SELF day whatever.

Yesterday was a big road travel day. Contrary to my usual performance, I got a slightly later start than I intended in leaving home. But nevertheless Jared and I made it to Raleigh in plenty of time for Max and me to pick up the now-infamous SpeVan and return to Red Hat for our Fedora 15 release party. We had a great turnout there; unfortunately that meant all the cupcakes were gone before I could snag one! Probably better for me in the long run though, especially considering that we stopped at Bojangles on the way out of town.

Max was a real trooper taking the driving duty from Raleigh to Spartanburg. The trip took us through pretty bad gridlock at Charlotte, as well as a couple of thunderstorms. I’m sure it was especially distracting to hear the commotion from us boisterous passengers, especially given the increasing devilry toward the rear of the van. Nevertheless, Max made sure we all got to Spartanburg safely, and we touched down in time to say hi to Leslie Hawthorne and catch a wave of very well dressed partygoers at the hotel.

(I’ve noticed that every time a bunch of Fedora people gather at an event, we attract formal wear. Sometimes, as in Berlin a couple years ago, this gives some of our younger, single contributors a chance to chat up someone of the appropriate sex. At other events, we simply marvel at the fact that our scruffy group doesn’t get thrown out of whatever establishment is home to this chaotic mixing of the classes. Last night was apparently some sort of debutante ball, which I seem to recall happened at SELF 2010 also.)

Max and Jared and I were able to catch a quick (and, thank goodness, light) sushi dinner across the street. Then we returned and joined the crowd to unwind with a drink on the outside patio, after which Robyn proceeded to take all of Max and Greg’s money in an extended round of poker. Especially painful for the boys, I’m sure, were the two Hail Mary plays (can you use a football metaphor for poker?) that saw Robyn first snatch survival from the gaping maw of certain doom, and then a half hour later go all-in on a prayer for a straight that actually came true. I half expected to see the word “FATALITY!” hanging in the air like in that Scott Pilgrim movie. As the man sang, You got to know when to hold ‘em…

This morning we’ll be getting together to throw around some ideas for tuning FUDCon to ensure that the communitization of the event continues to trend in a positive way, and hopefully I’ll get a chance to go over my talk a bit more before this afternoon. Even though some of the material is similar to a talk I’ve given before, I like to feel prepared.

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. I hear tell of a tasty grilling event that will honor our favorite meaty champion of free software, and I expect to catch up with wonderful friends from all around the open source world.

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.

FAD @SELF 2010.

You probably already know that the Southeast Linux Fest 2010 is coming up in just a few weeks (June 11-13). The Fedora Project will, of course, be there as well. Last year I was honored to be one of the inaugural event's keynote speakers. Apparently those crazy guys at SELF never learn, because this year I'm doing a couple sessions, one on Fedora and one on PyGTK for beginners! Kidding of course. They are an amazing team of people who put on one of the best inaugural community conferences I have ever seen in 2009. This year promises to be a barn buster as well, from what I hear.

But did you know we're also holding a Fedora Activity Day on Sunday? Both Yr. Humble Narrator and Max Spevack will be there talking about Fedora myths and truths. Our wiki czar, Ian Weller, will be giving a talk on gardening the wiki as well. It's an easy way to help keep Fedora information fresh and plentiful for everyone. Many other fine Fedora friends will be there too, and we plan to cover some keen technical topics like remixing Fedora into Live USB form.

Remember that our activity is free and open to everyone — just like the Fedora community. Hope to see you at SELF 2010!

SELF, day 1 and 2.

Day 1: Slept really poorly, probably just a result of angst over my keynote, which, in the tradition of fine Fedora Project Leaders of yore, I completely rewrote the night before, finally turning in around 1:30am and waking up about every hour afterward (like clockwork!).

The first day of SELF was great, though — I made it up on time at 6:00am, did a couple of tasks, had breakfast (yay for Southern hotel offerings of protein and waffles), and rode over with Clint “herlo” Savage. The staff welcomed me like a VIP, which was odd but showed what incredible lengths to which they had gone to make the Southeast Linux Fest a first-rate conference. I came up to the exhibit hall and found not only a Fedora booth teeming with Ambassadors, but also a booth for Red Hat (which was a platinum sponsor of the conference as well, woo!).

I attended Zonker’s keynote in the morning, which was very good, but to be honest I didn’t get a chance to see any of the other sessions. But I did hear from attendees that they were, as a rule, very good! Poor Clint had to battle a dying projector for his talk on Fedora Remix but I hear his audience interaction was A-game as always, and many people walked away thinking it was one of the best sessions they attended.

In fact, everything at the conference was excellent, from the organization to the can-do attitude of the staff, to the provision of a real speakers’ lounge, to the gear and schwag. Moreover, we found out the conference had more than broken 500 registrants before the day was out — which is simply fantastic for any community conference, much less one in its first year. I think you can count on many SELFs to come!

My keynote, over which I had wrung my hands quite a bit, turned out fine, I think — capable of improvement, certainly, but quite solid. You’ll get your chance to judge for yourself, because SELF is going to publish all the sessions as CC BY-SA videos online in a few weeks. Freedom and sharing — what an excellent choice for a conference all about Linux and free software!

I want to join the other organizers, all of whom did a great job, in saying a special thank you to David Yates (of Lotta Linux Links podcast fame) for inciting this wonderful event. I had a marvelous time and I hope they will invite me back, even if it’s not for a prestigious keynote spot. I love the fact that my speech wound up the very first SELF. What an honor and a privilege!

There was also a wonderful after-party, with nerdcore rappers Dual Core representin’ (sorry). They were fantastic — I just wish I had their freestyle Fedora rap from the Ohio Linux Fest last year, because I heard it was sick. (That means awesome, from what I understand. Am I hip now?)

Day 2: I turned in pretty early compared to a lot of people, so Day 2 was not as rough on me in the morning. After a good breakfast we headed over to Clemson and held the Fedora Activity Day for the Fedora Docs Team, and I thought it was a smashing success. Jesse Keating had led a sort of “design thinking” setup for the Development FAD last week, and I drew on this a bit for the beginning of the session, for the sole purpose of identifying pain points, seeing what we felt were the most important ones to fix or mitigate, and making proposals for how to address them.

Like the FAD in Raleigh, we also used Fedora Talk to broadcast voice from the meeting room, and IRC Freenode #fad to interact with remote attendees, including Zach Oglesby and John “jjmcd” McDonough. I think they got something out of it, and their input certainly helped us as well. Hopefully I wasn’t too much of a taskmaster but we just enjoy being around each other so much, it’s easy to get off track having fun! In the end, though, we had the right balance of humor, enjoyment, and accomplishment.

The notes, which we composed collaboratively in Gobby, are on the wiki now, so hopefully we’ll be able to move on those starting next week and in the upcoming Docs team meeting. And we also constructed a RPM specfile template for Zikula CMS modules, which should come in handy as we finalize packaging work to get the Fedora CMS off the ground shortly. Great work, everyone!

I’m going to pull my email using offlineimap now, and then it will be time to board the plane shortly. Tomorrow, no rest for me — I have only a day and a half of work until I’m back on another plane for Open Source Bridge in Portland, Oregon!

SELF, day 0.8.

I should have mentioned one other fun thing that I did with my evening last night. I don’t want to put unfair pressure on anyone, and I’m sure he’s doing a ton of interviews over the course of the SELF event. But I had a great time having a long conversation — several, really — with Klaatu of Fedora Reloaded fame. I’m thinking bits of these will appear soon in feeds near you.

We talked not just about Fedora but also about a former govvie’s view on open source in government, and a bit about my stupid pet project, PulseCaster (now I suppose I really need to get it to 0.1!). We had a great time and I’m hoping that when I get this silly code completed, I’ll get the chance to call him and return the favor.

SELF, day 0.

I had a great flight yesterday from Dulles to Greenville — the plane was very sparsely filled, and I had an exit row all to myself! It made for a great work environment even with a short flight. When I landed and picked up my car, I was both horrified and amused to find out it was bright yellow and had a spoiler. I’ll try to find time to take a picture because that car is so not me.

Arrived at the hotel fine after a ~40 minute drive, but needed to wait for a clean room. I soon found out why: the Southeast Linux Fest had almost 500 pre-registrants — for a first-year conference!. The hotel was full, and although I did get my room after a short wait, I also found out that thankfully there are other hotels in the area, several within walking distance.

I met up with David Nalley in the speaker/organizer lounge, where I deeply regretted not being hungry because they had BBQ there. We chatted and I went off to my room to catch up on some email and other tasks.

We gathered across the street at a restaurant called Rockhoppers that is decorated in penguins. Could that have been more fitting? I think not! Soon it was overflowing with penguins of a different variety, many seeking sustenance in the form of beer. I ended up at a table with some hilarious and fascinating people from around the region. Ian Weller showed up just after first round (don’t worry, Ian’s mom, he had Dr Pepper) and we enjoyed some really excellent dinner and laughs.

I got to talk to Richard Weait from OpenStreetMap for a bit about Moksha, the framework that underlies the new Fedora Community portal, and we caught up on my own hometown LUG, which he visited a couple of months back, much to our delight (and record-breaking attendance).

Finally, I went back to the hotel to bone up on my keynote for Saturday night, and then I fell prey to the curse of Fedora Project Leaders past: rewrote the whole thing less than 24 hours before the event. Wish me luck!

I’m going off to find Greg DeKoenigsberg and whoever showed up to man the various booths. Red Hat, as a Platinum sponsor of SELF, is supposed to have a nice presence here. I’ll be at the Fedora booth on and off, and at the Red Hat booth (wearing a different shirt) for a little while this afternoon. My keynote is at 5:00pm, after which I’ll be looking forward to tomorrow’s Fedora Activity Day with a bunch of the Fedora Docs team members.

Head down tomorrow.

Due to my travel to this week’s Fedora Activity Day in Raleigh, and the marketing work around the release, I find myself a little strapped for time and with a lot of writing to do. Tomorrow I will probably be absent from most IRC and only addressing critical email so I can get those tasks done.

This weekend is the Southeast Linux Fest (SELF) and we’ll have Fedora Ambassadors on hand to celebrate the event, and the release of Fedora 11. Clint ‘herlo’ Savage is giving a talk on making your own custom Fedora Remix, and I have the honor of delivering the evening keynote. I’m really looking forward to this event, and encourage you to come by and say hi if you’re attending.

Know thy SELF.

Yes, I’m sorry about that one too. But are you getting ready for the Southeast Linux Fest? It’s coming this Saturday — a superb gathering of Linux community members, speakers from a number of different projects (including Yr Humble Blogger doing the evening keynote), and all sorts of projects to help you become a free software contributor. Of course Fedora will have an awesome presence there, and as it turns out our sponsor Red Hat will be there as well with their own booth. Please come by and say hello!