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!

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.

Talks at FISL 10

Greetings from Porto Alegre, Brasil!

It's my second trip to Brasil and I'm already having a blast. Heading for dinner soon with Nanda, but just a quick update before I head out the door. I'm giving two talks at FISL 10: The 10th International Forum on Free Software. Tomorrow, I'll be talking about Google Summer of Code and hope that any all GSoCers at FISL will turn up and share their experiences with the audience. Talk starts at 13:00. On Friday, I'll be talking about Community Management Basics, and once again hope everyone can come by and share their collective wisdom.

We're also planning a GSoCer meetup after my talk tomorrow, and you can join the planning discussion in this thread.

I owe the world a write up on the Summer of Code BoF at Open Source Bridge. It will happen, really. I have notes. 

Leaving for Las Vegas

In case you missed the announcement, I'll be speaking at Joomla! Day Las Vegas tomorrow. The good folks from Aspiration Tech will be facilitating this day of unconferencing on all things Joomla!. I'm looking forward to seeing old friends, making new ones and talking about the fine arts of community management.

I'll be Denting and Tweeting from the conference, so if your curious about the events of the weekend, check in on me on identi.ca and Twitter.

I'm so excited to be heading out, I can almost forget how poorly I do in desert environs. Wish me luck and hope to see some of you there!

Pre-FOSDEM Fun

I'm arriving in Brussels a few days early, getting the old internal clock adjusted and catching up with some old friends. Most of the core team for Melange will also be coming to FOSDEM, so I'll be spending most of my time haunting the halls with them. If you have have questions about the new workflow application for Google Summer of Code come and find me and I'll introduce you to the development team.

On Friday, 6 February. I'll be heading to the EduCamp organized by the Mozilla Foundation folks. Should be a great meetup for those of us interested in seeing FLOSS development added to the standard academic curricula, as well as a chance for us to talk about more ways to scale some of the burgeoning efforts in this area. Even if you can't attend the camp, I'd encourage you to follow our discussions on the wiki amd contribute your thoughts. For those interested in learning more about some of the FLOSS in Education initiatives out there, there's an excellent list of resources available, also courtesy of Mozillans.

And let's not forget the traditional Friday night beer blast. I'm usally not a big fan of beer, but watching the improved beer distribution algorithm - version 3.1 to be exact - in action should make for one exciting evening. Looking forward to dusting off those old armchair anthropologist skills....

17 Days to FOSDEM

Well, 16 according to the conference website, but I'm in California.

I'll be giving my first keynote presentation at this year's FOSDEM conference on Large Scale Community Management. 2009 will be my second FOSDEM and I'm excited about giving this talk. I speak about Google Summer of Code quite a bit, and this keynote promises to be one of the first inside looks at all the work done behind the scenes to make the program happen each year. It'll be a great opportunity to give some well deserved accolades to all the unsung heroes and heroines that have made the Summer of Code what it is today.

On a more personal note, I'm particularly excited about having the opportunity to share some of the lessons I've learned as the Community Manager for this large and incredibly diverse global group of FLOSS developers. I think my journey into the world of FLOSS was quite different than most, and writing this talk has helped me be more introspective about the skills I brought with me when entering the foray and the skills I've gained along the way. I'm looking forward to sharing my story right alongside the story of Google Summer of Code and using my experiences to better inform folks about how to run their own community outreach campaigns and best welcome new contributors to their projects. I'm hopeful that my exploration of why I've chosen the career path that I have and why I have been successful in doing so will be a source of inspiration. If not, at least there will be some pictures of cats and other merriment.

I'll be around for the entire conference and the pre-FOSDEM party. I'm pretty hard to miss, so please do come by and say hello and, if we haven't met yet, introduce yourself!

2008 Nonprofit Software Development Summit

The good folks at Aspiration Technology are once again creating their magic with the second Nonprofit Software Development Summit. Given current economic conditions looking rather sucktastic to say the least, I'm looking for inspiration these days. And I find I'm really excited about the power of FOSS to help organizations that have limited IT resources to accomplish their goals. Pragmatism, accompanied by noble goals, is unstoppable. Provided there is action.

That's where the crew at Aspiration comes in. I go to a fair number of conferences. I spend most of my time with the hackers, documenters, artists, user experience researchers, users and partners of people in FOSS, and I know what motivates them to get things done. Hearing from people like Gunner, Lena, Michelle and San, people want to go GSD. (There are a whole host of other folks who belong on this list, as well; you'll find their names among those partners collaboratively developing the summit agenda.) Every time I go to an Aspiration led event I leave refreshed and inspired. And I get more good things done.

I'll be giving a talk about Google Summer of Code™ and how Google's support of the participating projects has helped provide tools to the non-profit world. I want it to be more of an open discussion and to find out what the non-profit world wants from FOSS developers.

In so many situations, I think we lose momentum because there are so few people who can translate between the divide of, for the sake of brevity, users and hackers. You know, those people who think their computer is, at best, a tool with many inconveniences. These are smart people. They are just not you - they do not breathe it, live it, love it, feel it in their fingertips the way you do. They want to accomplish a task and they don't have much of a budget to do it on. You can help with that. Though you likely need someone to help you help them figure out what they want. Then again, you may be one of those less-rare-than-previously-thought-but-still-rare-nonetheless social geeks who really digs talking to people. If you are, you should totally come. If you are one of those people who is good at getting people to geek out together when they are in totally different disciplines, you should totally come. I think we will learn a lot from one another.

Steal this Video: Stephen Fry & GNU's 25th Birthday

Peter Brown asked me to mention this video on my blog, and I'm horribly delinquent. That being said, I will write about Drupalcon Szeged and Hungary later. Also DjangoCon 2008, which a team of stalwart volunteers and I are hosting at the Googleplex this weekend. First international Django conference, ever. They're having beers now at the Tied House, and it promises to be a fantastic second day tomorrow.

And stepping back from that utter tangent, the video. If you're an Anglophile like me and adore The Black Adder and Fry and Laurie as I do, you simply have to watch this video - Stephen Fry wishing the GNU operating system a Happy 25th birthday. It's just as thrilling as watching Terry Jones discuss Medieval siege warfare in Crusades, but then again I suspect more people I know find British comedians loving Free Software more compelling than said comedians being experts in Medieval History. Yes, Terry Jones is a trained Medievalist.

If you're looking for a well reasoned, articulate explanation of Free Software that you can show to your Dad, Mom, Cousin and all those friends of the family who haven't a clue what you do at that computer of yours all day, let alone what your value system is surrounding it, then you're going to be equally elated.

The Software Freedom Day organizing team have also added the video link to their website front page. I think it's fantastic that such a cogent exploration of Free Software is available before the SFD this year, as well; it's a great resource for local teams to show during their events.

And speaking of those fighting the good fight for Free Software, James Vasile asked me to spread the word about the Software Freedom Law Center's upcoming NYC Software Freedom Day Reception. If you can attend, I really urge you to go. I have learned a great deal about Free Software law and what it takes to effectively run a software non-profit from James, and if he's any indicator of your would-be company for the evening you are guaranteed to leave both excited and enlightened.

Here are the details (quoting James' mail):

The Software Freedom Law Center cordially invites you to the 2008 NYC Software Freedom Day Reception! Industry leaders, lawyers, advocates and hackers alike will be gathering to commemorate and celebrate the state of the movement; from the inception of the GNU Project 25 years ago to the present day, the lives of millions of people all around the world have been forever changed by software freedom.

More information about Software Freedom Day can be found at
http://softwarefreedomday.org/about

When: Saturday, Sept. 20th from 6pm to 9pm.

Where: Limewire is hosting us in their rooftop garden at 377 Broadway, between White St. and Franklin St. It's just a few blocks south of Canal. http://maps.google.com/maps?q=377+broadway+10013

Activities will include guest speakers from around the movement, as well as music and a raffle, with a focus on mixing, meeting, and greeting. The reception is a rooftop affair, providing ample time and space to celebrate, meet new people and reconnect with old friends.

RSVP required to: rsvp@softwarefreedom.org
We look forward to seeing you there!

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.

FLOSS Flyover

I mentioned yesterday that I'd post about all the latest in the world of FLOSS that's been on my mind lately. Here's the laundry list:

The Google-O'Reilly Open Source Awards: After a bit of cajoling and nag mail (read: expert geek herding), we've nearly arrived at the list of winners for 2008. Awesome list of nominees this year and no, we won't tell you who won until OSCON.

Open CourseWare and Open Source in education are topics near and dear to my heart, so imagine my pleasure when this list of Linux Open CourseWare floated through my inbox (via the LinuxChix Grrltalk mailing list). LH sez check it out, both the site and the list.

I mostly talk about Open Source programs for students on the Google Open Source Blog, but I'd like to give a shout out to the folks at the OpenUsability for organizing another Season of Usability. Fantastic stuff, and many a former Summer of Code student involved I might add. I'm so excited that this meme continues to spread - while we're on the subject, check out the Haiku Code Drive - and it means a great deal to me that I have the opportunity to contribute to an effort whose effects are yet to be understood, but are far reaching indeed. Life is good.

Speaking of said meme, via the NOSI list about a month ago I saw a call go out for proposals and support for the Freedom Summer of Code, a program to get students designing software for advocacy campaigns and other "radical tech." There have been times when folks wonder why Summer of Code doesn't have an overt social justice component to it and the simple answer is that the program is about code. The more complex answer is that there's no effective way for our team to take a position on which social justice and world saving mission is better than another, so we focus on helping Free and Open Source projects get useful code written. Then other folks can use that code for whatever good they deem most worthy. I've got an email into the organizing team to find out how their call for student proposals went, as they stopped taking submissions on 24 May.

Speaking of Open Source as a catalyst for social change and a corner stone of the Open Culture movement - yet another topic near and dear to my heart - check out the awesome work being done by the folks at the Textbook Revolution project. The site recently relaunched and there are some great resources for finding Open CourseWare. The accompanying Stingy Scholar Blog also rocks.

I may live to regret this offer, but if anyone is looking into doing a Summer of Code like mentoring program, let me know. I may have some useful guidance to offer you. Free and Open Source software/culture projects only please.

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.

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.

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.

It's Officially Hot in Here...

Google Summer of Code 2008 is on!

Spread the word, hang out with us in #gsoc on Freenode and apply, apply, apply.

Now I'm going to go relax with Ben and hang out with Pinkerton.

Life is good.

Musings on LCA & Back to Real Life

I said I'd post my thoughts on linux.conf.au 2008, so here they are. The program was excellent. I'll leave it to those better versed than I to comment on the technical aspects, but I particularly enjoyed the LinuxChix Mini-Conf and Elizabeth Garbee's Introduction to Open Source Animation, complete with audience accessible clay figurines. All the Keynotes were great; Stormy Peter's "Would You Do It Again for Free?" is real food for thought given some of the discussions going on around money in open source. Open Day rocked. Many thanks to the Olliver family for the open source dance mat and RepRap ring love. I didn't get to hear from Karl about his trip to Papua New Guinea, but I did get a chance to bond with Aaron over a power strip. Sharing free couch with James, James and Pascal was a definite highlight. Adam, Brad, Joel, Lee, Sam and Tim, it is always wonderful to see you. A couple of pleasant evenings were spent in the pursuit of dancing. I petted possums in the park next to my hotel with Cat and Lynne. Melbourne is a lovely city.

It was great to see the usual suspects, and to meet many more of you at the 'Student' Party. I hope you had as much fun getting early evening gelato as I did. Lemon gelato is just so awesome, particularly in a slightly humid atmosphere. If I asked you to ping me, please do; I'd love to hear from you. Ditto if you were promised t-shirts.

Finally, I was tremendously impressed by the work of the 2008 organizing committee. Their care and passion really showed through in the little details, from making the Penguin Dinner open to all attendees to providing refillable insulated water bottles. I saw many fewer plastic bottles in the waste bin than I'm used to seeing at conferences. I loved the juxtaposition between the cathedral for the Speaker's Dinner and the bazaar for the Penguin Dinner. I saw one of the greatest demos for women in tech ever - ask me about it next time you see me.

I won't be back to LCA next year, as I'll be in Auckland getting married, then honeymooning. No doubt paths will cross again sooner rather than later.

It's good to get back home, though. I spent Saturday and Sunday puttering around the house, enjoying my home brewed coffee and rearranging the bathrooms, putting away the last bits of what I'd packed for my past three week jaunt. And doing tons of laundry. As much as housework lacks excitement at the best of times, when I have been gone awhile I love how doing it grounds me and puts me back in sync with being home. Ben and I finally ripped out the nasty old shower doors in our bathroom on Saturday evening. Bliss. But now I must determine what type of shower curtain really defines me as a person. That's much more complex.

My best guy friend, David Wilkins, came over with his husband Gerardo last night. We had what our guests were gracious enough to christen Kung Pao Vegetable & Citrus Chicken Stir Fry. It tasted great, I just need to work out the amount of fruit juice in the sauce. Ben's General Tso's Chicken still beats any of my Asian inspired dishes any day.

Whilst not puttering about or entertaining, I watched The Living Daylights and Equilibrium. Live and Let Die is playing in the background now.

I spent much of today writing ~1K lines of HTML for what should be part of the first changelist I check in at work. 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!

Wrapping Up GHOP

So I'm waiting to blog about the cool thing I mentioned yesterday because I don't want to scoop someone who shall remain nameless - *cough* - limi - *cough* - so I'll just do a quick post to celebrate the close of GHOP.

This contest has been a labor of love for several months by many members of the open source community and I cannot thank them enough for all of their hard work to make this effort possible. All of you rock!!

On a final note, I want all the student participants to know how much respect you've garnered in just a short time. I consistently hear from our mentors how blown away they are by everything you've accomplished. I sincerely hope all of you stick around and continue contributing to open source. I assure you there will be an endless supply of free and low-cost t-shirts in it for you.

I'm going to take a well deserved break. Until tomorrow morning. The Apps Architecture folks are in town.

I am Iron Woman

This has been an insane seven days, but also seven of the most incredible.

Last Sunday, I boarded a plane in Melbourne. I think my flight was supposed to leave at 13:00. I am also pretty confident it didn't. I know there was a four hourish delay in Sydney, but I also spent those four hours engrossed in a, shall we say, less than Western canon status novel. I also don't really remember those four hours. I'd been traveling for 3 weeks and three days at that point, returning home after linux.conf.au, but I do remember Grant telling me more about PA-RISC, making balloon animals and giving me mini-chocolate squares. Grant, you're awesome. :)

Ben picks me up at SFO.

We drive home.

I decompress.

Eventually, I sleep.

Life is good.

The next day around 10:00 I boarded a plane for LAX. A flight and a shuttle ride later, Ben and I settled into our hotel. I caught up on mail. We had steak dinner with Cat. Pleasant fare, pleasant company. It was a good night.

Walked - that's right, walked in LA - to Disneyland from our hotel room. We were in the park from 11:00 until 01:30 the next day. There weren't very many people there in general, but after 20:00 the park was almost literally deserted. I think most of our co-workers were at California Adventure. We went for many rides, no waiting.

We rode the Matterhorn and Big Thunder Mountain Rail Road twice in a row. We went through the Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean seven or eight times each. Indiana Jones is overrated. If Finding Nemo is any indication, I would do very poorly in a submarine. I love Ben because he enjoys the Enchanted Tiki Room right along with me.

Up at 5:45 on Wednesday. On shuttle to the airport in 20 minutes, finally home a little over four hours later. Ran into the office for a quick meeting. Went back home. Crashed. Bliss....

Thursday rolls around. We announce the Grand Prize Winners for Highly Open Participation tomorrow, so I spend the rest of the week getting everything together we need to make that happen. Thursday, Friday and Saturday are all about feeling the motivate love. On Friday morning, I pop in to make sure the Plone Strategic Planning Summit kicks off, then go back to making other things happen.

On Saturday, I succumbed to Steve. Yes, I bought an iPhone. The worst part is, I love the darn thing. I mean really love it. I don't particularly think the techie obsession with gadgets is necessarily a good thing^TM and refuse to become emotionally involved with my accessories and tools. I still can't change my own battery. This device is still unbelievably awesome. The UI is unbelievably intuitive. Ship of Fools melodiously steals thoughts of time away from me as I pound away at the keyboard, moving messages, making things happen. Sweet bliss.

I still feel dirty, though. Curse you, Steve, for making beautiful products that function so well. Please open source everything Apple as quickly as possible so that I can use your devastatingly sexy toys sans guilt. I will forever thank you and recommend you to all my friends.

As a random aside, there are days I think the only one on the internet that you can believe in is Fake Steve. You have been warned, people.

I'd talk about today, but that'd be eight days and that's too long for a recap. Besides which, the truly awesome things that happened today I can't blog about just yet. Tomorrow though....

So, to come full circle, I mentioned that I started last week returning from LCA, and I'll write more about my experiences later. I do want to give a shout out to two women who were kind enough to share their thoughts with me, Stormy Peters and Sarah Stokely. Conversing with both of them gave me some valuable insights on self-perception, the pull between the professional and personal when blogging about open source and a whole host of other topics. Thanks to both of you ladies for your time. I'll actually be blogging regularly now.

Oh yeah, and I finally got Slashdotted.

Busy couple of weeks ahead. Life is good.

The Pep Talk

Yes, yes, yes, I know I haven't written in forever. I'll take a week off one of these days and write up the last N months.

In any case, I'm taking a moment to actually blog because I hope it will be useful.

I've talked to a few people, and I'm hearing that some students aren't planning to apply to Google SoC this year because they think their applications won't be good enough or, worse yet, that they can't measure up to the past successes of their friends who have already been in the program. Needless to say, hearing this is a total bummer.

So, I work with a former Slashdot editor, the Chairman of the Apache Software Foundation, two incredibly talented and witty Subversion developers, the former maintainer of Beagle, the PhD who founded the ArgoUML project, a Samba maintainer and the guy who is a GCC dev and a Subversion developer and an intellectual property attorney. And those are just the people with whom I share a team IRC channel.

No intimidation factor here, clearly. </sarcasm>

So the pep talk:
I feel your pain. But, say it with me people - open source developers, brilliant though they may be, are just people too. Sure that's cliched, but you'll soon discover that they also require hideous amounts of caffeine, love pizza and yum cha and are all for free as in beer. And freedom. And beer.

If you're struggling with your ideas, talk to the developers working on the projects that interest you. Chances are they really want want to talk to you. Hang out in the projects IRC channel, post to the forums, and talk to your classmates for help in writing your proposal.

Start interacting with some project communities. You might find out that you're talking to a member of their Board of Directors who had no experience developing open source software two years ago. Or that your potential mentor was a student last year, and he was also intimidated as hell about applying. Don't be so hard on yourself and don't be self-defeating. Get your ideas out there and feel the open source love. :)

I'll be around in IRC if anyone feels like they need a personalized version of the pep talk.