Yesterday, Jared and I drove down to Raleigh. Jared starts Red Hat’s new hire orientation today, and this was a good opportunity for me to stop by the office and take care of a couple in-person tasks. Last night we had a wonderful dinner with Max at Taverna Agora — I had some fantastic lamb chops and we had great conversation. We discussed with Jared some of the things he needed to know about internal mechanics like where Fedora’s budget comes from, and where the Fedora team fits into the organizational structure in Red Hat.
Both Max and I are very excited to see Jared set up his own agenda for leading Fedora, which I know he will be thinking about during and after his travel to FUDCon Santiago tomorrow and then FISL 11. Being down in LATAM will give Jared a great opportunity to find out how our Fedora community operates there, meet some of the active contributors involved, and ask what they need to be even more successful in the future.
In just a few minutes, I’m heading out to locate the remaining Fedora tablecloths for our Ambassadors to use. The always dependable Joerg Simon talked to the rest of the Ambassadors steering committee and other Ambassadors, and sent me a list of destinations. Two of the cloths are already in circulation in the USA. Two more will be heading to the LATAM region with Jared — they’ll be going to Ambassadors around the region for use at upcoming shows. The others I’m mailing to APAC and EMEA.
I set up a meeting for Jared to meet Red Hat’s CEO Jim Whitehurst, and we’ll have lunch with some of the Community Architecture team and Red Hat VP of Open Source Affairs Michael Tiemann. I’m also trying to pick up Jared’s laptop early today so I can get Fedora 13 onto it — we won’t have a lot of time tomorrow, since we also have meetings scheduled with the Brand team, the Legal team, and the Corporate Communications team. Somewhere in there we’re also going to get a new photo (head shot) of Jared. I plan to stand around holding his bag for him while this happens, now that I’m being demoted to his caddy. ?
So it’s going to be a busy couple of days. After I drop Jared at the airport tomorrow evening, I’ll be driving home and back online more consistently on Wednesday. For the next few weeks I’ll be operating as sort of a backup for Jared, since we’re not sure what his connectivity will be like in Santiago and Porto Alegre. Paradoxically, his robust travel schedule in the first few weeks is likely to help us with the transition of workload, and I’m working on a schedule of release-related tasks for his use as well.
OK, now I’m off to find some swag!