UTOSC 2009, Day 3.

I’m sitting in the pleasant (and free wifi-equipped!) Salt Lake City airport, waiting for my plane back to DC and my home and family. I’m really looking forward to seeing them for dinner and a few hours of together time, before I motor off to Raleigh early tomorrow morning.

Yesterday was the final day of the UTOSC 2009 conference, and it was set aside as a “Family Day,” just like last year. And as with last year this was one of my favorite days to be at the conference. Not only were there lots of cutie-pie rugrats running around the area, but we had goodies galore for them — buttons, stickers, and temporary tattoos, which they made off with by the score.

I spent part of the morning helping Mark Clanton get his new Compaq laptop loaded with Fedora 12 Beta. Because someone removed the httpd binary from the second stage installer, I couldn’t play the neat trick I used in earlier releases. I worked around this unhappy situation by having a Fedora 11 DVD ISO available on the installation source, a USB hard disk, and loop mounting it and its contents in succession to get to the old httpd binary in Fedora 11′s second stage installer.

Of course, if we’d waited for the actual Beta release we could just use a standard DVD, network URL, or NFS installation, but where’s the fun in that? Everything worked out in the end and Mark also has all the kernel mode-setting bling provided in Fedora, from a beautiful graphical boot with Plymouth to a smooth fade into the login screen. Nice!

I worked on a couple tasks for the upcoming release, such as updating the press briefing sheet we send out with our Fedora 12 Live USB previews. I also caught up  with Adobe’s open source director to talk to him briefly after his keynote, and of course spent a good amount of time at the Fedora booth talking to families about Fedora, open source, OLPC, and Sugar. Larry Cafiero was Johnny-on-the-spot with T-shirts, making sure everyone could show off Ian Weller’s new “splatter” design — and of course their love for Fedora and free software!

In the afternoon I actually made it to a talk, which ended up being a two-hour workshop on advanced git. It was paced and positioned perfectly from my perspective, given by Tim Harper, a great instructor and an experienced Rubyist, not to mention a super-friendly guy. I got so much out of this talk, it almost seemed like the whole trip was worth it just for those two hours.

By the time I returned from the talk, I found that Larry and Ian had already spirited everything from the booth back into boxes and bins, and it was ready to be shipped off to the next great community event Fedora is attending. Ian and I talked about some FUDCon travel subsidy matters, which Mel Chua and I are working on finalizing, to bring in more community members. Then it was time to say goodbye to all my UTOS friends and thank them for another amazing conference.

Once again, UTOSC has grown from the previous year, and I would safely say that it is now one of the best-organized, most successful and well attended community conferences in the USA. A great assortment of community spokespeople, users, developers, business owners and entrepreneurs, and system administrators makes this a can’t-miss event for networking, learning, and just plain fun. My hat’s off to you guys, UTOS, for a wonderful UTOSC 2009. I’m already looking forward to UTOSC 2010!

UTOSC 2009, Day 2.

After this morning’s activities, I spent a little time catching up on emergency email and did a bit of polishing of my slides for my talk later today. At some point I realized my head felt like it was going to explode, which seemed incredibly unfair given the fact that I had maybe a pint and a half at dinner the night before. So Clint and I went to the cafeteria, since he was similarly afflicted, and found some Tylenol, which helped immensely. Over the course of the day, I also played several ultimately unsuccessful rounds of phone tag with people regarding FUDCon matters.

I gave my talk on the Fedora/Red Hat relationship and our open source strategic technology betting which was very well attended and well received as well. I got great questions from the audience — which I always like, because it means people are not just listening but also thinking — and had some interesting discussions afterward as well. Very much worth being here!

I spent a while talking to someone who runs a business incubation program here at the SLCC, along with Christer Edwards, and learning about the challenges he’s up against in providing services for those customers. I had some “Aha!” moments that I should be able to turn into action items when I meet up with the Community Architecture team in Raleigh next week.

Then I went upstairs again for Ian Weller’s talk on measuring community statistics. It also was very well attended and, though relatively brief, there were many insightful questions (and answers) so I know again there is a very rapt audience out there for the work Ian, Michael DeHaan, and others are doing on EKG and other community statistical tools.

I spent the next hour working on some personal projects, went back downstairs to the hall and had some more conversations with people around the hall from XMission and Novell about open source education, and then headed back upstairs for a session on open source podcasting, where I’m writing this post. This has been my one subpar experience at the conference, since I’m pretty disappointed the speaker has spent most of his time talking about non-open source solutions. It would be nice to see some movement around this need. Maybe I can recruit some people to help me fill it!

Tonight we’ll have the Geek Dinner at a place called Spaghetti Mama’s, which I”m looking forward to now that I didn’t eat anything since breakfast. Then I’ll probably head back to the hotel and try and do a smidge of catch-up before I crash. Overall, another superb day at UTOSC 2009!

UTOSC 2009, Day 1.9.

Eventful morning already from UTOSC 2009.  So far today I’ve had a chance to meet Stormy and say hi, and then traipsed off with her and joined a few other friends from UTOS for a meeting with Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon and some of his staff members. They seemed incredibly interested in what UTOS and the rest of the open source community is doing to encourage collaboration, open learning, job growth, and better ROI for businesses. What a treat! We bounced important points about open source around the circle of enthusiasts and proponents, and fielded questions from the Mayor and his staff with aplomb.

Yesterday we had intermittent problems with the networks. Not unexpectedly for an open source conference, the Cisco wireless APs used here at the SLCC Miller Free Enterprise Center couldn’t quite keep up with demand in some areas of the building, since they’re only rated for a certain number of connections. To add to the fun, apparently they also see foreign SSIDs as unwanted visitors, and promptly stage an active DDOS against the interloper, thus flooding the wifi network so people can’t authenticate successfully. We discovered yesterday that this effect is not only caused by people with their own wifi network shares, but also by the mesh networking features of OLPC XOs. Meaning that a properly equipped six-year-old can effectively take down the network here.

Both the SLCC and UTOS staffs worked together to diagnose and remedy the problem, and today they have put up extra APs to handle the increased traffic. Which is good, because attendance is expected to grow daily through Saturday! (Shout out to Trevor, for the early morning he put into helping with the networking. You’re a trooper, my friend.)

UTOSC 2009, Day 0.

Today I drove up to Washington after lunch to catch a plane to Utah for UTOSC 2009. The drive was pretty uneventful, and only about a quarter mile of stopped traffic near the Prince William Parkway and then a brief pause north of Woodbridge — it was practically paradise as far as DC area traffic goes. I don’t enjoy airports other than the fantastic Richmond airport with its comfortable, airy seating areas and free wifi. I thought I’d be able to cope by using blueman and tethering to my phone, but unfortunately the latest code isn’t up to speed with current PolicyKit or NetworkManager, neither in Rawhide nor in the project trunk itself, so no-go. I’ll reproduce the problem tomorrow and file appropriate bugs.

I made it in one piece from Washington DC to SLC — no thanks to the terrible headwinds that assaulted us not only leaving DC but then descending into Utah. Haven’t experienced worse turbulence than that in a long while. Also, the plane was very crowded. I think the last row had one middle seat empty, and other than that, we were packed in there like sardines. If that weren’t enough, it was really warm back where I was sitting!

This misery was somewhat balanced out by my first experience with in-air wifi. It’s too slow for any real transfers, but it’s certainly fine for email and IRC. I found everything worked, including tunneling back to my IRC proxy at home over SSH, and a VNC session for good measure. Not bad, but I wouldn’t have paid $12.95 even for a five-hour flight. Thankfully, it was a “first flight free” deal.

My flight was pretty late in the day, leaving DC at five, so I got to SLC a little after eight, and took a really long cab ride to the hotel.  By the time I got checked in it was a quarter to nine, and I hadn’t had dinner yet. I was pretty famished since that was two hours earlier than my bio-clock. Clint had invited me via IRC, while I was still over Oklahoma, to come by the conference center, but the flight had just been so chock full of humanity that I really needed some solitude and quiet. So once I dropped my bags off, I walked a half mile or so to a nearby salad place and it was pretty decent. I did indulge in a glass of the strawberry lemonade, but I avoided the apple cobbler (and yes, the other desserts too) and felt pretty good about it. Granted, it was a bit easier to do this since the staff started putting the food away while I was still eating my meal… I probably should have thanked them!

Anyway, the wifi at the hotel is fantastic — thank you UTOSC 2009 organizers — so I’m picking up my email to do some triage, doing a little work on my slides, and then hitting the hay. The fabulous “fozzmoo” (Doran Barton) is graciously picking me up in the morning, and I’m looking forward to seeing everyone, once I’m rested and replenished with the meager helping of wits I’m allotted in this lifetime. More tomorrow on UTOSC Day 1, including the distro panel and other happenings!

I’m speaking at UTOSC.

I'm speaking at UTOSC 2009!

Coming up in a few weeks is one of my favorite events from last year — the fantastic Utah Open Source Conference 2009. It will be held October 8-10 in SLC and features a cross-distribution speaker lineup that includes people from projects all around the free software universe.

Ace community developer and all-around nice guy Clint Savage sent me a code you can use — FDRA — for a discount on the already extremely low registration fee. If you register before September 26 (that’s this coming Saturday!), the normal fee is only $70 for three days and over 50 technical sessions, plus birds-of-a-feather sessions and other exciting events. But with this code, you can get 50% off that fee and it’s only $35. Now I’ve been to UTOSC before, and I can tell you that $70 is already an amazing deal. How can you pass it up at only $35?

OK, sales pitch style is done now. Seriously, this is a fantastic conference and one thing I really liked about it is its very inclusive, family-friendly style. There’s even a special Family Day planned where you can bring the kids for all sorts of activities and a cookout.

I said last year that I would not be surprised if UTOSC, which has almost doubled in size every year, became one of the premier Linux community conferences in the USA. Yes, it’s near and dear to my heart because I know some of the wonderful organizers, and because I had such a great time there last year. I was even honored to give a keynote there. This time there are other superb speakers, and I’ll be giving a talk myself, along with holding a Fedora BoF session. But despite my obvious non-objectivity, from everything I can see about UTOSC 2009, I think that prediction’s already come true!

UTOSC, Day 2.

Friday was another fantastic day at the conference. Started the day with a true homestyle breakfast at Cracker Barrel with my friend Jared Smith and his friend Trevor. Then it was off to the conference to show off more Fedora and OLPC.

I taught a session in the morning on “Fedora Remix,” showing off tools like pungi and the livecd-tools. Things went really well except for a brief glitch caused by my not having removed some prior work by-products before running pungi. The audience was forgiving and really appreciated the fact that Fedora makes absolutely everything we do 100% re-consumable, reusable and redistributable.

Later in the day I had a chance to talk to a few very interesting people. This gave me the idea for a new spin in Fedora that might prove to be very popular in the long run for Fedora 11. I need to talk to a few more people to see how possible the end state is, and how we can best accomplish it. But it could end up a highly compelling offering.

Of course I got to work the booth all day again, and didn’t get to see any sessions, but the payment for that was awesome, including a lot of people turned on to Fedora and Sugar, a few hopefully as developers. I also scored some sweet T-shirts including the Banshee shirt that is by far the best of show in my opinion.

I did get to see two great keynotes, one by the author of “Schlock Mercenary,” Howard Tayler. His quotes on making grizzly bear soup were priceless and memorable for people who are looking to have someone tell them how to succeed in the open source community. The other was by Novell community manager Joe “Zonker” Brockmeier, and really shows how he and the OpenSuSE community are quickly learning from the iteration of other communities like Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, and so on.

In the evening we went to Tucanos, a Brazilian restaurant (read: “Death By Meat”) that had superb caipirinhas. (The garlic sirloin tips were also fantastic, as well as the grilled pineapple.) The UTOS folks once again outdid themselves and everyone had a wonderful time. By the time I got back to the hotel I was dead tired, but I stayed up long enough to update Clint’s XO machine to the latest stable build 711. This ended up fixing some of the sharing problems we had at the booth that day, which would help since Saturday was set up at UTOSC as Family Day.

More on that later!

UTOSC, Day 0-1.

Despite his incredibly busy schedule organizing stuff, Clint “herlo” Savage picked me up at the airport on Wednesday night, and summarily whisked us off to the Fiddler’s Elbow. We proceeded to tuck into a fantastic barbecue dinner with the rest of the UTOSC staff and presenters, complete with sweet corn and cobbler (more blueberries than in the Michael DeHaan version, to be honest).

I had time to hang out with a few of the Novell guys including one-man army of community management Joe “Zonker” Brockmeier. We discussed among other things our desire to get a mini-summit for RPM hackers together in the Czech Republic at one or both of Fedora’s and Novell’s developer events next month.

UPDATE: Since he just let the cat out of the bag at his keynote, we also discussed his “Dairy Council” idea for jointly marketing Linux. Just as Zima marketed their product by presenting it as an alternative to beer, Linux might also be marketed as an alternative to Windows, but only if we abandon for purposes of the campaign the idea of driving people to any one distro over another. Certainly an idea worth discussing and thinking about. Fedora Marketing — discuss!

After a too-brief and fitful sleep, I gave up and got up early to work on some email and brush up my keynote a bit (as noted previously, the Spevack method works!). The affable John Mizell came and picked me up at the hotel and we headed over to Salt Lake Community College to set up the booth. All our kit had arrived as promised and setup was a cinch. We had a couple XOs courtesy of OLPC, Red Hat, and Clint, which as always attracted every passing soul. They’re irresistible!

I spent the day telling people about Fedora — our mission, our philosophy, and some of the projects we have been and will be involved with. OLPC definitely fits into this picture, as you can see, which is why we love showing off these units at our booths.

I got some time to talk to some other Novell folks like Stephen Shaw, who’s working not just on Mono but also on some great new accessibility features. I have to admit — sorry Stephen, please forgive me — that fully half of what he said went completely over my head, but I know it had something to do with moving messages away from Bonobo and toward D-Bus. (Well, not everyone can be an ace developer.) Stephen’s wife Emily was one of the organizers for the UTOSC show, and just seems to have an immense talent for making everything seem easy.

We had a couple cancellations from would-be booth workers, so I ended up spending most of my time working there, but it was a great way to talk to a fantastic crowd of passers-by about how open source works and how they can get involved. That also was the focus of my keynote on Thursday night, in which I tried to springboard off UTOSC’s “How To” theme and talk about “How to Change the World.”

The conference has had over 500 registrants, which is more than double its attendance last year. The Utah Open Source Foundation and the various volunteer and user groups in this area have done a simply tremendous job on all the planning, organization, and execution. I, for one, won’t be surprised when UTOSC quickly becomes one of the defining FOSS community shows for the entire USA.

I’ll try to catch up tonight on Day 2.