SELF 2011 day 1.Max posted a good summary of SELF day 0 that included our dinner and confab last night, and since we’re in agreement there’s no need for me to belabor his points. The upcoming release cycle will be an opportunity for community leaders throughout Fedora to renew their commitment to regular communication, transparency, and visibility at all levels. So on to SELF day 1: Today was Cloud day here at the Southeast Linux Fest, and I know a couple of Fedorans here made it to some of those sessions. However, I ended up getting together with Max, Robyn, Jared, Eric ‘sparks’ Christensen, and a couple other people to talk about finance and events. One of the important topics was how we can make sure sponsorship requests and other financial matters for FUDCon events are handled quickly, efficiently, and fairly, while still maintaining a strict bottom line. You’ll see some of the work captured on the EtherPad for the meeting, and links to some wiki tweaks made, here. I know Jared and Max will be posting more information about that session, and since I had to leave in the middle of the session for a conference call, I don’t want to jumble up or misstate the proceedings. Nevertheless, I was happy to see this dialogue happening in a candid and open way (besides the EtherPad and wiki work, our room was open to anyone who wanted to stop by and listen or participate). I also had a chance to listen in on a little documentation brainstorming that Jared and Eric were doing after lunch. I spent my remaining time going over my slide deck and making some last minute tweaks for maximum goodness. As it happened, I had a very healthy turnout for my session on PyGObject (that slide deck is CC BY 3.0, by the way), good questions and feedback from the audience members, and even a number of very gracious compliments from attendees. I love doing these educational “fill in the gap” sessions designed for the beginner-to-almost-intermediate audience. I believe lots of people out there are like me — somewhat skilled in simple sysadmin tasks but haven’t been able to make the leap to writing their own applications because of the learning curve. They just need a helping hand to explain the necessary missing pieces in a friendly and non-threatening way. A gentleman talked to me after my session about “backing up into the right answers” as a learning experience, when you have no other alternative. That’s certainly a good way to explain how I learned GUI programming with PyGTK and PyGObject! But I’d rather help other people avoid awkwardly driving around backward and save them the time it took me to wrap my head around the basic concepts, and get them into 2nd, 3rd, or 4th gear (moving forward, not backward!) faster than me. We agreed that we both had plenty of occasions when we could have used that sort of tutelage, and I hope my session bridged the gap for some of the attendees. After my session, I had a couple brief chats with attendees and other folks, and then suddenly it was time for the speaker dinner, which was delicious. I briefly wished I had a nice cigar to follow that excellent steak they served us, but decided to head upstairs to write a blog post instead so I could meet my self-imposed regiment of one per day. Now I’m going to go join the rest of our SELF folks at the pre-party and unwind. And hey, if I’m lucky I might be able to watch Robyn spank the tar out of Greg and Max at poker again. |
Ten days to SELF 2011.This weekend included a Monday holiday for people in the USA. Unfortunately, my enjoyment of said holiday was interrupted by coming down with some sort of sinus bug on Friday, which wiped about half of my weekend. On Monday, though, I finished some retouches on my presentation for the upcoming Southeast Linux Fest 2011, where I’ll be talking with people about “Graduating to GUI: PyGObject for Beginners.” This is an update to a talk I gave last year on PyGTK, incorporating information about what’s changed from a beginner’s perspective. SELF ’11 registration is still open, and although you can register for free, there’s a very inexpensive $65 supporter package which I highly recommend if you’ve got the cash. You’ll easily get your money’s worth and more out of all the great talks and networking opportunities there, and help make it possible for the incredible volunteer staff to continue to make SELF run smoothly. (You also get some neat freebies.) After the hotel ran out of rooms very quickly in the reserved SELF block, I hear the staff got an additional block of rooms set up. I’m not sure if those are all gone yet, but if you haven’t registered already, you should do it now. SELF is a great event, and I am really looking forward to this year’s edition. An addition I love is an OpenSchedule app available for Android phones that lets me work out the talks I want to see, and add them to my personal calendar. Really nice work, SELF staff. (Note to self/SELF: I wonder if this is FOSS that we could use at a future FUDCon?) There are also a bunch of special events happening alongside SELF that you can also register for, like a DrupalCamp and a day on how to build stuff in the cloud — phenomenal. Check out the SELF registration page for more information. A bunch of Fedora folk will be attending SELF, including FPL Jared Smith, former FPLs Max Spevack, Greg DeKoenigsberg and myself, Robyn Bergeron, Tom ‘spot’ Callaway, Ryan Rix, and more. So do come by and say hello during the event. Hope to see you there! |
SELF pimping.Once again this year I’ll be traveling down to the Southeast Linux Fest for a weekend full of informative talks, social fun, and exceptional collaboration opportunities with fellow Linux geeks from around the region and the nation. SELF has been an enormous hit since its inaugural outing in 2009. I’ll be joined by fabulous people from across the Fedora friendsphere, and of course there will be lots of free goodies at the Fedora booth for everyone. My presentation on Friday is going to be on PyGObject, making the transition from PyGTK to the new world of introspection awesomeness, and what that means to people who do programming as a hobby and not for their bread and butter. I promise to keep things down to earth and accessible by newbies and hopefully not make those of higher skill levels cringe often. Except for bad jokes, those are pretty much a given, as those of you who’ve been to some of my other talks can attest. By the time you read this, or shortly thereafter, the SELF schedule should be appearing on the web site, and you can see for yourself how valuable a trip to the conference can be. Linux community events like SELF are booming in popularity because they feature great speakers, invaluable learning opportunities, and fantastic social networking outlets for a pittance. A big thank you to my employer, Red Hat, for giving me the time and funding to make it to the event, as well as being a Platinum sponsor of SELF 2011. (By the way, Linode, a Diamond sponsor this year, is where I run this blog… Did I mention how happy I am with their service?) But no matter how many sponsors there are, it takes a lot of fine people dedicating a huge amount of time, expertise, and effort to put on any community event like SELF. That this event has become so popular so quickly shows not only that SELF is filling a necessary gap in the Southeast region of the US, but that it’s done so with style, ambition, and the sure, guiding hand of great volunteers. Hats off to you guys and best of luck for another incredible event at SELF 2011! UPDATE: Unfortunately, previously mentioned grilling event was contingent upon Our Meaty Champion becoming the Fedora 16 namesake. So, no dice. But there may yet be hope for a related outing, stay tuned while at SELF. |
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December 24 2010
12:17 pm  Fedora, Food + Drink, Friends + Family, Linux, Red Hat  Permalink  No comments   |
Presents for everyone!Even though I’m on vacation, I had some fun catching up with some geeky Fedora work, like handling bugs and package maintenance over the last few days. It only took me a few minutes at a time to do something useful for (hopefully) many other users. Along the way I was helped by other contributors, like Kevin Fenzi, who did a package review for me, or bug reporters who tested a package update. Among the things I got done:
Some of these things had been on my “to-do” list for a few weeks, but I didn’t have time for them during busy workdays. Since my evenings and weekends have been pretty full this was a great opportunity to scratch some of these things off my list. I also got to work more on my PulseCaster project, although I haven’t yet made the sweeping interface changes that I’d like for the next version. I also bought the pulsecaster.org domain for it, in the hopes that will spur me to work even more on it over the next few months. I fixed a couple workflow issues in the interface and was able to remove a little code with some “create on demand” dialogs rather than putting them in the Glade file. I’m still hung up on needing some additional and more complicated Python pieces, like querying the volume level of a source or sink so I can introduce a VU-meter like control as part of the interface changes. But in the meantime, I’ve started to get much better and faster at implementing ideas in PyGTK. I’m not sure my coding style is as good as it should be, but my understanding of concepts has gotten fairly good, so I can translate PyGTK API docs into the ability to do something. I gave a couple conference speeches over the past year on PyGTK that I hoped would give other people in similar shoes — people who can write scripts but aren’t familiar with GUI programming — a primer that allows them to “cross the bridge” into exciting new territory. Lest my family oriented friends think I’ve been shirking my domestic obligations, or failing to use my PTO to rest and rejuvenate, I also did a lot of relaxing personal and family things over the last few days. Some of these things were responsibilities even if they were fun, or a nice change from work or geeky stuff. The funny thing is, most days since I went on PTO I’ve been getting up at about 7:00 or 7:30am so as not to waste the whole morning. For me that’s at least somewhat a luxury, since I normally get up at 6:00am for work. Here’s some of the things that extra time allowed me to get done, even if I threw in an hour or two of work on geek stuff each day:
I also got to do some completely selfish leisure stuff, like trying the new Sam Adams Infinium (I give it a 90 on the beverage scale), playing our new piano and some guitar, and hanging out with our dog Dixie — the world’s greatest pound puppy! Speaking of pound puppies, a quick step up onto the soapbox here: If you are looking for a pet this holiday season, or whenever, please adopt one from a local shelter. I’ll write more about this in another post later, but I wanted to throw that plug in here in case you’re one of the numerous people who might get a pet during or after the holidays. We did a little share of unhappiness thrown into vacation, though. First, my ’00 Accord ended up needing a new transmission, which is going to be rather expensive. However, we’re very fortunate to be able to handle it without any real financial discomfort. Not everyone these days is as lucky, so I try not to take that for granted. My brilliant and dedicated colleagues and coworkers at Red Hat have made that sort of security possible, and I’m very thankful for all their hard work! This vacation time in part allows me to hit the ground running in 2011, so I can continue to do likewise by them. The other disappointment is that my mom took ill yesterday, and is feeling really crummy today. That means she and her hubby won’t be coming to Christmas Eve dinner this year as they usually do. Eleya has put together a really scrumptious menu for us, and certainly we’ll still enjoy it, but it’s too bad it’ll just be us, with no company to share it with. But then again, we’re really fortunate to have each other and a bountiful meal to celebrate the holiday — and tomorrow we get to visit my sister where we’ll see the rest of the family. Anyway, that’s a big update on all my doings of late. Wherever you are, and however you choose to celebrate the season, I hope you have a fantastic time and that you get to spend it with friends and loved ones. |
Your money’s worth in “aha!” moments.
Not only that, but I’m joining amazing dignitaries in the Linux universe like Stormy Peters, Jon “maddog” Hall, and Red Hat’s own Christopher “Monty” Montgomery. (I can’t wait for Monty’s talk on codecs, but I’m hoping it’s not filled with math. Math is hard, I’m going shopping!*) I get to present a revision of my PyGTK for Beginners talk that I did at the Southeast Linux Fest in June. I’m planning to eliminate some of the introductory material, because if the SELF audience was any indication, the audience in Columbus will probably know some of the very basic concepts already. I’ll be spending less time on setting up tools, and more time on delving into the way that GTK works, and showing a specific, simple example of how it’s put to work using easy Python code. By the way, if you’re going to this event, and you plan to attend my talk, let me know what you would like to see there. I’ll be limited to about 40 or so minutes of speaking material so there’s time for questions and answers. But if there’s something specific on which you’re stuck as a novice (or wanna-be novice) PyGTK programmer, I want to help! If you’re an expert, you’re welcome too. I might have you answer a question or two though, maybe even mine. I like to think of community learning sessions as just that — of, by, and for the community. I may not have all the answers, but chances are someone does. And it’s far less important for me to look smart than for the audience to learn. I try to give good answers, but I don’t mind saying “I don’t know” or asking an experienced audience member if it helps. In one of my previous lives I was an instructor and I still enjoy teaching when I can. I often enjoy diving into deep water where I’m not an expert and just trying to get people over the same humps that baffled me when I started. I’ve learned enough to write some simple interfaces and code, and reaching that plateau has been a real eye-opener. A few short years ago, I would have told you it would never happen. But it can, and what I want to do in this talk is give people a couple “aha!” moments that will dispel all those fears and make it happen for you, too. Basically, if I get you even one step closer to the powerful belief below, I consider my trip a success: You can write free software too! If you care to see my earlier slides, they’re in my Fedora People space, available under a CC BY-SA 3.0 license here (OpenOffice.org Impress format). Be aware that these will change for Ohio Linux Fest, though, and “aha” moments aren’t always predictable from a raw slide deck. Hey, I’ve gotta have some hook, right? Whether I see you at my talk or not, though, don’t fail to register for the Ohio Linux Fest 2010! Let people know you’re coming, too — use the #ohiolinux hashtag on Identi.ca and Twitter, and tell a friend! * Lest anyone think that joke was at anyone’s expense other than mine… rest assured it wasn’t. |
SELF 2010 trip report.One of the hardest parts of being FPL and attending a conference is getting a trip report done while you try to catch up to everything you missed while you were gone! But better late than never, here’s my report from this past weekend’s Southeast LinuxFest (SELF). Thursday I packed up and headed to SELF v2.0. A short flight from Reagan National landed me in Greenville, which incidentally has one of the most pleasant access roads I’ve seen. The organizers had arranged the conference at the Marriott in Spartanburg which was relatively new and very nice accommodations. Of course most of the staff was busy rushing around making sure everything was ready for the conference on Thursday, but I ran into David Nalley, Dave Yates, Amber Graner, and others who were responsible for making SELF happen. That evening not all the Fedora folks had arrived, but I did get to have dinner with Robyn Bergeron of Fedora Marketing {fame,infamy} and Steven Dake, who works on corosync and high-availability stuff for Red Hat. Turns out Steve is a cigar guy and was kind enough to offer me one, which I gladly accepted. It was a relaxing, cool evening, and the SELF organizers came out and joined us eventually as conversation went into the wee hours.
The next day most of the Fedora folks gathered in a conference room to plan and then work on cleaning up various areas on the wiki, particularly the Docs Project contributor and process pages. They’ve gone wild and unweeded for a while and this was a good chance for us to make a fresh start. Ohio LinuxFest core team member Beth Lynn Eicher was on hand as well, and her fresh eyes really helped us find places where we needed to do some serious revamping. Ian Weller and Eric Christensen drove us to write several texts, and we even came up with an idea for a team contact template that will be available soon. We’ll be swapping in the new content and sweeping out the old shortly as well. It was nice to be able to have this “bonus meeting” in addition to the planned activities for Saturday and Sunday. Friday evening there was a nice speakers’ dinner planned by the SELF staff, after which I skipped the party so I could have a nice long jaw with Max Spevack, and so I could be sure to rise early. On Saturday I spent the morning getting ready for my talk at 10:00 on the Fedora Project and what our four foundations mean in theory and practice. My talk’s available for download under a CC BY-SA 3.0 license, and when the video is available from SELF I’ll post a notice here. My room was pretty full, so I was pleased, especially since it didn’t seem that most people had made it out of bed for an 8:00 start time. I think I gave a solid talk, although I think it wasn’t as humorous as some of the talks I saw or heard about during the day. Reminder to myself: it’s OK not to be so serious when presenting! Meanwhile, our erstwhile Fedora Ambassadors held down an awesome booth:
I saw some other interesting talks such as Ian Weller’s presentation on “datanommer,” Doug Vann’s on Drupal, and Daniel Chen’s on how to help unbreak Linux audio (the answer is not turning off PulseAudio, by the way).
But one of the highlights for me was getting to see a talk by Wietse Venema from IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center. Dr. Venema is famous in one of my previous fields of endeavor for a seminal textbook, which I brought and had him sign. He was a nice guy, and he even joined us at the lunch table later.
And I was gifted with a remarkably great-smelling bag of chocolate cappuccino from Klaatu of Hacker Public Radio (among other outlets), to which I hope everyone is listening. In the afternoon along with all the other Fedora folks I attended Max’s excellent keynote. I had the privilege of doing the keynote last year and it was nice to see another well-known Fedora personality tapped for this year’s closing remarks. I think Max really took advantage of the keynote to talk about open source issues in general, and how it could be leveraged by people in their business, making the talk about more than simply Fedora. It was incredibly enjoyable and Max spoke passionately, as he always does.
I have a great photo that happened to catch Max at a moment when his face has a look that’s completely out of context to the presentation, which I’m saving for a caption contest later on. A couple amazing things happened after the keynote. First, Ben Williams, one of our Fedora Ambassadors, won not only a brand-new Nexus One phone by random drawing, but also a raffle for a decked-out Pogo Linux workstation, the winning ticket for which he purchased at the last minute after already having bought five others. What a stroke of luck! Just as amusing was this prize, won by Jon “maddog” Hall — good to see he might have the chance to be important in software one day:
We stayed around to attend maddog’s BoF session on Project Caua. Then while everyone else was prepared to start partying, a few of us including Max and Michael DeHaan slipped off to a marvelous Thai restaurant, where I had a duck panang that was just about perfect and we all had a good time trolling, and being trolled by, our boisterous waiter. We returned to the hall to catch the end of nerdcore rap group Dual Core’s set, and have a brew or two. Once again, it was important not to stay up too late because Sunday was starting at 8:00 again.
Or maybe that was 9:00? Well, that’s when the first real session of DrupalCamp began anyway. I was only able to attend a couple talks which were very much introductory. Since I’d already read about, installed and played around with Drupal they weren’t too helpful for me personally, and the advanced talks were beyond my experience. But I got to meet a few people who were doing Drupal and make some contacts that might come in handy in the future for Fedora teamwork. The Fedora crew gathered (at the Krispy Kreme where yr. humble narrator stoically refused all manner of tasty fat pills) to sketch out the battle plan for the Fedora Activity Day coming up that afternoon. This FAD, because it was attended by people with a wide variety of skill levels, started with an incredibly fun session where we debunked Fedora myths and exposed Fedora truths (think “dependency hell/yum is slow” or “just disable SELinux”). One of my favorite parts of that hour was when Dan Walsh piped up to say that, from his developer POV, anyone filing a bug against his work was making a substantial contribution that he very much appreciated. I had to slip off after the first hour because I was giving a two-hour PyGTK talk for beginners. Although it was difficult to cater to the expectations of a variety of skill levels in the audience, the talk seemed to go over well. A few of the more advanced folks were likely a bit bored in the beginning of the talk, and a few of the people with no experience were probably lost near the end, but I think most everyone got something useful out of the talk as a number of people told me afterward. It was a lot of fun presenting on something semi-technical and I expect that the eventual video will be more useful, since people can fast forward through the boring parts, or review the easy stuff while trying things on their own systems. One of the parts I most enjoyed about giving the talk was pointing out that FOSS is global, and that even new developers should keep internationalization and localization in mind when programming so they maximize their audience and their impact. When I returned to the FAD, the numbers had shrunk somewhat as attendees departed the SELF conference via car or plane for home. But there were still about a dozen people around, and we continued to talk about current projects and ways to get involved in them. One young man named Adam seemed particularly interested in our Infrastructure team and Python web programming (which he does for a living) and I encouraged him to come by a meeting on IRC when he gets a chance. Finally it was time to bid everyone goodbye. Max, Ian, and Eric and his friend Tim had departed already. I had a few conversations with FAD attendees on the way out, including a very constructive one about Fedora’s freedom principles and the way they apply to things like Adobe’s Flash software. I ran into some of the SELF organizers and again thanked them for their superhuman efforts at making the conference a great success. Then I met up with a couple associates attending SELF at the hotel pub and had a nice quiet dinner to unwind, after which we joined Robyn and Steve on the patio for some great conversation about programming, geek history, chess, music, and life in general. It was a superb way to end the weekend and a fabulous conference.
Monday morning I woke up at about five in the morning to catch my flight home, and took the rest of the day as my substitute weekend. This coming weekend I’ll work on getting the rest of my photos uploaded from the conference, or at least those that were worth a hoot. I want to thank all the Fedora friends who helped make SELF such a great conference, including our Ambassadors who manned the booth, those who signed up to help improve free software, people who shared their thoughts about where we’re doing great and where we could do better, and of course the SELF staff for their many tireless efforts. I’m looking forward to SELF 3.0 already! |
FUDCon Toronto report.There have already been plenty of posts about all the good stuff that happened at FUDCon Toronto 2009, so just repeating the same details would seem like gilding the lily. Easily over 200 attendees as of Day 1, and we had other people showing up over the weekend, and students stopping in on Day 3, asking questions and sharing stories. A great facility at Seneca, thanks to Chris Tyler and crew. Lackluster broadband at the hotel, but a great hack suite experience nonetheless. Questionable pub surroundings, very little sleep, loads of fun, and a marvelous event overall. OK, that sums up everyone else’s posts, so how about what I accomplished, other than teaming up with Mel Chua and Chris Tyler behind the scenes as the Indefatigable FUDCon Ninja Trio? Day 0: Not much other than checking in with the hotel to make sure they were ready for the bus. Dinner with Greg DeKoenigsberg, Howard Johnson, David Huff, Yaakov Nemoy, and many other Fedorans at the infamous “Irish Pub.” Arrived a bit late for the actual FUDBus landing, but got to greet almost everyone arriving at the hotel. Then realized everyone was going to the pub again and cursed the fact that I hadn’t had a healthy snack to get me through for a late night dinner. Day 1: Realized we just broke BarCamp — at least as a “do everything the day of” event. In the future, we’ll need to have a night event for our scheduling. The consolation prize, of course, is our “embarrassment of riches” when it comes to talks: more than we can fit in the schedule, to be sure. Thanks to Yaakov and an intrepid crew of volunteers, we also had almost every talk logged on IRC so that remote contributors could “listen in,” ask questions, and participate from afar. In between event troubleshooting and hallway conversations, I caught part or all of:
There’s kind of a trend there, since I’m keenly interested in the experience of Fedora and how we might all bring our individual skills to making it better. I also gave my own wacky commentary on Fedora and some ideas on thinking beyond our subjectivity to broaden Fedora’s reach, widen its appeal, and attract more contributors to what I think is ultimately a more sustainable approach to working in the free software community. On a semi-related note, there’s a saying you’ll find on my blog site. You won’t see it in RSS readers of course. It reads, “Esse quam videri,” which means “To be and not to seem to be.”* The free software distribution that we enjoy comes to us thanks to the efforts of thousands of people upstream from Fedora that write some of the code we use, and one of the things we need to do over the next year is redouble our efforts to support them. In addition, we need to recognize all the Fedora contributors who are vital parts of upstream communities, and support them as well. And in doing that, we need to be true to our FOSS philosophy and practices — walking the walk, not just talking the talk. I drew a brief metaphor in my FUDCon closing comments on Day 1 to $FAST_FOOD.** Leaving aside all my veggiesaurus friends for the sake of argument, the success of $FAST_FOOD implies that a great number of people find $FAST_FOOD’s goods to be tasty and affordable. And the advertising and marketing of $FAST_FOOD sure tends to reinforce that — even going so far as to imply their food good is for you, and high-quality. But unfortunately, the widepsread, negative side effects worldwide, from obesity (yes, I’m looking at you, mirror) to agricultural nightmares to economic problems, tend to say otherwise. There are better ways to produce nourishing food, and promote healthier and more sustainable lives. And in the same way, there are better ways to produce free and open source software that don’t sacrifice freedom or choices for users, and promote “healthy” upstream collaboration and cultivation. And that’s what Fedora represents to me: being this sustainable force, not simply appearing to be so. So, back to my FUDCon tale: Following the technical sessions in BarCamp, of course there was the world-famous FUDPub event, dominated by snicky-snacks and pool sharks. I also got to meet, live and in person, previously virtual-only friends like Adam Miller and Karlie Robinson. I also tried to troll Max Spevack, but was too earnest to carry that off properly, and failed miserably (sorry Matt, I tried). Max is a master at this so maybe I need to take some lessons! Or alternately, in the future I’ll just stick to wearing my heart on my sleeve, which apparently suits me better. Day 2-3: We moved to a different building where the hackfests would be more effective, putting people together in small rooms or around workgroup-sized tables for better face-to-face exchanges. To start off the day, I gave an introductory talk on PyGTK development, aimed at people who were in the position I was last year — understanding the basics of Python, and knowing how to write basic programs, but not understanding how to build a GUI around it. I explained things in rudimentary terms, such as how events work with GTK, the inheritance model for objects, and how to look up properties and functions using system resources like DevHelp when writing code. These were the things that were so difficult for me to wrap my head around as a liberal artsy non-programmer, every time I sat down and tried to bridge this gap, and I think I hit the sweet spot for a bunch of the attendees. And fortunately, there were a couple experts in the room too, who I could rely on to tell me if I was Getting It Wrong, or offer additional advice to the attendees. A bunch of people took this information and started thinking about cool ways we could extend and, to some extent, universalize PulseCaster to meet more of our media origination needs. We did some brainstorming about use cases and also interface design to support them; that’s hard work but very worthwhile, and also incredibly important to me because I want a tool that meets the GNOME HIG and remains simple, slick, and usable by non-technical people. I’m really keen on working on this more over the next few weeks, especially during my vacation time when I can set my own agenda. During the rest of these days I had a number of meetings with different people to understand issues, listen to ideas, give feedback where it was wanted, and facilitate everyone else’s FUDCon experience:
Day 2 ended with a nice dinner with Max, Matt Domsch, Dennis Gilmore, and some other Fedora folks at the Ice Cream Patio. Christopher Aillon and I split a nice bottle of valpolicella, although I think that I probably got the better part of a 60/40 split, and the food was very good, especially the dessert (my amaretto trufata was excellent, and if Dennis wasn’t so imposing a figure, his raspberry crepe would have been in danger too if I could have distracted him somehow!). We talked a lot about disasters for some reason, and hearing what Matt and Christopher had both experienced in the way of real estate catastrophes, I felt completely humbled about my stupid and trivial basement leaks. Day 3 ended quite differently, with dozens of Fedorans crammed into our hospitality/hack suite at the hotel for hors d’oeuvres and fun conversation. For the most part, people set their laptops aside and wound down from an action-packed weekend. My manager, Tim Burke, VP of Linux Development at Red Hat, was there too. I do have to say that it is incredibly empowering and supportive for one’s manager to show up at the most important regional event as a participant — and at the risk of sounding like a suck-up I think that’s one of the things I really like about working with Tim. Maybe I’d better say something negative to balance it out — we wish he’d brought beer! In general, this FUDCon was one of the most exciting events I think we’ve ever had. It was certainly one of the, and maybe the single, largest ever. I’m really grateful to all our contributors who made it such a success, bringing their talent, their knowledge, their passion, and their willingness to help others contribute to free software through Fedora. Coming up to this event, I’d been struggling a bit with some mental and spiritual exhaustion. This event helped me get Fedora back into perspective and reminded me what a beautiful thing it is to be surrounded by wonderful, smart people — and how much we can accomplish when we bring our ideas together and compare them constructively to find the best way forward. Thank you to every single one of you who participated either on-site or remotely, for the gift of renewal. See you at the next FUDCon! * The original Cicero quote is also worth knowing: “Few are those who wish to be endowed with virtue rather than to seem to be so.” ** I’m not naming one here to avoid the obvious legal entanglements. UPDATE: Apologies to Colin for absent-mindedly fubar-ing his last name. |
