FUDCon stuff.

Although we did our best to get enough power drops for the FUDCon conference space, it would be great if people would bring some power strips. We don’t want to create a daisy chain o’ doom, but with the power drops being those big industrial quad boxes, we’ll need to split them out somehow so people can plug in as needed. So again, bring power strips if you’ve got ‘em!

FUDCon incoming.

I’m currently trying to get my flight rearranged so that I can arrive at Boston on Tuesday instead of Wednesday, which should make it easier to get the last-minute FUDCon logistics handled. Since the next couple of days will be hectic, I wanted to give a brief overview of the next couple of days here.

Fedora will have a display table at the Summit, located near the Red Hat Cool Stuff Store. (And what could be cooler than Fedora, I ask you?) We’ll have it staffed during the event by Fedora volunteers — and even though we have people signed up already, it’s not exclusive. Feel free to sign up for a slot alongside any of the names there. Meet someone you only recognize by name, and get to know them!

At the table, we’ll be making Live USB keys for people who bring us a stick. Depending on whether anything else is open, the table may be active on Tuesday night, but it will definitely be open starting Wednesday morning.

If I can arrive on Tuesday, my plan is to attend the opening Summit keynotes on Wednesday morning, then meet up at the booth with anyone who’s around. This will probably be around 10:00 a.m. or so. From there we can make plans for the rest of the day.

On Thursday at 9:00 a.m., FUDCon begins. We’ll all convene on the 3rd floor of the Hynes Center, where the signs should point the way to FUDCon. We have a large hall flanked by two smaller conference rooms. The opening of FUDCon will take place in the big hall. We’ll have people in place starting between 8:00-8:30 a.m. to give out badges. (If you’re around on Wednesday, feel free to come by the aforementioned Fedora table, since we might already have the badges at that point.)

At Thursday morning’s opening I’ll make a couple brief comments. This will likely be just a welcome message, and some organizational points of order. Then the mike will be turned over to each of the hackfest leaders — including anyone who decides to become one on the spur of the moment! — in turn, for them to brief the attendees on what they’re trying to accomplish over the next couple of days.

We have light snacks, sodas, and water available in the FUDCon space in the morning, on Thursday and Friday. We purchased roughly enough for 150 attendees, but they’re unlikely to last into the afternoon if everyone tries to subsist on just snacks. (Food service is really expensive at the Hynes Center, in case you hadn’t guessed.) The good news is that the Hynes center is within walking distance of a lot of places to eat. I’m told that there’s some sort of food court nearby, so I’ll be scoping that on Wednesday to get details. Keep in mind that the folks who have pre-registered have dibs on snacks; we don’t need snack police but, as always, let’s play nice with each other.

And remember, on Thursday afternoon at 4:00 p.m., Jim Whitehurst will be speaking at FUDCon in our large hall. To make things easier on Jim, we’ll move any ongoing hacking to the two additional rooms, so he can speak in the big hall without too much commotion there. I suspect his voice will be straining a bit after a couple days of continuous conversation with Red Hat customers, partners, and associates.

We’ll have plenty of announcements about Saturday’s BarCamp by Friday, and they’ll be carried here on my blog (and probably others) as well.

I look forward to seeing so many of our community members, old and new, and hope you’re as excited as I am by this FUDCon! We’ve pretty much reached the end of pre-registration at this point, with almost 150 signups as of this morning. But remember that the event is free and open to everyone, so continue to spread the word!

Git ‘er done, sort of.

I had an hour or two free this afternoon while we wait for a babysitter to arrive — I’m taking my wife to see the new Indiana Jones film. Grownup night out, woohoo! So I decided to play around a little with git-cvsimport. Naturally, right?

The Docs team is looking at moving our documentation into indvidual hosted projects, and of course I’m advocating git for the repos. When I tried the command, it worked pretty nicely, but I discovered there’s a -A switch that allows you to declare an authors file for converting the CVS-stored UNIX user names into the more complete information git usually stores, including a human name and email.

So I was able to use Toshio’s awesome Fedora Python modules to whip up a script to do exactly that. It took — in my typical fashion — about 5 minutes to actually write, and 30 minutes to clean up into something I wasn’t completely embarrassed by. The results are here.

Fedora contributor recognized!

Congratulations to our own Jeroen van Meeuwen! It was announced today that Jeroen is one of the recipients of Red Hat’s 2008 RHCE of the Year award. It’s really a treat to see someone from our community recognized, and his Fedora contributions highlighted in the award as well.

Next up, Jurisprudence for Dummies.

News flash: CSI to be entirely cast with morons. Because what could be better than trusting bedrock criminal investigative principles like the chain of evidence and scientific objectivity to COMPLETE IDIOTS?

Elections loom.

Elections for the Fedora Board are set to commence on Friday, June 13th. The nominees have been recorded on the wiki page for nominations and all that remains is for the community to vote. The voting period will extend from 0001 UTC on 13 June until 2359 UTC on 22 June.

Note that you do not have to cast a vote blindly — you can feel free to ask questions of the candidates. Email them, or feel free to ask your questions on a list they frequent, such as the fedora-advisory-board list.

I’d like everyone voting to remember that this isn’t a popularity contest, or a reward system. Think about how you’d like to Board to look when you vote, the same way you think about how you’d like any government body to look when you cast votes for their elections. We have a lot of worthy candidates on this list, and you should pick the ones that you feel will best represent you in advancing the Fedora Project.

I’d like to thank everyone who threw their name into the ring, as well as Nigel Jones, who’s revamped and tested our new election software. Bravo!

FUDCon preregistration close

The folks who are setting up the Red Hat Summit are providing badges for the people who preregister for FUDCon. They need to have a final list by Monday morning so they can get the printing in motion.

Therefore we will close preregistration on Sunday night, 2359 UTC, 15 June 2008. If you have been waiting for any sort of deadline to sign up for attending, this is it! You can sign up at the wiki page. See you in Boston next week.

Talk, talk, it’s only talk.

Looking at the FUDCon page on the wiki, I think we could use a few more talk proposals for the Saturday BarCamp. I’m sure there are people out there who are simply going to make their proposals on Saturday morning, but it helps us generate excitement if you put your subject matter up in advance. Your talk might also end up being the tipping point for someone sitting on the fence about attending.

If you’re on the fence about giving a talk, please don’t be shy. Whatever you’d like to discuss is likely to be of interest to some of the attendees — we’ve had everything from in-depth kernel talks, to how to evangelize Fedora, to making and broadcasting freely licensed music. We already have a number of very interesting talks announced in advance, including the new Fedora Nightlife community grid, Func, and the future of the Fedora Account System 2.

We’d love to see your talk on this list too. So sign up today!

Road dog tired.

The last few days have been exhausting for a number of reasons, including weather, travel, and house troubles.

Travel good.

Yaakov talked about the pleasure of traveling out of the Pittsburgh International Airport a while back, so I wanted to again plug for the Richmond International Airport, which is equally awesome. Easy parking, efficient and pleasant TSA people, and free wifi at all the gates and terminals. What could be better (other than having to get up at 3:30am to make the flight)?

And I need to also say that JetBlue is rapidly becoming my favorite airline. The Richmond to Boston shuttle, which travels northbound from 7:00-8:30am (with a return flight from about 8:50-10:30pm) is rarely packed but well populated enough that hopefully it will stay in service for some time. The seating is comfortable, the staff is friendly, and the legroom in their Embraer jets means I have space to get some work done (especially compared to the Boeing sardine cans one endures with United).

Meeting day.

Yesterday I was up in Red Hat’s new Westford office. Unfortunately, I forgot my entry badge, because I have recently switched backpacks, but I had a couple people to vouch for me. I had a bunch of meetings and a videotaping with Jeremy Katz and some of the media gurus from the Raleigh office, who arrived at lunchtime.

One of the meetings was a big mindmeld between the Fedora Project Board and the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee (FESCo), trying to sort out roles. FESCo’s role has subtly changed over a few years, and before we elect new committee members, the nominees should have a clear idea of their responsibilities. The meeting went long (of course!) but we got a lot of issues out in the open which have been frustrating to both FESCo and Board members. There will be more word about this soon as we try to make sure the community is retaining a strong, meritocratic voice in the development of our platform.

Travel bad.

Because the string of meetings lasted from the time I arrived to the time I had to leave, thankfully with a lunch break in the middle, I had zero time to even get online, and the accursed Boston airport and its lack of free wifi weren’t helpful either. My plane was late arriving in Boston, so I didn’t get back to Fredericksburg until close to 1:00 a.m.

On a personal note.

The weekend was nice — I took a bit of a break from the keyboard after a few hours of catch-up on Saturday. Unfortunately, though, the soaring temperatures this weekend appear to have taken their toll on our air conditioner. Mind you, we just bought a brand new Trane unit last summer — to replace the house’s original contractor-grade POS, which gave out on the hottest week of the year in early September. Now our new system’s thermal expansion valve (TXV) appears to have died, so the system literally cannot push refrigerant back inside the house from the outside unit.

The result is that, thanks to the temperatures of about 100F yesterday (and a heat index of close to 110F) it was about 90 F in the house by the time the sun went down on Sunday. Opening the windows after dark did very little good, because a haze had settled over the area as a result of the stationary high pressure air mass. Yesterday my wife gave in and took the kids to the home of some nearby friends, since our A/C service shop couldn’t get the TXV valve for a replacement until today. I had to be back at our house by about 7:30 a.m. to meet the repairman.

That wasn’t the end of the trouble though. When I arrived home, I found that there was water dripping from the ceiling of the kitchen, and the drywall seams were etched and stained with moisture. I think we’ve had a leak in the wax seal or the flange under the master bathroom toilet above the kitchen.

Fortunately the leak wasn’t more than 8 hours old given the timing of when my wife was last in the house the night before. I got the water mains turned off and the mess cleaned up — not more than a gallon or two of water all told, and the mess on the floor in the kitchen was on sink and tile only and doesn’t appear to have done any observable damage. It’s a little hard to tell because I can’t turn on the lights — the fixtures are alongside part of the leak.

So the A/C repairman is here fixing that problem, a plumber is due in the early afternoon, and I’m sitting in a house that is slowly creeping up from stuffy to unbearably hot while I wait for some cooling relief.

In summary.

My scarcity online yesterday was due to the meetings packed into my Westford visit, but if you can’t raise me easily online today, I’ve probably collapsed from a combination of heat exhaustion and depression.

Come and knock on our door.

So I find myself still seeking lodging for the FUDCon at the Summit. All the folks we’re bringing to the Summit under the Fedora budget have already been assigned roommates. If I can’t double up with someone at the Summit hotels then I will probably be staying offsite somewhere. If you’re still looking for someone to share the cost of a room, please let me know soon.