Penguin Day San Francisco: This Saturday (and before)

This Saturday, I'm heading to Penguin Day San Francisco. This will be my third Penguin Day, and this time I'll be leading two discussion sessions: Introduction to Free and Open Source Software and Learnings from Summers of Code. Other awesome topics include CiviCRM, Introductory and Advanced Level sessions on Drupal and Joomla!, and even Introduction to Blogging led by our fabulous facilitator, Allen "Gunner" Gunn of Aspiration fame. Should be a truly awesome way to spend a Saturday in the City by the Bay.

Performed a true drive by at today's MySQL Camp, a.k.a. the MySQL Conference Unconference. I'm hoping to get a chance to stop by the camp tomorrow since it'sso close to my house. We had an half and half mix of experienced and newbie in the small audience, so we opted for group discussion of Open Source for Newbies over lecture format. Communication sans slides ftw!

The number one question: how do I use Open Source to help further my career prospects. For those wondering more about this question, take a look at How to Put Free Software Experience on Your Resume; it's aimed primarily at newly graduating students, but it's useful for all takers. Folks were also interested in good resources to learning more about software licensing. Wikipedia is a good place to start for an overview of each of the Free Software Licenses and Open Source Initiative Approved Licenses. I'd also recommend Intellectual Property and Open Source: A Practical Guide to Protecting Code by Van Lindberg. Always nice when you can get a FLOSS programmer writing about matters FLOSS legal.

Open Everything NYC this past weekend rocked. Highlight: Schuyler Erle on RapidSMS. I covered a basic model for folks to get involved with social causes in their local neighborhoods in my talk Common Sense. As conference organizer John Britton put it best "It's great that you're all here. It's even more important that you go out and do something."

Amen.

8 days, three unconferences. Wow.

New York City was, as usual, lovely. Too densely populated for my long-term tastes, but the chance to catch up with friends in between Summer of Code madness was quite welcome. City Island in the Bronx - beautiful, just beautiful. Even saw a falcon on the drive over the rough bridge onto the island. The park two blocks from my friend's house has giant bronze seals and an overly smiley dolphin, but looked like a great place to play when you're a wee one. And I finally got to eat at Dinosaur Barbeque.

Life is good.

It's a Small World

We hosted the Plone Strategic Planning Summit at Google last weekend. If you want full details on the summit, check out limi's summit write up. Limi is the world's foremost expert on embarassment driven development. And blogging. Seriously, ask him about this concept if you get a chance to meet up with him; I'm sure you'll find his commentary insightful.

Much to my amazement I discovered last Saturday that one of our GHOP Grand Prize winners happenned to live close to Google HQ, so I asked him if he wanted to swing by Google to meet with the Plone team. Jonathan came by with his Mom, Constance, and great conversations ensued. It was great meeting Jonathan and even cooler getting to see him interact with a bunch of folks he'd only met online previously, if at all. I think the best part of the day was hearing Constance talk about the flame wars she'd heard about from her sons as part of their participation in open source. Not that flame wars are a good thing, mind you, but it was surprising and awesome to see how engaged she was with community dynamnics.

I would never have anticipated meeting such a hip Mom, nor would I have expected one of our GHOP Grand Prize winners to live so close to Google. Talk about fortuitous timing. It also turns out Jonathan lives about two streets over from me. A very small world indeed.

It's a Small World was closed when we visited Disneyland. Somehow I no longer feel like I greatly missed out having been deprived of cathartic experience of riding through and listening to the ride's message.

This being Valentine's Day and all, I'd like to make a shout out to someone who helped make the Plone Strategic Planning Summit possible even though he didn't attend - Allen "Gunner" Gunn of Aspiration. Gunner always brings the love to any event he facilitates and I feel privledged to have had the opportunity to work with and learn from him at numerous events.

When I walked into the summit and looked at all the easel pad sheets taped to the walls, covered in sticker dots, I knew Gunner had 'been there.' Jon Stahl confirmed he'd been inspired by Gunner's facilitation techniques, all of which are chronicled on the Aspiration wiki. If you ever get a chance to visit a Penguin Day or any other event hosted or facilitated by Gunner or another member of the Aspiration team, I highly recommend them. It's amazing how much can be accomplished and what real synergies can be created in just a short time using their facilitation techniques.

Happy Valentine's Day to all those who are celebrating. And to all, let there be love!