The Next Stage of the Adventure

I'm excited to say that today marks the beginning of a new adventure for me. While it wasn't an easy decision, I've been offered my dream job and will be departing from Google. The past six years have been incredibly exciting; I've had the opportunity to be a part of an amazing and diverse global community, launch world-first initiatives to involve students in Open Source and to be a part of the company that's one of the greatest success stories in the tech world. Great times all around.

I'll soon be starting a consulting gig with a team that has offices in the Valley and in Costa Rica. Looks like that Costa Rican hacker colony I've been talking about for awhile has come around, and I'm excited to be a part of it. First though, I'm off to speak on FOSS Mentoring at Free Software and Linux Days in Turkey, then accepting an award on behalf of Google from the National Center for Open Source and Education.

The next couple of weeks will be fun and I should be working some vacation in there somewhere. I'm hoping to get some time to write and get the word out on some other great projects I've been working on lately. That and I've got this awesome food dehydrator that's been hiding in its box too long, so I'll be indulging my love of cookery along with composition.

My thanks go out to the wonderful folks in Google's Open Source Programs Office and the rest of the company. It has been a pleasure working with you and I wish you all the best.

For folks wondering where to find me, there's the usual suspects: identi.ca, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Good old fashioned email works great, too.

Let the next stage in the adventure begin!

That Software Ain't Gonna Free Itself

For Ada Lovelace Day, I'd like to express my thanks to and for my friend and colleague, Deb Nicholson. Deb is the membership coordinator for the Free Software Foundation. She has also spent the last several months making the track on increasing women's participation in Free Software at Libre Planet a reality.

Deb initially brought a group of women together to discuss the topic last September, which brings me to my first reason why Deb is awesome: she gets stuff done. She got an initial discussion going, then reached out to get more people involved, and held regular IRC meetings to collaboratively plan the conference program with the community. She actually got all of us together in Boston. She even made sure all the women who attended got together for dinner. Best part - a few of the women who came to Thai were invited by a friend so they could geek out and learn more about Free Software.

Did I mention that in addition to making all of this happen, she also gave an awesome talk? I'm really looking forward to putting up a pointer to the video from Deb's talk; she did an excellent job dismissing myths around women in Free Software and laying out the ground rules for effective communication in our discussion. She dealt well with ineffective audience participation; she stood up and asked an individual whose communication was rude and derailing to leave the room. Her response took real courage and I was incredibly proud of her strong and respectful stance in what was a tense situation.

She also helped the volunteers whenever she could, helped hand out lunches, wrangled speakers, made sure we always had directions and acted as an awesome emissary for the FSF.

And did I mention that when not working on creating things happen in real life, Deb also hacks on GNU Social?

As a wise man once said, "software ain't gonna free itself." Deb is one of those amazing people that helps make FOSS possible. She's one of my heroes.

I will be posting more notes from Libre Planet later this week. Happy Ada Lovelace Day!

Heading to SIGCSE 2010

Tomorrow, Summer of Code opens for 2010. Going to be an action packed week; we're taking applications from mentoring organizations in less than 24 hours. Should be an exciting sixth year for the program.

Tuesday, I'm heading out to the city of Laverne & Shirley for SIGCSE 2010. It'll be my second trip to this conference for Computer Science educators, and I'm really looking forward to speaking at the Humanitarian FOSS Project Symposium on Wednesday. Hal Abelson will be keynoting at the Symposium, as well. It's a day not to be missed, so if you happen to be in and around Milwaukee, do stop by and attend the sessions.

I'll also be giving a presentation on Google's Open Source student programs with Cat Allman on Friday. She and I will be at Google's booth throughout the event, so if stop by and introduce yourself.

I'll be regularly updating identi.ca and Twitter while conferencing, so check for my updates from SIGCSE there. Time to go pack some very warm clothing.