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.