Today, Sunday 5 August 2018, the annual Debian Developers and Contributors Conference came to a close. With over 306 people attending from all over the world, and 137 events including 100 talks, 25 discussion sessions or BoFs, 5 workshops and 7 other activities, DebConf18 has been hailed as a success.

Highlights included DebCamp with more than 90 participants, the Open Day, where events of interest to a broader audience were offered, plenaries like the traditional Bits from the DPL, a Questions and Answers session with Minister Audrey Tang, a panel discussion about "Ignoring negativity" with Bdale Garbee, Chris Lamb, Enrico Zini and Steve McIntyre, the talk "That's a free software issue!!" given by Molly de Blanc and Karen Sandler, lightning talks and live demos and the announcement of next year's DebConf (DebConf19 in Curitiba, Brazil).

The schedule has been updated every day, including 27 ad-hoc new activities, planned by attendees during the whole conference.

For those not able to attend, most talks and sessions were recorded and live streamed, and videos are being made available at the Debian meetings archive website. Many sessions also facilitated remote participation via IRC or a collaborative text document.

The DebConf18 website will remain active for archive purposes, and will continue to offer links to the presentations and videos of talks and events.

Next year, DebConf19 will be held in Curitiba, Brazil, from 21 July to 28 July, 2019. It will be the second DebConf held in Brazil (first one was DebConf4 in Porto Alegre. For the days before DebConf the local organisers will again set up DebCamp (13 July – 19 July), a session for some intense work on improving the distribution, and organise the Open Day on 20 July 2019, open to the general public.

DebConf is committed to a safe and welcome environment for all participants. See the DebConf Code of Conduct and the Debian Code of Conduct for more details on this.

Debian thanks the commitment of numerous sponsors to support DebConf18, particularly our Platinum Sponsor Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

About Debian

The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of the largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of volunteers from all over the world work together to create and maintain Debian software. Available in 70 languages, and supporting a huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal operating system.

About DebConf

DebConf is the Debian Project's developer conference. In addition to a full schedule of technical, social and policy talks, DebConf provides an opportunity for developers, contributors and other interested people to meet in person and work together more closely. It has taken place annually since 2000 in locations as varied as Scotland, Argentina, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. More information about DebConf is available from https://debconf.org/.

About Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is an industry-leading technology company providing a comprehensive portfolio of products such as integrated systems, servers, storage, networking and software. The company offers consulting, operational support, financial services, and complete solutions for many different industries: mobile and IoT, data & analytics and the manufacturing or public sectors among others.

HPE is also a development partner of Debian, and providing hardware for port development, Debian mirrors, and other Debian services (hardware donations are listed in the Debian machines page).

Contact Information

For further information, please visit the DebConf18 web page at https://debconf18.debconf.org/ or send mail to press@debian.org.

DebConf18 is taking place in Hsinchu, Taiwan, from July 29th to August 5th, 2018. It is the first Debian Annual Conference in Asia, with over 300 attendees and major advances for Debian and for Free Software in general.

Thirty-two companies have committed to sponsor DebConf18! With a warm "thank you", we'd like to introduce them to you.

Our Platinum sponsor is Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). HPE is an industry-leading technology company providing a comprehensive portfolio of products such as integrated systems, servers, storage, networking and software. The company offers consulting, operational support, financial services, and complete solutions for many different industries: mobile and IoT, data & analytics and the manufacturing or public sectors among others.

HPE is also a development partner of Debian, and providing hardware for port development, Debian mirrors, and other Debian services (hardware donations are listed in the Debian machines page).

We have four Gold sponsors:

• Google, a technology company specialized in Internet-related services as online advertising and search engine,
• Infomaniak, Switzerland's largest web-hosting company, also offering live-streaming and video on demand services,
• Collabora, which offers a comprehensive range of services to help its clients to navigate the ever-evolving world of Open Source, and
• Microsoft, the American multinational technology company developing, licensing and selling computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers and related services.

As Silver sponsors we have credativ (a service-oriented company focusing on open-source software and also a Debian development partner), Gandi (a French company providing domain name registration, web hosting, and related services), Skymizer (a Taiwanese company focused on compiler and virtual machine technology), Civil Infrastructure Platform, (a collaborative project hosted by the Linux Foundation, establishing an open source “base layer” of industrial grade software), Brandorr Group, (a company that develops, deploys and manages new or existing infrastructure in the cloud for customers of all sizes), 3CX, (a software-based, open standards IP PBX that offers complete unified communications), Free Software Initiative Japan, (a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting Free Software growth and development), Texas Instruments (the global semiconductor company), the Bern University of Applied Sciences (with over 6,800 students enrolled, located in the Swiss capital), ARM, (a multinational semiconductor and software design company, designers of the ARM processors), Ubuntu, (the Operating System delivered by Canonical), Cumulus Networks, (a company building web-scale networks using innovative, open networking technology), Roche, (a major international pharmaceutical provider and research company dedicated to personalized healthcare) and Hudson-Trading, (a company researching and developing automated trading algorithms using advanced mathematical techniques).

ISG.EE, Univention Private Internet Access, Logilab, Dropbox and IBM are our Bronze sponsors.

And finally, SLAT (Software Liberty Association of Taiwan), The Linux foundation, deepin, Altus Metrum, Evolix, BerryNet and Purism are our supporter sponsors.

Thanks to all our sponsors for their support! Their contributions made possible that a large number of Debian contributors from all over the globe work together, help and learn from each other in DebConf18.

DebConf18, the 19th annual Debian Conference, is taking place in Hsinchu, Taiwan from July 29th to August 5th, 2018.

Debian contributors from all over the world have come together at National Chiao Tung University, Microelectronics and Information Research Center (NCTU MIRC) during the preceding week for DebCamp (focused on individual work and team sprints for in-person collaboration developing Debian), and the Open Day on July 28th (with presentations and workshops of interest to a wide audience).

Today the main conference starts with over 300 attendants and 118 activities scheduled, including 45- and 20-minute talks and team meetings, workshops, a job fair, talks from invited speakers, as well as a variety of other events.

The full schedule at https://debconf18.debconf.org/schedule/ is updated every day, including activities planned ad-hoc by attendees during the whole conference.

If you want to engage remotely, you can follow the video streaming available from the DebConf18 website of the events happening in the three talk rooms: Yushan (玉山) (the main auditorium), Xueshan (雪山), and Zhongyangjianshan (中央尖山), or join the conversation about what is happening in the talk rooms: #debconf18-y, #debconf18-x and #debconf18-z (all those channels in the OFTC IRC network).

DebConf is committed to a safe and welcome environment for all participants. See the DebConf Code of Conduct and the Debian Code of Conduct for more details on this.

Debian thanks the commitment of numerous sponsors to support DebConf18, particularly our Platinum Sponsor Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

We are very pleased to announce that Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has committed to support DebConf18 as a Platinum sponsor.

"Hewlett Packard Enterprise is excited to support Debian's annual developer conference for the third consecutive year," said Steve Geary, Senior Director R&D, Advanced Software Development, Hewlett Packard Labs. "The Debian community and open distribution are true innovation enablers for our Memory-Driven Computing work and products all across HPE."

HPE is an industry-leading technology company providing a comprehensive portfolio of products such as integrated systems, servers, storage, networking and software. The company offers consulting, operational support, financial services, and complete solutions for many different industries: mobile and IoT, data & analytics and the manufacturing or public sectors among others.

HPE is also a development partner of Debian, and providing hardware for port development, Debian mirrors, and other Debian services (hardware donations are listed in the Debian machines page).

With this additional commitment as Platinum Sponsor, HPE contributes to make possible our annual conference and directly supports the progress of Debian and Free Software, helping to strengthen the community that continues to collaborate on Debian projects throughout the rest of the year.

Thank you very much Hewlett Packard Enterprise, for your support of DebConf18!

DebConf, the annual conference for Debian contributors and users interested in improving the Debian operating system, will be held in National Chiao Tung University, Microelectronics and Information Research Center (NCTU MIRC) in Hsinchu, Taiwan, from July 29th to August 5th, 2018. The conference is preceded by DebCamp, July 21th to July 27th, and the DebConf18 Open Day on July 28th.

Debian is an operating system consisting entirely of free and open source software, and is known for its adherence to the Unix and Free Software philosophies and for its extensiveness. Thousands of volunteers from all over the world work together to create and maintain Debian software, and more than 400 are expected to attend DebConf18 to meet in person and work together more closely.

The conference features presentations and workshops, and video streams are made available in real-time and archived.

The DebConf18 Open Day, Saturday, July 28, is open to the public with events of interest to a wide audience.

The detailed schedule of the Open Day's events include, among others:

• Questions and Answers Session with Minister Audrey Tang,
• Debian Meets Smart City Applications with SZ Lin
• a Debian Packaging Workshop,
• panel discussion: Story of Debian contributors around the world,
• sessions in English or Chinese about different aspects of the Debian project and community, and other free software projects like LibreOffice, Clonezilla and DRBL, LXDE/LXQt desktops, EzGo...

Everyone is welcome to attend, attendance is free, and it is a great possibility for interested users to meet the Debian community.

The full schedule for Open Day's events and the rest of the conference is at https://debconf18.debconf.org/schedule and the video streaming will be available at the DebConf18 website

DebConf is committed to a safe and welcome environment for all participants. See the DebConf Code of Conduct and the Debian Code of Conduct for more details on this.

Debian thanks the numerous sponsors for their commitment to DebConf18, particularly its Platinum Sponsor Hewlett Packard Enterprise, the Bureau of Foreign Trade, Ministry of Economic Affairs via the MEET TAIWAN program, and its venue sponsors, the National Chiao Tung University 國立交通大學 and the National Center for High-performance Computing 國家高速網路與計算中心.

For media contacts, please contact DebConf organization: 林上智 (SZ Lin), Cell: 0911-162297