Notes from South Africa, Volume 2

My keynote this morning went absolutely fantastically; I couldn't be more pleased. I had about 100 people in the audience - 25% of the conference attendees - and afterwards I had multiple people grab me in the hallway to tell me how much they enjoyed it and how useful the material was. Woo-hoo! Today is a very good day.

It's also the last day of the OpenMRS Implementers Meeting and HISA 2008, and I'll be heading home tomorrow morning. The whole crew from Regenstrief is heading out tonight, but I think some of the Partners in Health folks will be sticking around, so I'm looking forward to a beer or two with them. I'm even kinda sorta caught up on email, so next week shouldn't prove to be too insane.

Luggage still has not arrived. I am somehow not surprised given that a plane overran the runway at Durban airport on Wednesday. That fact combined with my having begun my journey on United pretty much leaves me suspecting that I may not see that suitcase for several more days, and there's a part of me that wonders if it's gone forever. I sure hope not - my favorite jeans and, in fact, most of my decent wardrobe was in there.

I didn't go buy clothes, though. The hotel staff offered to drive me into town several times, but I really own enough clothing and everything I bought when my luggage went missing in Brasil is still sitting in closet, unworn since my return. I'm too sentimental to it off to the Goodwill. Just seems like a waste, even at a 7 Rand / 1 US Dollar exchange rate. I may decide that was a supremely bad call when Ben comes to pick me up at SFO and I'm wearing the same outfit I was wearing a week ago. I am so looking forward to a change of clothes.

I ventured down to the beach briefly and splashed about a bit in the ocean. The recent storms have really made the waves huge and all the freighters I saw far out on the horizon on Monday night have moved in much closer to shore. The lights out on the water in the evenings have been a truly beautiful sight, and watching these multi-ton ships get tossed around so easily is quite the reminder of the awesome power of nature. Note that I didn't notice the warning sign letting people know that "shark nats" had been taken down due to the weather until I was on my way back from the beach. Ahem.

I have some more random observations about my experiences in Durban, but as I've managed to spend the vast majority of my time in the hotel, with a brief jaunt to the beach, the casino down the way about 3 km and the convenience store a block and a half away, I naturally feel like they're not quite representative. Oh yes, and the drive through town to get here.

When I arrived in Durban I'd missed my connecting flight from Johannesburg (Jo'burg if you're a native), so the driver that had been arranged for me was no longer waiting. I tried calling a few folks but had no luck getting through, and I really don't believe the helpful pre-recorded operator lady who told me repeatedly "the number you have dialed does not exist." The number most certainly exists. I was reading it. Whether or not I dialed it properly, who can say, but I tried every permutation I could think of and no luck.

Failing that, I wandered out to the curb wondering what the heck to do, since I'd been warned that hopping into a taxi when you're a tourist, not so much. I finally asked an older lady who was also waiting curbside what she suggested, and she directed me to the shared shuttle service and said it was safe enough. She then told me to just stay away from the blacks. Um. Wow. She seemed so sweet and gentle. Yuck. Generation gap, I hope, not that that's anything like an excuse. Her advice on transportation, though, proved quite good; I just wish she had been able to deliver it without the accompanying bile.

I cruised into Durban with two gentlemen heading to the hotels by the beach and two women heading back to their apartment complexes downtown. I'd been expecting much more evidence of poverty, but if the areas we drove through are any indication it's not that bad in Durban. Sure, every single apartment complex - and there are a lot of them, all clustered together and with romantic names like Sahara Sands - has heavy metal security doors on it and the lower floors have bars on the windows, but that's hardly worse than anything I've seen in the "wrong" neighborhoods in San Jose. There were the usual stores selling hopelessly unfashionable furniture. Not a single electronics/Fry's/Best Buy type store in sight. In fact, not much of anything but housing in sight, some building proudly advertising the security services they offered to their residents with huge signs outside.

Within a few blocks the neighborhood got considerably, though the bars remained on many windows and doorways. There were suddenly upscale department stores with huge perfume displays right inside the doors. All the department stores had names I didn't recognize and but I haven't found someone to ask if they're locally owned or part of a huge (multi)national conglomerate. The streets seemed much cleaner, too, though I have to say that there are more rubbish bins around this area than I've seen in any American city. Then again I am in a tourist area at the moment.

American brands don't seem to have really penetrated this market, with the notable exception of the three KFCs I saw downtown on my drive in from the airport. There was also a Nando's downtown and in the food court of the casino, though I haven't made my way there yet. Maybe tonight. Nando's is not to be missed, wherever you might find it.

If I was looking for an answer to the where the poverty problem comes from, I figured it out pretty quickly after talking to one of the door attendants at the hotel, which is supposed to be quite posh if you believe their website. Not that I've ever seen a website claim that their property is any way suboptimal, but this place just doesn't seem all that posh, rooms-wise. There are, however, two pools on the pool deck level, one of which overlooks the ocean. Location, location, location.

I digress. I asked Dennis, said doorman, how the place treated the staff, since I'd seen more than one upbraiding that didn't seem warranted. (Isn't that supposed to happen away from the customers, anyway?) He said the hotel wasn't great, but it wasn't bad. His take home after an 8 hour day is 96 Rand. Holy. Crap. That means that this gentleman has to work more than an hour to purchase one fo the hotel's 14 Rand Caffiene Free Tabs. No doubt things are less expensive away from the hotel, but holy. crap. I wonder how much of the staff's ability just to live is based on tips. Apparently minimum wage in South Africa is 1800 Rand per month, which everyone acknowledges is not enough to live on, and unemployment is a real problem.

According to all the magazines that have been left around the hotel, a major part of the South African economy is tourism. I'm sure it is, but, erm, I had to have a security guard walk me the block and half to the ATM at the convenience store because the front desk wouldn't let me go unescorted. I really didn't feel afraid at any time, but I'm also not necessarily chomping at the bit to return here as a tourist either following that experience. Apparently one of my colleagues at the conference was forbidden to leave the hotel by the Manager on Duty, even though she just wanted to take a brief walk to get some air. Hrm.

The food here has been amazing, even moreso since it was conference food. If I'm remembering the conversation I had with my hosts correctly, South Africa has the largest Indian population outside of India, and we've been treated to out of this world chicken curries and briyani and naan and these amazing chutneys all week. Samosas to just die for, with spicy sauces that are actually spicy. Truly sumptuous fare. Hence no need yet for Nando's, but with close of conference the free cuisine extravaganza has concluded.

I am so happy I came to this conference. It's amazing to see the idealism I so often associate with Open Source made manifest in such an obvious way. Every single person I've spent time with this week is dedicated to bettering things for the poorest of the poor, or as one gentlemen put it so well, "the currency of our transactions is the number of lives we save." I am so inspired, and I am so incredibly thrilled that they felt my thoughts on community building were useful and would be helpful to them long after they returned home.

Today is a very good day. Now I'm going to make it even better by hitting the Nando's.

Notes from South Africa

I'm currently in South Africa at the HISA 2008 Conference, where I'm helping to facilitate the OpenMRS Developers Track. I'll also be giving a keynote on Friday morning on Creating Sustainable Collaborative Communities: Lessons Learned from Google Summer of Code™. I'm incredibly excited to be here for many reasons: first solo keynote, first OpenMRS Developers Meeting I've attended, first time in Africa, and my first time getting to deeply engage with the Open Source community working in the bioinformatics and health care space. I'm also thrilled because the talk I'm giving will be the first time I'll be exploring some of the collective wisdom I've gleaned from working with over 175 projects with a wider audience; it feels like a great way to give back to the community, particularly since this community is focused on providing adequate patient care for those with HIV in the developing world.

This afternoon the Dev Track is purely open space, so I've had a few minutes to catch up on email and to update the old blog. July is usually the busiest month for the Open Source Team and preparing for this conference, OSCON, and the GHOP Awards Ceremony, all while onboarding a new hire for my team has kept me quite busy. There's the usual care and feeding of Summer of Code, too, but we have a great bunch of students this year, as usual, and things have been pretty smooth if hectic. It's how we roll....

I've been in town since Monday afternoon and it's been quite the experience thus far. I'd like to thank Chris Seebregts and Carl Fourie from the Program Committee for inviting me to present here, as well as the OpenMRS team for the honor of helping them come together and get things done. It's only day two of the conference, and things are really popping. With an endless supply of coffee and snacks and so many passionate people working together on common problems, the buzz in here is just incredible. There are still at least 50 people in here even though the main conference sessions closed down an hour ago, all of them hacking away, whiteboard prototyping, sharing ideas and excitement. The projects here - OpenMRS, Partners in Health, OASIS (no, not the standards body; they're looking for a new name :), Mirth, Baobab, inSTEDD - have decided to use this time to work on project interoperabilty challenges, and the few Google stickers I brought with me have made great prizes for some of our ice breaker sessions. The OpenMRS guys are running a parallel bug squash for their 1.3 Release Candidate. We've even got a documentary filmmaker here observing the track and interviewing individual developers and teams about their processes. The Dev Track room is definitely the place to be.

So that's up to the minute HISA 2008. Here are some general thoughts on my time thus far in South Africa.

The good

Well, all of the above really. It's always nice to see Paul, Shaun, Ben, Brian, Darius and Justin. The thing that really sticks out in my mind so far, though, is how little ego seems to be a driver in this particular set of Open Source communities. I'd immediately noticed that aspect about the OpenMRS folks their approach resonates throughout this room. There's little if any acknowledgement of rank and nary a sniff of my code is bigger than your code. Very enjoyable, collegiate vibe. Also, and it might be just that it's an informatics conference rather than the usual Open Source conference, but there are many women here, several of them coders. Very refreshing.

I've had the chance to sit down with a lot of folks and help them brainstorm about their ideas. Shared a coffee with Dykki Settle of the Capacity Project and kicked around ideas for how to build developer communities in Africa by targeting students. The work their group is doing to create software that allows Health Ministries better manage their health care worker deployments is an interesting parallel to the work done by all the health care hackers I usually hang out with, who are focused on deploying patient care systems at the clinic level. The Capacity Project has already released all their code as Open Source; they're already on their 3.0 release. I've also spent some quality time with James Arbaugh of the Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Haiti, learning more about their OpenMRS installation. James is a bug filing machine. Tomorrow he'll speak, along with OpenMRS implementers from Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. There are folks here from places like the WHO and the Rockefeller Foundation - definitely not your typical Open Source conference - and they're also totally down to earth, hanging out and having beers.

The bad

Either United or South African Airways lost one of my bags, which was of course the bag that had 99% of my clothing. The gift of an OpenMRS shirt has helped ease the pain, but if my suitcase doesn't turn up tomorrow I'm going to have to break down and go buy some clothes. It's been rainy and rather dreary for the past two days, too. I'm taking comfort in the fact that I don't need to miss my swimsuit since there's no chance to visit the beach in this weather, even though it's less than 1 km away. I have an awesome view of it from my hotel room window, and I've fallen asleep to sound of the Indian Ocean and the rain every night. So it's hardly that bad.

Speaking of rain and the suboptimal, every time I travel I'm reminded of how sheltered Americans are regarding the rest of the world. I turned on the TV shortly after arrival and was greeted by in-depth coverage of the current flooding in Iowa, though I'm quite confident that I've never seen such a mention on CNN about South Africa being the 30th driest country in the world. Fortunately, the government provided a handy sign that I spied on my way from Durban International Airport, so I can certainly count this trip as educational. I've been reading a book on brand marketing recently and the authors remarked on the changes brought to the American life by increased travel, particularly to Europe. I hope that this trend continues and my country becomes more self-aware, world-aware and cosmopolitan.

The amazing

I've heard a lot from the OpenMRS folks about their installation in Eldoret, Kenya, but I just learned from Ben that they've recently seen a 100% success rate in their efforts to prevent HIV transmission from mother to child during pregnancy. That's right, provided a mother does not subsequently breast feed her infant, there is a 100% chance her baby will be born HIV negative. These folks don't rest on their laurels, though; Paul is quick to point out that mission #2 is to make sure these children don't become orphans.

Wow. I am so happy that I can spend a week with these folks helping them achieve these goals together. I've seen a lot of talk about analyzing Summer of Code as a model for incentivizing student developers and several folks have posed the question if students can be motivated by social justice and social welfare causes instead of cash. I certainly can't see why not; I'm absolutely awed by the passion of every person in this room for what they do. That being said, human beings have been analyzing what the essence of love and passion is and how they are created between two human beings for as long at least as long as we have written records, and I think we're no closer to finding the answer about what makes a person passionate about a cause than we are to understanding how we come together with our life partners. Passion, it would seem, must be inspired, but certainly it has to find fertile ground or the most inspiring cause won't motivate and the greatest of rhetoric will fail to sway.

We've got a full slate the rest of the week and I head back on Saturday. If I have enough time I'll be posting updates from the Dev Track and the feedback I receive on my talk.

Now if only I'd thought about building enough time into this trip to go on safari and finally get the chance to see a giraffe up close and personal. That's definitely on the list for my next visit to New Zealand. Sure it's a zoo, but you actually get to feed the giraffes. Awesome.

Adventures in Canadiaing

I returned from BSDCan 2008 just over a week ago, fully intending to spend some quality time with my poor, neglected blog. What I thought was a case of ineffectively coping with jetlag - and come on, it was a mere three hours time difference, so how bad could it have been - was a nasty case of stomach flu, from which I now seem to have extricated myself. Hooray!

My slides are now posted, as are those of many of my fellow presenters. If technical meat on all things BSD strikes your fancy, hie thee to the conference website to get your fill. I was quite pleased with how my talk turned out; when I asked how many Summer of Code mentors and students we had in the room, nearly half the hands in the audience of ~75 raised. We had two students turned mentors in the audience, as well, which was the nicest treat of the conference. You can check out a summary of my presentation on KernelTrap.

I'd like to once again thank the gentleman who agreed to be interviewed as part of my research: Jan Schaumann, Justin Sherill, Murray Stokely and Robert Watson. Special thanks to Jan for meeting with me the day before his family was to move from the Bay Area to the East Coast, and to Justin for pointing me to his Alphabet Project, which provided me with an awesome image for my presentation, used with permission of the artist, Cal Slayton. That's right folks, paranoia is not just for the Security geek anymore.

BSDCan is the kind of conference that I love attending: small scale (~200 attendees), solidly community focused, college campus venue, no excess, all tech. I'm sure the great vibe owes much to the conference's stalwart organizer, Dan Langille, who continues to organize both BSDCan and PGCon in Ottawa annually, despite having relocated to the United States. Dan's a consummately gracious host and his gift for making his attendees feel welcome and engaged is phenomenal; on the social side of things, BSDCan boasted two low-key but fun and conversation filled pub nights, an evening hacking lounge in the dorm accommodations and a full slate of tourist activities the day after the conference concluded, with all invited to join in the exploration of Ottawa. Really bringing the community vibe home, though, was the conference's concluding session, where Dan's mad auctioneering skills and the signatures of the attending FreeBSD core developers raised over 800 dollars for the local men's mission.

In addition to getting to spend more time hanging out with Dan, I had a great conversation with Dru Lavigne about measuring the maturity of Open Source projects, with Dru making the point that an excellent metric for establishing a project's maturity is its perceived value of non-code contributions.I'd add to that sentiment by noting that a truly mature project focuses strongly on user needs, equally or sometimes moreso than developer desires. The interplay here is still a difficult one since the vast majority of contributions, code and otherwise, remain voluntary. (More along these lines in the May issue of The Open Source Business Resource; many thanks to Dru for the honor of inviting me to serve on the publication's Advisory Board.)

More highlights from the conference and our few days in Ottawa, including an awesome leftward facing moose, can be found on Emma Jane's blog. I'm greatly looking forward to her talk this year at OSCON, Form an Orderly Queue, Ladies. In fact, speaking of the maturation of Open Source, I'm quite excited about a great number of sessions - and the great number of sessions - in the People Track this year.

Yes, the Canadia and the Canadians are amazing. Just ask the server who was kind enough to send me home from breakfast with a sealed bottle of HP Sauce because I was so delighted by its existence.

There's a few cool happenings in the world of Open Source that I've been keeping my eye on for the past few weeks that I'll write up later, but for now I'll be catching up on work.

Oh, Canada!

I'm heading up to Ottawa in about three weeks to speak at BSDCan 2008. The ever gracious Dan Langille suggested that folks attending would be excited to get the inside look at Summer of Code, a topic clearly near and dear to my heart. Rather than just explore the program at a high-level, though, I thought this talk would be a great opportunity to do something I rarely get to do while managing the program: get to know the *BSD projects a bit more closely and understand how they participate in the program, why they participate, how they structure their mentoring processes and how their overall community governance structures shape, mirror or are completely separate from the people infrastructure put in place as part of mentoring the annual crop of new contributors.

I've already had the pleasure of meeting with Jan Schaumann from the NetBSD project, and will be speaking with Justin Sherill of DragonFly BSD fame later this week. Many thanks to Jan for taking an afternoon to help me out while in media res of a coast-to-coast move!!

I have to confess that I'm particularly excited about having dinner with and picking the brain of Dr. Robert Watson from the FreeBSD project. For many reasons, not the least of which is the fact that I never get tired of saying "Dr. Watson." Fortunately I have had the good sense not to do so in front of him up until now, and I have to say I don't intend to vary that strategy. In addition to the joys of vague references to Sherlock Holmes, I'm looking forward to learning more from Robert than I already did from his excellent talk How the FreeBSD Project Works. Should be lots of fun, informative and a great opportunity for me to show off my favorite Thai place.

Should you find yourself at BSDCan or in and around Ottawa during the conference, stop by to say hello. Be forewarned that I remain deeply skeptical of poutine, but am a big fan of maple syrup. Well, truthfully I'm not, but as a big fan of breakfast it's hard to stay away from one of its star players. Waffles anyone?

Women Who Tech Telesummit Podcasts

The great team from Women Who Tech have released the audio for all the sessions as podcasts, including from my panel session on Women in Open Source. I highly recommend Women and Social Capital. Enjoy!

Expect an update on my adventures to Canadia this weekend.

Recap

I haven't posted in awhile, mostly because I've been busy with Lug Radio Live USA and Summer of Code. We'll be announcing accepted student proposals on Monday, so the craziness has died down and bit and we're in a calm patch for the moment. Things will heat up again in two days. Our duplicately accepted student resolution meeting in IRC yesterday was fast and furious as ever, but turned out very well and with no major damage.

I decided to take a break this morning, chill out, drink iced tea and read. Jeremy recently lent me Ben Elton's Blind Faith, and it was such a great book that I read through it all this morning. It's also left me with no desire to share anything whatsoever, so I'll just post some snippets:

Lug Radio Live USA was awesome. However, don't believe me, believe the hype. I learned a great deal over the weekend, especially about effectively managing a large-scale conference, spent some quality time with old friends, made some new ones, and even got to sing karaoke. Woot!

(Of course, that's not a particularly flattering photo and given what I've just read, I remain uncertain of just how excited I can and should get about karaoke.)

Among the many highlights, Emma Jane Hogbin's discussion of Women in Open Source was fantastic. She's right folks - we need more people in Open Source, and a great way to find them is to start with the very old and the very young. Ask her about her thoughts next time you see her.

Lessee, what else is going on....

After finishing off Elton, I now have a near irrepressible desire to go on to Atwood. So I shall. But first a few things about the house - the omnipresent laundry. Rearranging my office. Screwing around on IRC. I think I'll make some hummus. Perhaps I might even get saucy and include some roasted red pepper. Definitely a lot of lemon juice.

Then again, my blender is offline due to overuse. Meh. I also need to make myself some more iced tea.

The X.org folks were in last week, and it's always a treat to see them. We also hosted a MySQL architecture meeting on Friday, so I got to see Brian, Colin and Stewart. ++

Next week should give me some time to start preparing my speech for BSDCan.

That's about it heading west. Oh yeah, Lex is back in town. And happy birthday Louis!

Women Who Tech TeleSummit

I participated in my first webinar presentation yesterday, speaking on panel about Women in Open Source for the Women Who Tech TeleSummit. The TeleSummit was filled to capacity during pre-registration, and it was a real pleasure to "share the stage" along with folks like Arianna Huffington, Joan Blades and, of course, my co-panelist Michelle Murrain. Many many thanks to all of the organizers of this effort, especially Allyson Kapin simply because I worked with her most closely and can actually put a name to all the hard work. All audio from the conference was recorded and will be available from the conference website shortly.

I headed up to San Francisco for the TeleSummit after party along with the ever gracious Cat Allman, and had an absolute blast. So many cool people - women working as Database Engineers, Program Managers, Supply Chain Managers, Non-Profit Campaign Managers, ASIC Design Engineers, etc. Men were also present, clearly welcomed and were obviously there for the conversational benefits. I had a much better time at this shindig than many of the women tech events I've been to previously, so once again many kudos to the organizers.

Among the many great conversations had last night, one of the most enjoyable and useful was with Emily Logan, Campaign Manager for Care2. It was also her first webinar presentation, and I thought it might be helpful to pass along our collective thoughts on presenting in this format:

When presenting live, it's easy to tell how knowledgeable your audience is about a particular subject, either by simply asking them or keeping an eye out for tell tale blank stares. When presenting online, you get none of these body language cues and we didn't have the opportunity to assess the knowledge of our audience prior to beginning the panel discussion. Fortunately the presentation software we used allowed for online chat, so we could answer questions real time and also get a sense for when the audience members were confused. I think it would be useful to ensure that audience members are given some pre-requisites for attending your presentation, e.g. familiarity with Open Source terms such as Content Management System (CMS).

I try to minimize jargon whenever I'm speaking, but I was painfully aware how much of it creeps in during yesterday's presentation. Every time I said a term I was completely familiar with, e.g. Drupal or flame war, I found myself wondering if any of the women attending knew what the heck I was on about. Again I think that listing pre-requisites would be a good solution, but I'm confident given our online chat feedback that the talk was both well received and well tailored for our audience's needs.

It's also worthwhile to realize that this presentation style is going to be odd for you until you get some practice doing it. If you're used to engaging your audience through humor, you won't hear their laughter when their phone line is muted. The standard reaction for a presenter is to retool accordingly, but again you're in a medium without audience feedback and it is likely they're actually enjoying your jokes. Or at least so I'd like to think about my jokes. Being comfortable with not having the usual feedback cues from the audience is key to presenting online successfully, so just be aware it's going to feel odd at first and to just go with it.

I'm really pleased I got the opportunity to be a part of this event. I learned a great deal, met some fabulous folks and got to spread the Open Source love. I hope a few women listening were inspired to take the plunge into using it and contributing to it, and that even more will be when the audio is out there for all to benefit from. I didn't get a chance to sit in on any other sessions, but I'll definitely be catching up when the panels are out as podcasts.

Boston

Ed. Note: This post is a recreation and I'm pretty sure the previous version was much more elegant. Such is life.

I left for Boston the day after MJ's birthday bash, late in the evening. I'd spent the morning buzzing around the house with Steve, performing post-party clean up, in the suitably lazy style required for such affairs, particularly when you'll find any excuse to not probe some obscure nook for various detritus. Not sure you want to look behind the couch? Have a bagel. The wet bar excessively sticky with what you're pretty confident is maraschino cherry juice? Wander around wondering aloud just how many people were there last night. People still on the couch sleeping? Clearly you can't tidy up in that room just yet; better to go to the kitchen and slice up some fruit to have waiting for them when they awake. Grab a few bottle caps along the way, toss them into the recycling bin, feel a real sense of accomplishment.

Eventually, the entire house was back to its previous state of cleanliness, and shortly thereafter MJ awoke and we settled out on the patio for an afternoon of absolutely nothing. Steve has a lovely view of the entire Valley from his deck, and the day was absolutely perfect: shining sun, crisp air, windy and chill but not cold. The Santa Cruz Mountains were visible, for a change, and lovely; the air was utterly clear. Bliss.

I flew from SJC to LAX on a turboprop plane and I don't recommend it. I also intend to never do it again. It's a slow and loud experience, the insistent hum of the engines reminding you of the inevitability of software and hardware failure. They happen. In fact, Paul Fenwick catalogs some of them quite expertly in his An Illustrated History of Failure. I remain confident, with no evidence whatsoever, that an excellent way to not meet with failure is to avoid turboprop planes, and I intend to heed my own counsel on this matter in the future.

An hour in LAX, then off to BOS. Real plane. Real sleep. Really good. After a briefish cab ride to my lodgings, I crashed for a few hours before heading out to get my hair done at theEl Coco Salon. The gentleman who gave me a cut and style had once worked at Yosh for Hair back in the day, when they were still up in San Francisco. He brought me coffee and we discussed a new fashion spread with Lindsay Lohan as Marilyn Monroe. We both agreed Lindsay didn't cut it. It was my best salon experience ever, hands down. I usually only get my hair done while I am in New Zealand, so yes, at best, once per year, but I think Boston may now be a better option. The flight time is considerably less and it would finally give me an excuse to fly JetBlue.

Monday morning, Drupalcon began. So many reunions, most of them not mine. So many Summer of Code students and mentors, so many friends I was stoked to see again. As usual, I'll leave the commentary on the sessions to those better versed in the milieu than me, but Dries' keynote was quite spectacular; it's particularly exciting to see that Usability is the watchword for Drupal 7. Now if I could only hunt down Anna Dirks and have her teach me how to make those mobile usability labs I saw her present on at GUADEC 2006, life would be even better. I've got it on the ever growing list. The Drupal as a GIS Mapping/Platform session was also quite spiffy, but then again I have a map fetish. I'm much better with the hallway track anyway.

Drupal Makes Sandwiches Happen!
Turns out that there were several GHOP students at the conference, and they invited me to be on their panel. I was truly honored to accept, so we met up at lunch time to grab some food and then plan for the presentation. We discovered that the lines for food were incredibly long, so we finally gave up and decided we'd simply power through and get food later. As we wandered through the lobby of the Boston Convention Center, Angie stopped to say hello to a lovely lady, who turned out to be one Suzi Arnold. Suzi invited us to head out for lunch, but upon hearing of our predicament promptly offered to bring lunch back for us. Have I mentioned how awesome Drupal people are?

We headed to the room for our panel discussion, which is where I discovered that Drupal apparently also makes pancakes happen. Or something. As a big fan of pancakes, I was deeply pleased. This prep was my first chance to really spend time with these folks, though I'd corresponded with several of them. Adam shocked me by being the third open source doctor I'd ever met, and since I never thought I'd meet one, I am now fairly sure there must be a secret manufacturing plant for them somewhere, probably tucked away quietly in the Midwest. Like Indianapolis. But that was the following week, this is still Boston.

I sit in utter amazement of the accomplishments of these students. In addition to other Drupal magic, Charlie Gordon made DROP happen. Michael Fogelman writes great docs and after interacting with him for just a few hours it was plain to me that he's got that rare skill that allows him to glean the necessary information from the uber-techie without causing undue irritation. It also strikes me that he doesn't ask 'stupid' questions; certainly never asked me any. Then there's Jimmy Berry, with that whole Click HeatMap and Version Control API for Git thing. Not to mention Dmitri Gaskin, who was too young to participate in GHOP so instead he mentored other students. And gave a session on practical JQuery. If these gentlemen weren't so inspirational, I'd be feeling terribly inadequate right about now.

I finally gave in and got a Flickr account. If you're interested, you can see pictures of some of these wunderkind and the few scenes I snapped in Boston here.

Monday night was my first meal in Boston's Chinatown, where I accompanied Robert for a dinner with some folks from the Knight Foundation. Family style dining and a spirited discussion about effective engagement when funding community Open Source projects ensued. In addition to good food and good conversation, I was surrounded by really great company, including the lovely Lisa Williams and Benjamin Melançon. The former, a Boston native, graciously organized a tour of her city for us visitors, though I wasn't able to accompany them; the latter generously lent me his jacket, as I'd underdressed for the walk back to the convention center after dark. Drupal, apparently, is also proof that chivalry is not yet dead. I spent a few minutes at the Monday evening conference party chatting with Lisa, but it was a bit loud so I knocked off to get some sleep.

Drupal Makes Pizza Happen!
So knowing that Drupal makes pancakes and sandwiches happen, it may come as no suprise to you that it also makes pizza happen. The Tuesday evening Acquia party venue wasn't conducive to the under-21s hanging out and hacking, so someone was kind enough to organize a GHOP BoF/Games night. We discovered that catering wouldn't be able to deliver food and the pre-arranged space at MIT was a long and cold walk away. Contingency plan one: find nearby pizza place, walk there, eat pizza, return to convention center.

One slight problem - the nearest pizza place, 1/3 of a mile away, couldn't seat ten people. I also suspect we had more than ten people, but people were happily wandering in and out so a firm head count was not forthcoming. Well, they could seat ten people, but really they had seating for eight people and we could squeeze in a few extra chairs. I hesitantly made a reservation. Short walk notwithstanding, it seemed suboptimal to wander out into the dark and snowy night to an uncomfortably small space. Hrm.

Contingency plan two: get food delivered. We'd heard this was a no-no, but apparently security didn't have a problem with it. Yay to Mr. of Chaos on that one, btw. I phoned Salvatore's again to cancel our reservation and ask about delivery. They didn't deliver. I mentioned that we had seven hungry genius kids desperate for food and asked if they had suggestions for other pizza places near the convention center that would deliver. A short on-hold moment later, the manager let me know that he'd go ahead and bring over our food order, no problem. Awesome. Bliss. Pizza, salad and pasta occurred an hour later. Life was good. If you are ever in Boston, patronize these people. They really made our night.

Satisfied that everyone was well fed and well entertained, I headed out for the Acquia party. With three floors of music on tap, clearly a good time was had by all. The best part, though, was hanging out with Bevan, stalwart GHOP mentor, Season of Usability student, and Open Source Kiwi. Open Source Kiwis ++.

The rest of the week is a bit of a blur to be honest, but memory leaks being what they are and the fact that it's been more than seven days.... Somewhere in there I gave my first keynote with Chris, and I think it went rather well. Many thanks to Adrian for the many good times out in the cold, to Sooz for being she who must get it done, to Rok for giving me juice right when my blood sugar had utterly depleted and to Kàroly for being a stalwart mentor and generally being awesome. Many thanks to everyone for making me feel welcome and a part of the wider goodness that is Drupal.

On Friday, I ended up at the MIT Stata Center, where I got to write on a real MIT chalkboard. Several actually. Somehow writing on them makes you feel like your IQ has increased by no less than 30 points. It was lovely. The rest, as they say, is history.

I'm no doubt leaving out a bunch of wonderful people from this narrative, like Addi and Geoff, but it's late and this is the second time I'm writing this novel. Chicago later. New Orleans, later, if ever. I still need a cafè au lait. Cafè du Monde, here I come.

The desrt and the Snow

Or the perfect end to an awesome week....

I left Boston on Friday afternoon not long after a lovely breakfast with Michael Hutchinson and a brief visit to Novell's Boston office, complete with a trawl through my inbox in their massage chair. Miguel was out and about at demoing some cool new Moonlight stuff, so sadly didn't get a chance to say hello to him. Spent my flight next to a fellow Drupalcon attendee, a gentleman working on putting together a start up focused on creating community oriented work/exploration spaces. I'm once again impressed to see so many civic minded business ideas coming to the fore.

An hour cab ride through Friday evening traffic later, I found myself at casa de Trow, and not long after eating an incredible burrito. To those who claim you cannot get decent Mexican food in the Midwest, I say "fie on thee." This place was kind enough to be open 24 hours a day and appeared to serve all manner of yummy breakfast items, though I wasn't able to indulge in any of those. They also brought us two kinds of salsa and some pretty sweet pico de gallo. The number of types of salsa presented to you, assuming of course the salsa is edible, is a great way for demarcating the so-so hole in the wall burrito joint from the truly awe inspiring purveyor of delicious carne asada. If the salsa is inedible, just leave immediately. Really. Your innards will thank you greatly, as will everyone you know, or at least everyone who likes you well enough to feel squeamish when you mention your recent bout of food poisoning.

Friday evening, it snowed. A bit. Not much. I nonetheless found it fascinating. Mind you, I've been in a snow storm, California style, which pretty much meant ten minutes of snow at Lake Tahoe, all of which melted immediately. Sure, California gets real snow, I just haven't experienced it. Which tells you that, comparatively speaking, we don't get enough snow to make it part of the every day life of the average Californian, and certainly not the average Silicon Valley denizen. This whole snow falls, sticks to ground, stays thing - utterly unrecognizable by me. The snowing subsided quickly, though, but left a beautifully clear, crisp evening in its wake.

Saturday morning, I worked out all the inevitable knots that come from couch surfing, then headed for breakfast at lula. We're spoiled for choice in the Bay Area for restaurants offering free range meat, organic and locally grown produce and all those other tasty treats that make food taste, um, good, but lula is truly a cut above. Hand made, organic and nitrate free sausage patties? Meyer lemon marmalade? Marvelous. Truly. Particularly since I'd been musing with a fellow attendee of MJ's birthday bash about making Meyer lemon marmalade, though since I'd never done it I thought it would be a more difficult experiment. Now I've got a good idea to work back from.

Headed into Google Chicago, as I had a few things to get done, and suddenly got a ping from desrt. In yet another example of why flying a certain airline whose name really ought to be "Disintegration," he'd missed his connection and was forced to stay overnight in Chicago on his own dime. Not good. He still had a few hours to kill before finally getting on his way to the GTK+ Berlin Hackfest, so he cruised downtown and we met up for a coffee. We realized we hadn't seen each other since UDS Mountain View, which is clearly far too long and provided clear rationale for a random, two hour round trip journey to the big-G.

Right about the time Ryan pulled up, it began to snow again. Really snow. Once again, I was enthralled. We spent the next two hours hanging out in the 8th floor mini-kitchen, raiding the snack bins for future travel needs and catching up on all things GNOME. While talking to Ryan is always a pleasure, I can't help but think it was made even more delightful by doing it next to the window, hot java in hand, snow falling outside, looking out over the city skyline at Marina City. Bliss.

I left Ryan on the Blue Line heading for ORD. Headed out for dinner with Ben and his wife Frances, who were kind enough to share their home with me that evening. In addition to relaxing and enjoying a lovely dinner, staying at their home gave me the opportunity to do more research on this whole 'parenting' thing. Everyone marvels at the energy of babies, but I suspect it has a great deal to do with the fact that a 'meal' for them consists of wandering back to their plate food over a two hour stretch, in between bouts of constructing train tracks from oversized pillows and playing fireman. Or whatever else it is that toddlers get themselves up to these days. Efficient fuel distribution mechanisms these little creatures have got. It continued to snow.

By the end of the evening, I was nearly done with Good Omens and was all read out, so I settled in to watch a few episodes of Torchwood, a.k.a. "totally without a doubt the best show ever." Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, was all right, though I am not sure how much I buy the ever mounting tension between Gwen and Captain Jack. Awesome Bond reference nonetheless. Why anyone thought Tom Jones' pathetically written and suboptimally sung Thunderball an acceptable substitute for Dionne Warwick's gorgeous croon escapes me. Sleeper was much, much better, reminiscent of the incredibly powerful Cyberwoman. I was about to nod off so I left off satiating my Torchwood cravings there.

I spent today in the pursuit of baby observation, purchasing knitting supplies, watching the new Doctor Who and crunching along the frozen ice on Chicago's streets, careful not to slip but fascinated by the feel of it beneath my feet. It continued to snow a bit, but by afternoon the sun shone brightly and a squirrel here and there bounded from fence post to tree, which Frances assured me is a sure sign of the approach of spring.

I even finished Good Omens. I know you'll be proud of me, Lynne, and yes I will now get more Terry Pratchett and, gasp, will even read it. More quickly than two months after you put it in my hands, no less.

I'm settled into my hotel now, looking forward to the coolness that will be the Open Source Team's All Hands meeting this week. Now, though, it's time to tuck myself into the sweet embrace of Goldfinger and get some sleep. Boston awaits until I have the head space to write about it meaningfully.

LugRadio Live USA & Jono's Recent Talk

Registration for LugRadio Live USA is now open, and I hope that anyone reading will be able to make it. It's shaping up to be an awesome two day show in the beautiful city of San Francisco, in the heart of the Federal Republic of Northern California. Google's Open Source Team, and by Open Source Team I mean Cat Allman and our colleague Kynan Dent, has been hard at work to make this show a reality. Please be sure to thank them when you see them at the Metreon.

I had the pleasure of hosting Jono Bacon for a tech talk when he visited a few weeks back to do a space tour, and would highly recommend checking out his talk Standing on the Shoulders of Giants. He makes some great points towards the end of the presentation about the damage done to healthy communities by the "noisy minority." Speaking as someone who has dropped out of more than one project due to poor behavior on the part of a few vocal participants, his remarks really hit home and were a great off-shoot of the material Ben and Fitz cover in their Poisonous People talk.

All too often people tend to shy away from confronting folks who pontificate a great deal, contribute little or nothing, but damage the community by derailing consensus and creating quarrels where none ought to be. This needs to stop. If you find yourself or your project dealing with this issue, Ben and Fitz have some great advice to help you deal with the problem. My recommendation is to simply point out to said noisy minority that you believe that their opinions are not widely shared and that the point of your community is to achieve consensus around common goals as opposed to creating divisions. If you find your remarks only championed privately, you might just want to move on to a healthier project.

I'll get 'round to posting highlights from DrupalCon Boston 2008, including my truly awesome lunch today with the crew from the Free Software Foundation, tomorrow. Or possibly later.

The Merry March Travels of LH

I hit the road again this Saturday, though this time I won't be leaving the States. Heading first to Boston, where I'll be speaking at DrupalCon 2008 along with Chris. I'm particularly looking forward to the GHOP panel and the Summer of Code BoF, as well as Dries' State of Drupal talk. Also curious to learn more about how the relationship between Drupal and Acquia works, especially how their business model, which is centered around community support, functions on a day to day basis. Of course, it's always great to see old friends, meet new people and share their stories. I can't wait to hear the story of how DROP came into being, and am planning to canvas all available GHOPers and GSoCers for suggested program improvements

Most exciting, though, is getting to see Angie again. It has been far too long.

The following week I'll be in Chicago for our team all hands meeting, followed by PyCon 2008. It's always a blast to see Ben, Fitz and Trow in their native habitat. The pizza is not bad either. If you haven't heard it yet, Ben and Fitz's podcast PC Load Letter is a must hear.

Chicago Engineering has grown a bit since the old days, and it will be nice to spend a bit more time getting to know the guys I hang out with on IRC. Should be fun to hang out in their new office space, too. I seem to recall rumors of floor to ceiling white boards....

On 18 March I head to NOLA, where I am going to top off four days vacation with a visit to Penguin Day New Orleans. Louis has already promised to take me to Lake Pontchartrain, along with Cafe du Monde. I have a lot of ideas about what I want to pack into those four days. There is just never enough time to spend in New Orleans, and I have not been back in over four years.

Having never been to a DrupalCon, PyCon or Penguin Day, these next three weeks should be quite interesting. If you should happen to find yourself at any of the above, please keep an eye out for me, come on up and introduce yourself.

Man, do I want a café au lait.