SCALE 6X Trip Report
by Tom Callaway
Sitting here in Boston, watching the rain fall on the snowpiles in 36
degree weather, I wonder exactly why I left LA? :)
SCALE 6X was one of the most fun, most interesting community shows that
I have attended in quite some time. Friday was a day of specialized
tracks, one for Open Source in Education, one for Open Source in
Healthcare, and one for Women in Open Source. Since the expo floor
wasn't open until Saturday, I actually got to attend some of these
sessions. In particular, I attended several of the Women in Open Source
sessions, specifically to try to gain some perspective about Fedora, and
what we might do to encourage more women to contribute. In discussions,
I discovered that one of the women in attendance was actually interested
in Fedora at one point, only to be treated incredibly rudely on the
Fedora IRC channel, and give up. I wish I could say that this shocked
me, but sadly, I could easily believe it. As a result, I'm starting work
on a "IRC Code of Conduct", for the users and the ops of #fedora
channels. There is no reason why the Fedora community cannot treat each
other with respect and dignity.
Later in the show, that same woman came to me, and showed me that she
had installed Fedora on her laptop. I hope that she is willing to give
us another chance.
I also got to attend a session on Drupal, which looks really amazing,
even if it is in PHP. :) After the sessions, some of the speakers
invited me to join them for dinner, which was a lot of fun, and
introduced me to some well known folks in the Open Source community.
There are a lot of amazing people in our community, and I'm glad to get
the opportunity to know them better.
On Saturday, the expo floor opened, and I got to meet Thomas Chung, who
helped me man the Fedora booth. Thomas was great, he provided posters,
stickers, DVDs and T-Shirts, plus he was willing to talk to all
visitors, and encourage them to try Fedora 8. We were right next-door to
Red Hat, which was an excellent opportunity for us to show unity. Some
people still have the wrong idea about how Fedora and Red Hat are
connected, and it is always good when we can show them that we are a
team, not competitors. The traffic on Saturday was amazing, I must have
talked to hundreds of people about Fedora, Open Source, and Linux. It
feels really great to be able to talk to people about the strengths of
Fedora, about how Fedora stands for the best ideals of Free and Open
Source Software, and to get others excited as well. I took some time on
Saturday to do some podcast interviews, then I grabbed Joe ‘Zonker’
Brockmeier and we sat down and talked for an hour about the possibility
of distribution collaboration. I am positive that as time goes by (he
just started!), we'll be able to work together more, as opposed to
constantly reinventing the wheel. At one point in our conversation, Jono
Bacon dropped by to say hello, it was a little strange to have
representatives from Ubuntu, Fedora, and OpenSUSE talking together, but
a positive thing. Jono jokingly suggested that we should come to the
Ubuntu Developers conference, and I offered to give a talk on making
quality RPMs. ;) I didn't get to attend any keynotes, or any sessions on
Saturday, but I was most interested in Sunday's sessions. After the show
closed, I stuck my head in the reception, where SCALE was raffling off
all sorts of goodies for those people who had gone around and filled
their "ticket" with the various stamps from the vendor booths. After
dinner, I held the Fedora BOF. It was the last BOF slot, and we were
directly competing with the "Weakest Geek" competition, so I wasn't
expecting a very big turnout. However, about 10 people showed up, and we
talked in depth about the features for Fedora 9, as well as what people
wanted to see. Clint "Herlo" Savage stuck around for the BOF, and when
it was over, we moved down the hall (next to the bucket of beer) and
just kept talking. In fact, we drew a crowd of folks, who ended up
talking until 1:30 AM. We probably would have kept talking, but I was so
exhausted I had to call it a night. I think that I enjoy those hallway
conversations most of all.
On Sunday, there were several presentations I wanted to hear, so I
worked the booth during the keynote, then left to listen to Karen
Sandler from the SFLC talk about Legal Organizational Issues for Free
Software Products. It reminded me of how lucky Fedora has it, to be
protected by Red Hat's legal umbrella, but also how much of a nightmare
the "Fedora Foundation" would have been for us. After the presentation,
I went to lunch with Liana Linden, who does a lot of the trademark and
licensing policy for Linden Labs. We had a very interesting discussion
about the similarities between our two projects. In fact, she inspired
me to start hacking on the Second Life viewer code again (I got it
compiled on rawhide, but it doesn't work right...). I spent the rest of
the day in the Fedora booth, talking to the folks who came towards the
end, then packed up to go home.
Some folks who I want to thank:
* Thomas Chung (next time, I promise, I will let you buy me lunch)
* Barton George at Sun (my very first podcast interviewer)
* Danese Cooper at Intel (thank you for inviting me to dinner)
* Stormy Peters at OpenLogic (I want to steal your slide technique)
* Chris Blizzard (snowboarding in Syria!)
* Dirk Morris (next time, tell us that your food never showed up)
* Cat Allman at Google (next time, I promise you can have a seatbelt)
* Peter Kronowitt at Intel (anyone who shares their sake with me is a
friend in my book!)
* Zak Greant (you have the smallest business card ever)
* Clint Savage (how exactly did we get from dirty jokes to Ron Paul?)
* Joe Brockmeier (Smolt, Licensing, and de-macro-ization!)
* Beth Lynn Eicher (it takes bravery to speak out, thank you again)
* Liana Holmberg (Jono is your fanboy.)
* Everyone else who I have forgotten, that made SCALE so much fun.
~spot
16 years, 2 months
Event Reports
by Max Spevack
For Red Hat, a new budget year begins on March 1.
Greg DeKoenigsberg, Jack Aboutboul, and I have been working hard to
secure *significantly* higher funding for community events and
Ambassadors than has existed in previous years.
But with increased funding comes increased pressure to prove that the
money was well spent.
To that end...
I would like to propose something for FAMSCO to consider, or if a policy
like this is already in place, I would like FAMSCO to reiterate that
policy and hold people accountable:
===
Anyone (regardless of whether they work for Red Hat or not) who
receives money from the Fedora budget to *attend or organize* an event
is required to produce an "event report".
The event report should consist of:
- one blog post per day with a description of what you did, the
atmosphere of the event in general, and pictures if they are available.
- a summary post to fedora-ambassadors-list at the end that provides
links to all the blog posts.
- the "leader" of that particular event should encourage all the other
Fedora folks who were there to post about it as well, and aggregate
their posts into the summary email to Fedora Ambassadors list.
- were any new contributors signed up during the event?
- the blog should be part of the Fedora Planet.
- this should be completed within 1 week from the end of the trip.
===
For examples, I would encourage people to look back at my blog posts
from LinuxTag or FOSDEM last year, or Eugene Teo's blog posts about LCA
just a week or two ago.
The reason why these reports should go on Fedora Planet is because there
are many people who read Fedora Planet who never will read
fedora-ambassadors-list and therefore more people will hear about the
event.
I would love if Thomas Chung and Spot would post some summaries of their
trip to SCALE. They are "senior" members of the Fedora community and I
would expect this from them regardless, but because this event was last
week, it is fresh in my mind.
Spot has already posted once about SCALE, but there has to be more!
What was the BOF that you did like, for example? Did we sign up any new
contributors?
Similarly, FAMSCO should expect to see a trip/event report from Jack for
Florida Linux Show soon.
Just something for folks to think about...
REMEMBER: The most important thing that Fedora Ambassadors does is
promote the Fedora brand, and recruit new members to our community. We
don't just want to recruit new Ambassadors -- we want to recruit new
people who will be packagers, artists, documenters, testers, etc. We
are looking to identify people who are excited about Fedora, and to give
them a personal introduction to the Fedora community.
One of the single best things that any Ambassador can do at an event is
help a potential contributor sign the CLA and edit his/her personal wiki
page. Then the new contributor will leave feeling like they are a part
of the community, and they will be ready to start contributing to Fedora
when they get home.
--Max
16 years, 2 months
Fedora 9 Always leads never follows
by Franz Robert
Hi,
I'm interested by some short texts or sentences about Fedora 9 new
features that could catch the attention of the press people. These might
be in the Fedora spirit I recall in the subject: Fedora always leads,
never follows.
What makes Fedora different in facts for users and what is really
important to say about F9 release (for ex.: vs Ubuntu current release ;
vs any other free/open offer).
I plan to send a press release WITH a live CD and a complete DVD to all
the computer media writers when it will time to (and why not a F9
tee-shirt?)
Any proposal is welcome and we can discuss it to set the right words in
the "perfect" press release*. We will keep an English one. Then any
ambassador or marketing group's member can translate for local use).
This subject could be in the marketing news list but I think ambassadors
should be closer to users, vendors and press. Finally, most of us are in
the marketing group!
Thanks to help in this brainstorm.
Franz
* A press release must be short, strait to the hot spots, easy to
understand and it have to highlight what really matter for the users.
So prefer "Fedora project strike again in Linux World with top of the
art release 9!" more than "Fedora project announce release 9!" (That
will be translated in magazines - if done - by something like "Another
release for Fedora Linux").
And, if this is possible, think about NINE best striking - 2008 feeling
- sentences.
After the title and the nine striking points, we need a short text,
about 3 or 4 lines they say "What is Fedora (at least a LINUX leading
OS)" ; "Who can/may use it and Why" ; "How to get it".
16 years, 2 months
LinuxTag hotel (readme if you will attend LT)
by Max Spevack
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraEvents/LinuxTag/LinuxTag2008/Rooms
Similar to last year, we are in the process of figuring out how many
hotel rooms we need to book for LinuxTag.
IT IS CRITICALLY IMPORTANT THAT YOU SIGN UP ON THIS PAGE IF YOU WILL
ATTEND LINUXTAG AND WANT A HOTEL ROOM.
Gerold will let people know what the deadline for signing up is --
Gerold, you can just reply to this email with any details I have missed.
Also like last year, once the final number of rooms is booked and we can
estimate the total cost, the Fedora Project will be able to inform
people of how much we can pay of the hotel bill. Last year, you will
remember that Fedora paid the entire hotel bill for LinuxTag. This
year, it will depend on the final cost. There is another conference in
Berlin the same days, and therefore it is already impossible for us to
stay in the Pegasus Hotel again.
Gerold has found a place that is reasonably priced (but more expensive
than last year), but that is also MUCH closer to LinuxTag than the
Pegasus was.
LinuxTag is going to be an excellent event this year. We have a nice
booth, we will have lots of swag, and a variety of talks.
Furthermore, we will have a "Fedora Ambassador Day" that will really
involve several night-time meetings of all the Ambassadors, in which we
will plan not only for LinuxTag, but also in which I will hopefully be
able to lead the creation of our plans for building the European Fedora
Community throughout the entire year.
Paul Frields, who has just taken over for me as the overall Fedora
Project Leader, will also be at LinuxTag this year. Starting with my
trip last year, it will now be tradition that the Fedora Project Leader
attends LinuxTag, since it is one of the most important shows in Europe.
I am really looking forward to seeing you all at LinuxTag again
this year.
Thanks,
Max
16 years, 2 months
Fedora Day 2008 Buenos Aires
by Pablo Barrera
Hi all,
Well, the year activities has begun in Latinamerica now, as you now, we have
summer here and year activities starts at march.
So before the FISL in porto alegre, where with the help of Rodrigo we will
bring the First Fedora Day in Buenos Aires, in April
or the first week in May.
Fedora Day will be a day of technical issues with the support of the
Technical Support Chief of Red hat Latinamerica, and the
president of Joomla! Cono Sur, that will bring and issue about using Joomla
in Fedora Servers as the speak of web design.
I would like to welcome to Javier Gabriel, the new Fedora Ambassador for
Argentina, ( Now we are 3).
If you wan to know more about the event check the spanish argentinian new
release
http://www.proyectofedora.org/argentina/?p=21
I will keep in touch with anticipation for requests DVds and things like
that
Fedorize yourself!
Pablo Barrera
16 years, 2 months
[Fwd: [ilugd] BITS Linux Users Club]
by sankarshan
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They seem to have a TechFest coming up http://www.bits-apogee.org/ : can
someone from Delhi help out here ?
~sankarshan
- -------- Original Message --------
Subject: [ilugd] BITS Linux Users Club
Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2008 02:46:18 +0530
From: Phaneendra <linuxfreak.me(a)gmail.com>
Reply-To: The Linux-Delhi mailing list <ilugd(a)lists.linux-delhi.org>
To: ilugd(a)lists.linux-delhi.org
Hello Everyone,
~ Iam Rama Krishna Phaneendra,doing my
B.Pharm(Hons) in BITS-Pilani,Pilani Campus.Our college is on of the top
institues in India,standing along side the IITs.I hereby wanted to bring to
your attention the following piece of Information.We have formed a community
called BITS Linux Users Club (BLUC).Our primary objective is to build and
sustain a strong community of Linux users in BITS.Our goal will be to
provide help and support to both new and old Linux users, helping in
installing and setting up Linux on computers, and encouraging the adoption
of the Linux Operating System on campus.
- --
http://www.gutenberg.net - Fine literature digitally re-published
http://www.plos.org - Public Library of Science
http://www.creativecommons.org - Flexible copyright for creative work
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16 years, 2 months
Re: [Ambassadors] LinuxTag hotel (readme if you will attend LT)
by Francesco Crippa
----- "Gerold Kassube" <gerold(a)lugd.org> wrote:
> [...]
> Pizza will be DEFINITLY a meal, but only with Spaghetti :-)
> We will definitly find a restaurant who serve this delicious meal to
> our Project Leader and the chair of FAMSCo ....
> [...]
mmmmm... pizza and spaghetti all together... It sounds pretty strange... Should I be worried about that? :-)
See you soon!
bye
Francesco
--
Francesco Crippa
http://people.byte-code.com/fcrippa
16 years, 2 months
Fedora EMEA Board Elections nominations | February 9th - February 21st
by Francesco Ugolini
Starting from today to February 21st you can nominate yourselves* for
the Fedora EMEA Boards election that will be held at FOSDEM 2008 on
February 23rd.
For more information and to nominate yourselves visit
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors/EMEA/BoardElections .
------
This is the first brick of a global and complex process to create
local organizations that will help ambassadors working better.
This entity born from the European community will after a long and
hard work made by great people who spent the last 3 year thinking
about a home for the ambassadors in Europe.
------
Some Important INFOS (please read it):
FAmSCo is here to help each ambassador, everywhere. If you need help
(getting resources, organizing local activities, planning FAD
meetings, creating a local entity etc...) tell us: we are here
everyday, 365 days on 365 (send an email to the M-L, to
famsco(a)fedoraproject.org or contact a FAmSCo member directly).
This is a project based on community effort, if someone need help the
community is here to give its support.
------
Regards
Francesco Ugolini
* see the requirements in the nominations wiki page
16 years, 2 months