| community leadership summit |
[Jul. 17th, 2010|10:30 pm] |
I was unable to attend last year's inaugural Community Leadership Summit, but when Karsten suggested that we combine this year's event with both OSCON and some face to face team meetings and goal review, we decided that it would be a great way to get the whole team together, and to ensure that several of Red Hat's community folks were present at the event.
Karsten, Ian, Mel, Robyn, John, and I attended some of the same sessions today, and I was frustrated when we sat down for dinner and I started to express my general disappointment (not with the event itself -- credit and thanks to the organizers) with the results of two sessions that I attended.
Once I was forced to articulate my problems, it became clear what they were:
I felt that the word "community" was very overloaded in the context of this event, and that there were a number of people who participated in online communities, but that there was a wide diversity of what those communities do, and what (if any) goals those communities have. For instance, an online community that is basically just a group of people sharing advice with each other has an entirely different set of dynamics than a community like Fedora that has specific goals, a schedule that results in tangible deliverables, and specific metrics by which success and failure are measured.
In the context above, a conversation about "conflict resolution in online communities" can be a bit frustrating when the majority of the people speaking stop their thinking at "well, just remove dissenters from the mailing list". Within a community like Fedora, that sort of draconian action would only make the situation worse, because healthy dissent and debate is one of the values that the Fedora community exhibits (possibly to an extreme, but that's a different blog post).
Another frustrating session was pitched as "resolving conflict between corporate developers and community developers". I had several problems with this session, the greatest of which was that the entire session took as a given the fact that (a) conflict of that sort must exist and couldn't be reduced or eliminated and (b) the community's influence on roadmap or feature desires were risks to be mitigated or hedged against.
This flies in the face of all the community experience that Red Hat has engaged in, which has demonstrated that being a part of an active open source engineering community not only speeds innovation, but greatly reduces the risk of a small pocket of engineers developing a product or chunk of code that no end users are interested in purchasing or building upon.
I spoke up in the session -- which was attended by several people who stated that their task was to grow new communities around a particular technology -- and tried to get them to talk about what the fundamental goals were. Why is a corporation deciding to invest in a community? It must mean that there is something they hope that community can offer that otherwise would be lacking? Sadly, no real conversation came out of this.
In summary, I felt like there were several different pockets of people at this event (which is fine -- diversity is good), but that everyone was talking past each other, rather than finding common ground.
As Karsten reminded me -- don't file a bug without offering a fix. As such, my plan for tomorrow is to pitch a session that tries to rectify this. I'm going to suggest a conversation that is about not only identifying the goals of communities, but that also discusses the analysis that should be done before saying "yes, this is a task for which community building would be a useful tactic." I'll borrow from bits of talks and presentations that we've been putting together inside of Red Hat and Fedora for years now. We'll see how it goes. |
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| hitting the road |
[Jul. 12th, 2010|07:56 pm] |
Ian and I hit the road tomorrow, where we will meet up with Karsten and Mel for a few days of team meetings. This will be the first time since last October that all of us are in the same place, and it will give us a chance to see where we stand on our goals, and to ensure that we've got our priorities aligned, and a good plan for the future of the team.
We'll also be attending the Community Leadership Summit and OSCON, along with a number of Fedora community members. Mel and Karsten are both presenting at OSCON -- you can see their abstracts here and here.
Everyone on the team will be blogging about what we're up to this entire week, and sharing that on various blogrolls (Planet Fedora and Planet TOS), and we hope to also generate at least one or two articles for opensource.com. |
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| hup holland |
[Jul. 2nd, 2010|12:13 pm] |
I certainly miss being in Amsterdam today, but I wore my orange Dutch jersey to work. |
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| FPL++ |
[Jun. 29th, 2010|11:15 pm] |
I feel like an old man today, since I'm now the ex-ex-Fedora-Project-Leader.
This post is about the conincidence that Jared's start date at Red Hat and FUDCon Santiago are so close together, that pretty much Jared's first act as FPL will be to get on a plane and attend that event.
I think back a few years to when I got started as the FPL. Some of the relationships that I formed very early on in my days on the job were with folks like Gerold and Joerg and Chitlesh in Europe, and because of that, I always had a bit of a soft spot in my heart for the EMEA community, because there were personal relationships and friendships there that I wanted to maintain. It helped me to realize that on the list of FPL priorities, attention to the global community needed to be high up on it, and we put some things in place to help build community leadership not just in Europe, but in a way that could be replicated worldwide.
If my early experiences led to me always giving a bit of extra attention to contributors in Europe (which culminated with an opportunity to live over there for a while, and has sadly dropped off since I've moved back to Raleigh), I'm hoping that Jared's early experiences with folks in the LATAM community will pay dividends in that part of the Fedora Project over the next few years.
In short, I'm glad to see our new FPL jumping in head first and heading to a part of the world that the last FPLs have not been able to get to, and I think we will see some great results. |
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| southeast linux fest 2010 |
[Jun. 15th, 2010|10:07 pm] |
This was my first trip to Southeast Linux Fest, and I continue to be really impressed by most of the regional Linux Fests that I have attended. SELF was excellent, as was Texas Linux Fest earlier this year and Ohio Linux Fest a couple of years ago. SELF's entire organizational team, which includes Fedora Ambassador David Nalley, deserves a ton of credit and a round of applause.
Fedora had a very nice presence at SELF this year, with something happening on each of the event's 3 days.
Friday
Ian and I drove down from Raleigh, arriving early afternoon. We used the car ride, and the fact that we shared a hotel room (protecting shareholder value for Daddy Shadowman) to discuss some of the work that Ian is doing as an intern this summer.
We arrived with plenty of time to join the Fedora hackfest. Ian and Eric led the hackfest, which focused on the Fedora Documentation Project and the Fedora wiki. There was a decent amount of work going on about improving the process of joining Fedora Documentation, some of which is already completed on our wiki.
I eventually ducked out of the hackfest, and had two long conversations -- one with Michael DeHaan and one with Paul Frields.
My last activity of the evening was to practice a few bits of my keynote speech.
Saturday
A very busy second day at SELF. Paul gave a talk about Fedora 13 and our four foundations. Ian gave a talk about the statistics work that he's doing in the Fedora Project, and Dan Walsh spoke about SELinux.
I practiced my keynote a bit more, and had a late lunch while watching the end of the USA vs. England World Cup match.
My keynote itself went well. There was a very large audience left at the event, even for a 5:00 PM keynote. My estimate would be somewhere around 300 or more. I'm a tough grader, and I give myself a B+ or an A-. A bunch of people who bumped into me at the social event Saturday night said they enjoyed the talk, and folks told me that there was some nice feedback on Twitter. It was an honor to be asked to deliver the keynote, and when video of it shows up, I'll link to it.
The Saturday night social event was a lot of fun, and gave me a chance to hang out with other Fedorans, including Robyn and Steve.
Special shout out to Ben Williams, who won both a fancy Android phone and a Pogo Linux server in the closing raffle. I also want to say a special thank you to Jim Brady, who gave me a bag of coffee beans that he roasts personally. The bag had a sticker on it that said "sudo make coffee".
Sunday
I spent several hours on Sunday at the Fedora Activity Day, which was a combination of Q&A, presentations, exercise in bug triage and bug filing, and general information session for folks who want to know more about Fedora.
I've got a lot of things to catch up on as this week progresses, but Southeast Linux Fest was a good event, and definitely a worthwhile trip. |
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| nerdy odds and ends |
[Jun. 9th, 2010|05:08 pm] |
For folks who are looking for a nice introduction to Python:
I came across Google's Python Class today, which is available under the CC-BY license. Seems like most of the heavy lifting to put all of this together was done by one of my college professors.
For folks who are looking for something to do in South Carolina this weekend:
Come to Southeast Linux Fest, which is an event that has a lot of ties to the Fedora community, not the least of which is that David Nalley is one of the event's organizers.
Yours truly is of this year's keynote speakers. Fedorans Paul Frields (a keynote speaker last year), Ian Weller, and Dan Walsh will also be speaking, and we're having a Fedora Activity Day for which I'm told over 100 people have registered. |
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| if i say 2 + 2 = 5, it doesn't make it true |
[Jun. 2nd, 2010|11:10 pm] |
Any sports fan who has ever argued against replay needs to simply acknowledge that they are wrong, and politely concede the point.
I am so tired of watching different leagues completely butcher important calls because they refuse to use replay when it's needed.
And baseball purists, spare me the arguments about the length of a game. You allow pitchers and batters to wander around for 60 seconds between every single pitch, but can't spend the same amount of time once or twice a game to get the call right?
Getting a critical call right should ALWAYS be the top priority. Massive credit to the NHL for reviewing every single goal that is even slightly questionable during the playoffs.
In the past 6 months, we've seen Ireland get robbed of a spot in the World Cup and we have seen a perfect game in baseball be denied, both because the Powers That Be don't think it's important to MAKE THE RIGHT CALL, and to use the available technology in order to do so.
A runner being safe or out is not subjective. Neither is a soccer ball touching a player's hand or not. These things are facts -- truths that simply need to be acknowledged. These things either happened or they didn't. The opinion of one particular umpire or referee doesn't change a truth.
There is enough ambiguity in life without introducing more of it needlessly -- in sports, or in any activity.
UPDATE: It happened again, this time in the World Cup. |
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| 2010 fedora scholarship |
[Jun. 2nd, 2010|10:00 pm] |
Red Hat's Community Architecture team started the Fedora Scholarship program in 2008 as a way to recognize the fact that we were seeing superb contributions to the Fedora community coming from high school students, and to reward and incentivize those contributions.
2010 was the third year of the program, and by far the most difficult for the selection committee.
As you've probably already read, Ian Weller is the 2010 recipient. But what you might not know is that we also awarded two honorable mention awards this year, and the Fedora Project will be making contributions the the freshman year tuitions of Ryan Rix and Sebastian Dziallas.
Congratulations to all three of these impressive students. I'm certainly glad that I didn't have to compete with them when I was applying for college!
Students who are interested in the 2011 Fedora Scholarship should watch this page. |
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| 4 fedora contributors and 40 pounds of pork |
[May. 21st, 2010|12:30 am] |
I made the trip from Raleigh to Ames, Iowa today for our Fedora Activity Day (which is really a weekend) related to North American Ambassador stuff for the rest of 2010.
Nothing really remarkable to write about regarding the trip itself, but it was really nice to get re-connected face to face with a few contributors -- John Rose, Dennis Gilmore, and Larry Cafiero.
John was kind enough to pick me up at the airport, and on the ride to his house we talked a bit about the current Fedora elections, and some of the Fedora Project's "current events", by which I mean a lot of the long discussion threads that have been on the advisory-board list (What is Fedora's current vision? What should that vision be? Does Fedora have a target audience? Does it need one?), as well as sharing some thoughts around how the perspectives and potential answers to these questions vary greatly, and those answers aren't even consistent based on larger organizations. Different Red Hatters have strong opinions about this. Different parts of Red Hat as a collective would give different answers. Folks who work for other companies but whose job is to work on Fedora all have different answers, as well as the individual volunteers. Some of those answers may be similar, but the simple fact is that there are far too many constituencies, and trying to argue it all out on mailing lists is doomed to failure.
Dennis and I had a similar conversation (though slightly more technical in nature) in John's kitchen, while Dennis applied a dry rub to FORTY POUNDS of pork that will cook all day on Friday for consumption on Saturday. Fortunately, a few more Fedora contributors will have shown up by then, which means I'll probably only be personally accountable for the consumption of 3-4 pounds of pork on my own. |
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| iskme.org |
[May. 14th, 2010|10:12 am] |
If you haven't been to the website for the Institute for Knowledge Management in Education, you should take a quick look at it, because long-time (and now former) Red Hatter and Fedora leader Greg DeKoenigsberg is their new CTO.
It has been such a privilege to work with Greg over the years, and while it's certainly sad to see him leave Red Hat, I find motivation in the fact that he's following his passions. Greg is a dear friend, mentor, leader, and co-worker, and I wish him nothing but success and satisfaction in his new role. |
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| random bits of old fedora swag |
[May. 4th, 2010|09:17 pm] |
I was going through some boxes the other day, and I came across a few rare Fedora items.
I've got what I think is the last pair of Fedora flip-flops, which were made in 2006, and are so big, they probably only fit someone who plays in the NBA. Kevin has large feet and expressed interest, and as such, they are now being shipped to him.
I've got what I think is the last Fedora travel mug, which is so old, that is has the original Fedora logo on it. Josh promised to share photos of him drinking from this mug, so it is now being shipped to him.
I've got a few random CDs and DVDs from Fedora 5 - 11, which are useful to people who like to make sure they have 1 CD of every release. If anyone wants one, let me know. |
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| thinking about our LATAM community today |
[Apr. 23rd, 2010|01:49 pm] |
Tomorrow is FLISOL (Festival Latinoamericano de Instalación de Software Libre), which is a day of FOSS events all across the region, and Fedora's provided resources to a number of our LATAM community members who are organizing events.
I hope everyone has good events, and I'm glad to see that as a community we've used FLISOL to really spread some resources around the region. I hope we can keep that energy up leading into our LATAM FUDCon this year in July. |
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| deep in the heart of texas |
[Apr. 8th, 2010|09:07 pm] |
I'm heading to Texas Linux Fest tomorrow, so my email and IRC availability will be a bit low until I'm back in Raleigh on Tuesday.
A few quick thank yous:
* To Greg, for being a sounding board and his generally-brilliant-self while helping to assemble what became the talk that I'm giving this weekend, and that he's giving a version of next week at POSSCON.
* To Mel and Matt Jadud for some advice, ideas, and constructive criticism of early versions of aforementioned talk.
* To Matt Domsch for hosting a pre-event dinner at his home on Friday night. |
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