Report from trip to Vietnam
FIXME: this is a draft...
Mid November, 2010, I visited Vietnam. Here is a report of that trip.
Background
I was invited to give a talk at the FOSSASIA event in Hồ Chí Minh City,
and extended the trip to allow for potential spontanious events in the
area in the following weeks. I was excited to provide my talk on Debian
Pure Blends, a topic of interest for some years, but was at the same
time that I was there as replacement for - not together with, my
colleague Andreas Tille: I tend to focus on the theorethic/technical
parts of designing and maintaining Debian Pure Blends whereas Andreas is
great at getting practical things done and emphasizing usability and the
user experience. So we complement each other pretty much and I missed
him representing his own points of view.
Debian kindly sponsored my travel expenses, and the local organizers
provided shelter, food and an always positive and enthusiastic
atmosphere both at the FOSSASIA conference itself and outside the venue
and privately afterwards. Thanks to all who helped make this the great
success that it was!
Arrival
I took off from Copenhagen, Denmark, and went via FIXME London, UK and
FIXME Hongkong, China to Vietnam - FIXME hours in all. Smooth process
through all airports, and surprisingly good food aboard the flights. :-)
Took some time at arrival to locate the young volunteers picking me up,
and a funny experience followed: At home few days before departure I
was noticed by email to bring a spare, non-SIM-locked GSM phone, and I
was now given a white envelope containing not only a map of inner city
and a few advertisement flyers, but also a SIM card for free use
throughout my stay. Brilliant idea which I haven't experienced before!
One of the volunteers cleverly wrote her own phone number on the
envelope - and that turned out to be a crucial move, because after a
brief hello a taxi was called for, I got in - and was surprisingly sent
off on my own! I had no cash, the driver didn't speak english, and as
feared he shock his head when I waived a VISA card at him. I loaded my
phone, looked in vein for official contact phone numbers inside the
envelope, and then called the phone number written on the envelope
explaining my confusion on not knowing where I was headed and not having
cash to pay. I handed the phone to the driver and they coordinated to
get me to the right hotel, who then paid the taxi driver with a friendly
laugh.
Conference
house, building
exhibition, talks
program
who where when
my talk: listeners, expectations
Women in Open Source - gender discussion
other debian people giving talk about ...
exchange of experience with debian man from asia and from australia?
Meeting people
After the conference I followed two of the conference organizers, FIXME
Hong Phuc Hao and Mario Behling and visited their home+office at FIXME.
I stayed there for a week, helping them improve their local systems to
better handle future conferences - e.g. improve their clever move of
handing out a GSM SIM card for all speakers: setup an sms server to
collect contact info for each SIM and publish on a public web page.
setting up a server: new purposes how to use
University talk w/ Dave Crossland
staying one day at 3D café for interessed people
Ubuntu users
travelling home
departure from ...
arrival ...
summary
lesson learned
would travel again or not
hints for other Debian people
co2 footprint ;-)
