Karremans from Cybertec delved into the CloudNativePG operator, which implements PostgreSQL to run on Kubernetes. The second talk by Jakub Zemanek from initMax provided a detailed guide on configuring PostgreSQL accounts based on Active Directory using Ansible and the ldap2pg program. Gülçin Yıldırım Jelínek from EDB followed with a practical example of implementing vector storage of AI embeddings in PostgreSQL. I also really enjoyed the engaging and informative talk by Boriss Mejias from EDB, who explained different types of consistency and ways to ensure them in PostgreSQL using synchronous or asynchronous replication, and colored his talk with practical examples from a big musical event, where payments from multiple sources must be quickly and safely distributed throughout the system. Pavel Stehule offered a deep analysis of the pros and cons of the existing cost-based optimizer in PostgreSQL (slides in Czech lang). Pavlo Golub from Cybertec delivered an informative session on programming different PostgreSQL operations with the Go language. In the final talk, Ales Zeleny presented an in-depth analysis of the features of two extensions focused on monitoring query performance in PostgreSQL – pg_stat_statements and pg_stat_monitor.

The conference was really well-organized, and I extend my gratitude to Tomas Vondra and the other organizers for their hard work. Overall, it was very successful event, filled with valuable insights, engaging discussions, and networking opportunities. I look forward to applying the knowledge gained here and I am eager for future editions of the P2D2 conference.

Useful links:

  1. Prague PostgreSQL Developer Day 2024 talks – summaries with links to slides (English / Czech)
  2. Prague PostgreSQL Developer Day 2024 conference recap – Tomas Vondra (English)

Photos by Tomas Vondra (EDB):

 

Once again a KubeCon has come to an end

This year, the CNCF hosted the meeting in the French capital. In the south of Paris at the PARIS EXPO PORTE DE VERSAILLES, over 12,000 participants came together again this year.

In addition to various talks and unconferences, there was also a wide range of Contribfests slots, which made it easier for interested parties to get involved in various projects. The thematic focus this year was clearly on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.

Wednesday morning started at 9 am. All keynotes had one thing in common: the topic of AI/ML! Here are a few titles: “Accelerating AI Workloads with GPUs in Kubernetes”, “Build an Open Source Platform for AI/ML” or “Optimizing Performance and Sustainability for AI”. In addition to the keynotes, participants were also offered plenty of talks on the topic of AI and ML. Anyone interested in this topic could find what they were looking for at any time during the three days in the “Paris” room. The new white paper on “Cloud Native AI” was also announced during the keynotes.

Location

Anyone wishing to enter the conference first had to pass through security, consisting of metal detectors and possible bag checks.

Unfortunately, there was again the problem of overcrowded rooms this year. Several times during the day it was necessary to reschedule spontaneously, as the selected talk was unfortunately already overcrowded and admission was no longer possible. Unfortunately, this also applied to some keynotes in the morning.

A few impressions

The CNCF Storage TAG and the Storage SIG reported on current developments in the storage sector and mentioned various white papers (“CNCF Storage Whitepaper, Performance and Benchmarking whitepaper, Cloud Native Disaster Recovery whitepaper, and the Data on Kubernetes whitepaper.”). Among other things, it was shown how “PersistendVolumeAttributes” can be used to adjust PersistentVolume attributes, for example to adjust the number of IOPS for a volume during operation.

In the Contribfest slot on Metal3 (Metal Kubed), the maintainers of the project gave a first insight and showed how a development environment can be set up. Among other things, Metal3 offers a ClusterAPI (CAPI) implementation that can be used to manage bare-metal systems. Ironic, which originates from the OpenStack project, is used in the background.

At the “From UI to Storage” talk Thanos maintainers gave an insight into the current implementation and potential future improvements.

In the “CRI-O Odyssey”, the CRI-O maintainers talked about innovations within the Container Runtime. This included the topic of “Confidential Containers” and “Podman-in-Kubernetes”. The topic of WASM integration was also on the agenda.

The maintainers of Fink reported on “Fink on Kubernetes” and how the system is used to classify objects like astroids or supernovas in the field of astronomy.

In the talk “eBPF: Abilities and Limitations”, not only general misconceptions were clarified, but also ways to work around existing limitations were pointed out. In addition, the question of whether eBPF touring is complete was raised and a version of Conway’s “Game of Life” in eBPF was presented.

Those who have always wanted to know how Istio mTLS can be implemented in multi-cluster environments with the help of SPIRE found what they were looking for in room D. After a short introduction to SPIFFE and SPIRE, it was shown how Istio components can be connected to the SPIRE agent.

Maintainers of operator-sdk talked about current innovations in operator-SDK and OLM V1. Particularly interesting were the changes in the Operator Lifecycle Manger that have been introduced in version 1 (previously version 0). Among other things, OLM v1 is now able to manage packaged operators via Helm, even without prior preparation by the operator maintainers.

Conclusion

In addition to many interesting talks, there were plenty of opportunities for lively discussions with other conference attendees and exchanges with exhibitors or project maintainers.

We are already looking forward to KubeCon 2025 in London!

This year’s FOSS Backstage took place on 2024-03-04 and 2024-03-05 at bUm in Berlin, Germany. One Debian Developer and employee of NetApp had the opportunity to attend this conference: Bastian Blank.

FOSS Backstage focuses on the non-coding aspects of Open Source projects. Aspects like governance, how to structure a project, and how to grow your project where talked a lot about. But also legal aspects on licenses choice and license compliance showed up.

Many startups will eventually show up the radar of Venture Capital. While this will make some people wealthy, this is often a turning point for FOSS principles. Melanie Rieback presented the keynote with insight into her successful non-profit security company. A company that can’t be sold to anyone really.

Once in a while, hopefully not too often, it will be necessary to change the structure of a project. For example if the founder of the project and his company suddenly goes away. Ruth Cheesley showed how changing the governance model can work in reality.

Funding is a not so easy, but still important part of every project. Some insights where given by Shane Curcuru about how projects are currently funded, with data he collects and publishes.

All presentations have been recorded and should show up on the YouTube channel of the organizers.

Introduction

For the first time ever, one of our colleagues had the chance to visit the North American edition of KubeCon and CloudNativeCon in Chicago this year.

Our colleague Michael Sprengel who already works 8 years for credativ and has gained a lot of experiences with Kubernetes and the development of Kubernetes controllers in that time, is sharing his experiences from KubeCon and CloudNativeCon North America 2023.

So with no further ado, let’s hand it over to our colleague Michael.

Come fly with me back to Chicago

Hi folks, my name is Michael Sprengel – Professional Service Consultant here at credativ – and I want to share my experiences with you from this year’s KubeCon / CloudNativeCon in North America. So come with me and let me give you a first person view of all the talks and things that I was able to experience here in Chicago. You may not had the chance to visit the North American edition of KubeCon so far, so this is the best chance for you to get some insights which could make you think of also attending KubeCon and CloudNativeCon next year then.

Those editions will take place in Paris and Salt Lake City.

Chicago – The Windy City

The good thing about such conferences is not only the possibility to attend talks and learn about new technologies that you can use in daily projects but it’s also an opportunity to learn new cultures and leave with a bag full of new memories.

This year, the conference took place in Chicago that is also known as the Windy City. I was lucky enough to arrive on Saturday, so that I had a chance to pack my backpack and pay Chicago a visit a day before the conference started. Hereby, I was able to check some of Chicago’s well known sights like for example Lake Michigan or the mighty Millennium Park in the center of Downtown Chicago.

The only downfall to this was that Chicago’s Cloud Gate that is also known as The Bean. This landmark is currently under construction at, so that I could only take a picture through some construction fences. But other than that, the city has a lot to offer like Deep Dish and Thin Crust Pizza or some university you may want to visit. Chicago is definitely worth it.

Day 1: Operator Day

Besides of this wonderful city, the actual conference has also a lot to offer. If you’re lucky enough to get a All-access pass for KubeCon, you can already visit some CNCF-hosted Co-located events near the venue. But don’t worry. Even if you don’t have such a pass, you can attend some virtual events already.

For me personally, I attended the so called Operator Day by Canonical. It’s a full day event that takes place from 9am to 4pm. It gave me some pretty good insights in implementing Kubernetes operators the Canonical way by using Juju.

Unfortunately, the current edition from Chicago isn’t online so far, but you can check out the last Operator Day from Europe by watching the videos below:

Day 2: First experiences from the venue

The second day was really mind blowing. If you never attended such a conference before, you will be surprised by the amount of talks as well as by the size of the actual venue.

After arriving at the venue, I had a chance to grab a breakfast and a coffee as well as attend the Opening Remarks in which leading Kubernetes and CNCF developers, engineers and ambassadors highlight the latest and greatest changes in Kubernetes and the CNCF space. Here, you could really feel how Machine Learning and AI is influencing Kubernetes and how features are added to this project to better support ML/AI.

Next to this, you have a big variety of talks that you can attend or you can go to the Solutions Showcase where all the major companies and sponsors have their booth. There, you can talk to maintainers or get in touch with companies that are using CNCF related projects or Kubernetes in their business. Typically some booths also offer so called Lightning Talks. These are like general talks but they tend to be shorter than the usual ones and they are mostly focusing on hands on sessions or live demos.

Day 3/4: Talks, talks and some more talks

In general, I was able to attend a lot of talks during the conference. Some of them were exactly what I was expecting and others however surprised me. Thereby, I visited the following talks:

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

The Service Mesh Battle Scars talk was one of the talks that surprised me, because it was basically and public battle between the maintainers of the biggest Service Mesh solutions in Kubernetes.

  1. Cilium
  2. Istio
  3. linkerd

It surprised me because it was quite interesting to see how each of those projects were arguing differently to specific topics like transport encryption as well as Sidecar, Sideless or Ambient mode. As an attendee, you could really get a feeling of what thoughts each project put into specific topics before realizing them. Especially the topic about encryption caught my attention. Istio and linkerd simply use mTLS for encryption, whereas Cilium now tries to use TLS for the initial handshake while using the resulting encryption key for IPSec to implement transport encryption. This concept led to a heavy discussion if this approach is still considered to be secure since Cilium is only reusing some part of TLS instead of using it completely and usually reusing well known and accepted security algorithms is always preferred in modern IT.

Next to this, it was also pleasing to attend the Spotify talk in which Tim Hansen explained how the engineers at Spotify implement GitOps and what effort it takes to create a new project / repository that should be deployed on production. Spotify uses some self-written solutions to achieve this and overcome some limitation that already existing solutions might have. For building and deploying for example, Spotify uses their own CI/CD solution Tingle. Tingle was created in 2017 to serve as the centralized CI/CD system for backend, data and web services and it thereby replaced 200 stand-alone Jenkins machines. More information about this, can be found here:

How We Improved Developer Productivity for Our DevOps Teams

Although this talk mainly focused on Spotify and their GitOps tools, the presenter also showcased open source tools which helps to accomplish similar functionality without relying on Spotify’s own tools.

Overall, the majority of talks really helped me to broaden my knowledge regarding Kubernetes and the solutions out there. Only some talks didn’t match my expectation, but even then you still have plenty of other talks to choose from.

Get the first person view

If you want to get an idea of how such a conference looks like, I create three videos which let you experience the conference similar to what I was able to experience. Give it a try and visit KubeCon and CloudNativeCon 2023 with me again!

Conclusion

Having the opportunity to travel to Chicago and experience KubeCon and CloudNativeCon for the first time was an one in the lifetime experiences. You not only have the chance to get insights to so many CNCF related projects but it’s also a good opportunity to get in touch with developers, engineers, managers and other people who use Kubernetes on daily basis. If you have the chance to visit such a conference, I would highly recommend to take the chance and attend them.

On KubeCon and CloudNativeCon, I learned a lot about new stuff and got an idea of design decision that probably will help me to solve some upcoming challenges in one of my own projects and which I wouldn’t know about if I hadn’t attended this conference. Thereby, one quote from Dr. Angel Diaz, VP Technology Capabilities & Innovation at Discover Financial Services really stick to my head:

Code, Community, Culture

And this is what it’s all about. You not only learn new stuff that you can use in your code, but you become a part of a community and get use to a culture which enables you to contribute to projects that are the baseline of most of our daily projects.

With a lot of Deep Dish Pizza in my stomach and a lot of new knowledge in my head, I’m happy to return from KubeCon North America and start working on my Kubernetes projects again.

Thanks for sticking around with me and I hope to see you on next year’s KubeCon and CloudNativeCon, too.

And by the way, if you’re searching for experts in Kubernetes and CNCF related topics, give our sales department a call and we might be able to help you with that.

This years All Systems Go! took place on 2023-09-13 and 2023-09-14 at the nice location of Neue Mälzerei in Berlin, Germany. One Debian Developer and employee of NetApp had the opportunity to attend this conference: Bastian Blank.

All Systems Go! focuses on low-level user-space for Linux systems. Everything that is above the kernel, but is so fundamental that systems won’t work without.

A lot of talks happened, ranging from how to use TPM with Linux for measured boot, how to overcome another Y2038 problem, up to just how to actually boot fast. Videos for all talks are kindly provided by the nice people of the C3VOC.

DebConf23 https://debconf23.debconf.org/ took place from 2023-09-10 to –17 in Kochi, India. 

Four employees (three Debian developers) from NetApp had the opportunity to participate in the annual event, which is the most important conference in the Debian world: Christoph Senkel, Andrew Lee, Michael Banck and Noël Köthe. 

DebCamp 

What is DebCamp? DebCamp usually takes place a week before DebConf begins. For participants, DebCamp is a hacking session that takes place just before DebConf. It’s a week dedicated to Debian contributors focusing on their Debian-related projects, tasks, or problems without interruptions. 

DebCamps are largely self-organized since it’s a time for people to work. Some prefer to work individually, while others participate in or organize sprints. Both approaches are encouraged, although it’s recommended to plan your DebCamp week in advance. 

During this DebCamp, there are the following public sprints: 

In addition to the organizational part, our colleague Andrew also attended and arranged private sprints during DebCamp: 

It also allows the DebConf committee to work together with the local team to prepare additional details for the conference. During DebCamp, the organization team typically handles the following tasks: 

Conference talks 

The conference itself started on Sunday 10. September with an opening, some organizational stuff, GPG keysigning information (the fingerprint was printed on the badge) and a big welcome to everyone onsite and in the world. 

Most talks of DebConf were live streamed and are available in the video archive. The topics were broad from very technical (e.g., “What’s new in the Linux kernel”) over organizational (e.g., “DebConf committee”) to social (e.g., “Adulting”). 

Schedule: https://debconf23.debconf.org/schedule/ 

Videos: https://meetings-archive.debian.net/pub/debian-meetings/2023/DebConf23/ 

Thanks a lot, to the voluntarily organized video team for this video transmission coverage. 

Lightning Talks 

On the last day of DebConf, the traditional lightning talks were held. One talk in particular was noticed, the presentation of extrepo by Wouter Verhelst. At NetApp, we use bookworm-based Debian ThinkPad’s. However, in a corporate environment, non-packaged software needs to be used from time to time, and extrepo is a very elegant way to solve this problem by providing, maintaining and keeping UpToDate a list of 3rd-party APT repositories like Slack or Docker Desktop. 

Sadya 

On Tuesday, an incredibly special lunch was offered at DebConf: a traditional Kerala vegetarian banquet (Sadya in Maralayam), which is served on a banana leaf and eaten by hand. It was quite unusual for the European part of the attendees at first, but a wonderful experience once one got into it. 

Daytrip 

On Wednesday, the Daytrip happened and everybody could choose out of five different trips: https://wiki.debian.org/DebConf/23/DayTrip  

The houseboat trip was a bus tour to Alappuzha about 60 km away from the conference venue. It was interesting to see (and hear) the typical bus, car, motorbike and Tuktuk road traffic in action. During the boat trip the participants socialized and visited the local landscape outside the city. 

Unfortunately, we had an accident at one of the daytrip options. Abraham a local Indian participant drowned while swimming.  

https://debconf23.debconf.org/news/2023-09-14-mourning-abraham/ 

It was a big shock for everybody and all events including the traditional formal dinner were cancelled for Thursday. The funeral with the family was on Friday morning and DebConf people had the opportunity with organized buses to participate and say goodbye. 

NetApp internal dinner on Friday 

The NetApp team at DebConf wanted to take the chance to go to a local restaurant (“were the locals go eating”) and enjoyed very tasty food. 

DebConf24 

Sunday was the last day of DebConf23. As usual, the upcoming DebConf24 was very briefly presented and there was a call for bids for DebConf25. 

Maybe see you in Haifa, Israel next year. 

https://www.debconf.org/goals.shtml 

 

 

Authors: Andrew Lee, Michael Banck and Noël Köthe 

Open Source Summit is the world’s largest, all-encompassing open source conference. Topics such as the latest infrastructure software, development on the Linux kernel and current works in open source communities are discussed. Until now, open source databases were a missing part of the conference program.

However, databases such as PostgreSQL® or Apache Cassandra are one of the most important pillars in modern open source infrastructures.

Together with the Linux Foundation, we are pleased to announce that this year’s Open Source Summit North America and Europe each will have their own database track.

Together with Sunil Kamath (Microsoft) and Divya Bhargov (Pivotal), our Managing Director Dr. Michael Meskes forms the program committee for the new track of the event.

Dr. Michael Meskes comments this in his blog post at the Linux Foundation as follows:

“The open source database track will feature topics specific to databases themselves and their integration to the computing backbone for applications. The track will focus on databases of all kinds, as long as they are open source, and any deployment and integration topics.”

The complete blog post of the Linux Foundation can be found here.

The Linux Foundation and the program committee are looking forward to plenty of submissions for this track. Presentations can be submitted until 16 February (North America) and 14 June (Europe).

This year’s Open Source Summit North America will take place in Austin, Texas. Whereas the Open Source Summit Europe will be hosted in Dublin, Ireland. Both events are once again backed by credativ with a sponsorship.

This article was originally written by Philip Haas.

From mid to late June credativ attended 3 consecutive conferences in Asia. The Open Source Summit Japan, the LC3 China and the PG Open China.

Open Source Summit Japan

As in the previous year, the Open Source Summit Japan was held again at the Ariake Conference Center on Odaiba, in the Bay of Tokyo. In order to cover the increasing number of participants, the event area was extended by several rooms. Accordingly, there was plenty of space for everyone.

Open Source Summit Japan 2018 Foto 1

Open Source Summit Japan 2018 Foto 2

In addition to a large number of technical presentations, mainly on containers, cloud and applications for automotive, there were also business and strategy orientated talks. All visitors could find topics of interest for themselves.

Specifically the presentation “Is There an Open Source Business Model: YES or NO?” by Jeffrey Borek (IBM) and Stephen Walli (Microsoft), deserves special mention, as it was the starting point for extensive discussions that day. Jeffrey and Stephen each gave their views and then gave the floor to the attendees to mix ask questions or give comments. The title being worded as it is doesn’t really explain the topic in detail. What the talk really was about is the question if a Open Source business model exists for large software companies.

Further to be emphasized is the presentation by our CEO Dr. Michael Meskes, whose question ”Is There a Future for Open SourceLC3 China

LC3 China (LinuxCon + ContainerCon + CloudOpen) was held in Beijing at the China National Convention Center. In the immediate vicinity of the Olympic Green Olympia Park, which was built for the 2008 Olympic Games.

LinuxCon China Foto 1

LinuxCon China Foto 2

Most of the presentations were held in English, although the vast majority of those attending were from China. A very welcoming gesture that definitely contributed to the international character. A large number of lectures with technical and business topics were held over the 4 days. Particularly interesting were the so called “office hours” as a separate position on the schedule. For this, 3 tables were provided at which discussions within the community could take place.

On the whole, LC3 seemed to be a platform for China’s largest IT companies, but it also showed that hacker groups and student groups have their own place in the community. We were certainly very happy to be able to participate and are looking forward to the next year.

PG Open China

Postgres’ growing success and the well-attended PostgreSQL® conferences, which have been held in China since 2015, led to the first PG Open China being held at the Hotel Nikko New Century Beijing this year.

PG Open China Foto 1

The aim of this conference was to provide a starting point for the Chinese PostgreSQL community and strenghthen its connection to the global PostgreSQL community

. For or this purpose, an international committee was established consisting of Bruce Momjian, Joshua D. Drake, Oleg Bartunov, Ray Feng and Dr. Michael Meskes.

After introducing this committee in a keynote, the event rooms were used for presentations and talks from the Chinese community. Joshua D. Drake and Oleg Bartunov also held a presentation. All lectures were translated with the help of an interpreter, so that all those present with less understanding of the English language nuances could comprehend everything.

The number of visitors of the PG Open China fortunately exceeded expectations and as such that the growth potential can clearly be seen. Especially with the focus on connection to the international community, the conference will certainly grow significantly over the next few years. It is therefore highly probable that we will be back on site next year. We were very happy to be one of the fist to participate in the PG Open China.

Last weekend, DebCamp, which is the pre-event of the largest Debian conference worldwide – DebConf, started.

This years DebConf will take place in Taiwan from July 29th to August 05th.

After we already took part in this years MiniDebConf in Hamburg, we are now also going to visit Taiwan to attend the DebConf, also because credativ is sponsoring the event this year.

Even if the flights last 16 hours on average, the anticipation of the colleagues is already great and we are very curious what the event has in store for its visitors.

Lectures, Talks and BoFs

Meanwhile the packed lecture program has been published. There will be around 90 presentations in 3 tracks on the following 8 topics:

Many of the presentations can even be streamed. The links are as follows:

We are especially looking forward to the SPI BoF (Software in the Public Interest – Birds of a Feather) and the DSA BoF (Debian System Administrators – Birds of a Feather), in which our colleague and Debian sysadmin Martin Zobel-Helas participates.

Job Fair

For us at credativ, the Job Fair is of particular importance. Here we meet potential new colleagues and hopefully many visitors interested in our company. If you want to have a chat with our colleagues: Noël, Sven and Martin will be available for you at the Job Fair and on all other days of the event.

In addition to exciting discussions, we of course hope for one or two interesting applications that we will receive afterwards.

The Job Fair takes place one day before DebConf18, on 28 July.

Daytrip and other events

Of course there will also be the “Daytrip” this year, which will show the conference visitors the surroundings and the country. Participants have a whole range of options to choose from. Whether you want to explore the city, go hiking, or hold a Taiwanese tea ceremony, there should be something for everyone.

In addition to the daily breakfast, lunch, coffee break and dinner, there will be a cheese-and-wine party on Monday 30 August and a conference dinner on Thursday 2 August. Our colleagues will attend both events and hopefully have some interesting conversations.

Debian and credativ

The free operating system Debian is one of the most popular Linux distributions and has thousands of users worldwide.

Besides Martin Zobel-Helas, the credativ employs many members of the Debian project. Also our managing director, Dr. Michael Meskes, was actively involved in Debian even before credativ GmbH (1999) was founded. This also resulted in a close and long-standing bond with the Debian project and the community for credativ.

This article was originally written by Philip Haas.

Debian 9 “Stretch”, the latest version of Debian, is about to be released and after a full-freeze on February 5th everyone is trying its best to fix the last bugs that are left.

Upon entering the final phase of development in February the test version was “frozen” so that no more packages could be added or removed without the approval of the release team.

However, Stretch has some bugs left, which need to be resolved until the release date, especially the so called release critical bugs (RC). For this purpose, numerous Debian developers host worldwide meet ups.

These meet ups are a long standing tradition and are lovingly called “Bug Squashing Party”. Despite the cute name, these events usually turn out to be one the most focused, intense and hard working days in the life cycle of a new Debian version. Pressured by the upcoming release date, everyone gets together to get rid of the nasty release critical bugs and focus on unfinished packages.

This weekend, from the 17th to the 19th of March, the Debian developers from credativ are hosting a Bug Squashing Party in the German Open Source Support Center in Mönchengladbach.

The Open Source Support Center employs the likely biggest number of European Debian developers in one place. Therefore credativ GmbH is providing the location and technical infrastructure for everyone who decided to join the Bug Squashing Party.

We hope that this year’s meeting is going to be as successful as in the previous years. Developers from all neighbouring countries took part in past events and some even found their future employer.

Coordinating the event are: Martin Zobel-Helas “zobel” (Debian system administrator) and Alexander Wirt “formorer” (Debian Quality Assurance).

If you would like to participate, feel free to sign up!

We are looking forward to your visit.

Here is the announcement on the mailing-list:

https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2017/02/msg00006.html

Here is the entry in the Debian wiki:

https://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2017/03/de/credativ

This article was originally written by Philip Haas.