| florida linux show |
[Oct. 29th, 2009|12:06 am] |
The Fedora presence at any given event can vary greatly, depending on the rationale for attending the event.
At one end of the spectrum is something like a FUDCon or a FAD -- an event that is entirely Fedora-focused, and that will usually have a significant getting-stuff-done theme, whether it is development, design, documentation, packaging, or testing.
In the middle of the specturm are the events that we target in different regions of the world that have a pretty signficant Fedora presence. Events like FOSDEM, FISL, Southeast Linux Fest, or Utah Open Source Conference -- we typically have a Fedora booth, a bunch of Ambassadors organizing the event, and a number of other contributors who are speaking, participating in a hackfest, etc. The conference serves a dual purpose of spreading the Fedora message and allowing Fedora contributors to have valuable face time.
The opposite end of the spectrum is an event that is something of a target of opportunity, or for which the Fedora presence is one specific thing. My attendance at the Florida Linux Show last weekend was an example of this kind of an event. I wore my Fedora Ambassador shirt, and I discussed Fedora 12, and the general rules and operations of the larger Fedora Project, but my reason for being at the event was in direct service to Red Hat's sales folks in the region, as opposed to an event that was organized through the Ambassadors processes.
Red Hat was the title sponsor of the show, and several of our consultants and solutions architects were on hand giving pretty technical talks about specific product offerings. However, the Red Hat organizers also wanted a community-focused talk, capable of sharing the bigger picture of Red Hat's presence within the open source ecosystem, as well as the Fedora->RHEL relationship, and how the Fedora Project is a source of innovation that is available to all. This is exactly the sort of talk that the Community Architecture team gives all the time, and my talk was well received by both the crowd, and the Red Hat sales folks who happened to be listening.
The crowd at the Florida Linux Show wasn't huge, but it was definitely passionate. There were probably 150 people at the closing keynote, which is actually a pretty good number. There were a lot of interesting sessions going on all day, and while the general conference hall with booths was pretty small, the sessions were well attended. For me, this is a great thing, because my reasons for attending a conference are to speak to an audience much more than to stand at a booth.
The conference hall was an interesting mix of corporate tables -- the sales folks who organized the Red Hat presence were happy with the number of conversations and potential leads that they got -- and there were a few interesting projects like Qimo and OnlyProfile, showing people software that was built on Linux, or a very customized version of Linux, more than the "every distro has its own table" kind of an event.
All in all, a nice one-day show. The organizers were really nice, and definitely had their act together. From the business perspective, the event was an excellent example of the revenue-generating side of Red Hat recognizing the value in sharing the community portion of Red Hat's larger value chain and value proposition, and wanting to share that message. |
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| some love for fedora docs |
[Oct. 20th, 2009|02:14 pm] |
The work that the Fedora documentation team does, in coordination with the translation team is really fantastic, and my guess would be that most long-time Fedora contributors don't often look at what that group of people is working on. Fedora Docs: taste them again for the first time. |
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| sprint |
[Oct. 20th, 2009|10:11 am] |
One of the things that my team decided on in our meetings last week was to take big chunks of almost every Tuesday and devote them to a team sprint -- we all get together and work uninterrupted as a group of one of the important tasks that our team faces.
Today is the first of these sprints, and we're working on the Teaching Open Source Textbook Project in #teachingopensource on freenode.
Also, my good friend and colleague Jan Wildeboer is in Raleigh this week, presumably so that he can watch the pig races at the North Carolina State Fair. |
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| face to face |
[Oct. 11th, 2009|12:20 pm] |
The entire Community Architecture team (Max, Greg, Mel, Karsten) is in Raleigh this week, for some face to face meetings as we solidify our strategy and tactics for the remaining 1/3 of the fiscal year. Our agenda includes Red Hat's strategy regarding higher education and open source curricula, the work that we continue to do in the Fedora Project, and other internal community building work that our team does within Red Hat.
Today (Sunday), my boss is taking us all out on his boat for a few hours of informal conversations, snacks and drinks, and swimming in Jordan Lake. |
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| vacation |
[Sep. 26th, 2009|11:52 am] |
Hi Fedora community,
I'll be on vacation next week (until Sunday October 4th). I don't use autoresponders on my email, so if any of you who read this blog post notice anyone on IRC looking for me, kindly let them know that I'm not around.
Thanks! |
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| final words from the fad |
[Sep. 26th, 2009|11:10 am] |
Everything that we are discussing at this event is being logged in #fedora-fad, and there are summaries of the meeting and action items generated for all to see.
I led an approximately two hour session in which we talked about the events that we want to do in EMEA next year, focusing mostly on the top-level events of FUDCons and FADs.
We're trying to create a short list of possibilities for FUDCons in EMEA in 2010, and then we can use some of the other cities with good resources as potential FAD locations.
At the moment, we're looking at (1) Zurich in Switzerland, (2) Milan in Italy, and (3) Utrecht or Delft in the Netherlands. Further discussions have to be had with Fedora contributors in each of those cities, and we need to list some pros and cons of each option.
The other trick is figuring out windows of time that might work for a FUDCon. If people have suggestions, please leave them in the comments and we will take it into account. There will be more public discussion about FUDCon EMEA before a decision is made.
The other proposal is to significantly reduce, if not eliminate completely, our presence at LinuxTag. No one at the FAD has any interest in making LinuxTag a premier event for Fedora once again. Gerold has said that he will not lead it next year, and we'll wait to see if anyone else steps up, but I don't see it as being anything other than a standard event, if that.
Outside of FUDCon EMEA and various FADs, we're looking at FOSDEM (led by Frederic Hornian and Bert Desmet) and Chemnitzer Linuxtage (led by Joerg Simon) as our two primary events for the year.
It is also incredibly important to me that we hold a large FAD somewhere in Northern Africa next year.
Other topics that we discussed in the afternoon included money and swag in the region (generally going ok, with a new swag tracker and plan to have an EMEA swag inventory page on the action item list), as well as ressurecting the Fedora Store EMEA idea, which Gerold has taken ownership of.
I had two excellent table tennis matches with Pierros and Gerold. Now we're all catching up on blogging & emails, starting to work on action items, and making plans for dinner at a pizzeria.
It's been a pretty good FAD -- we got some important work done, and I think we have been incredibly vocal on IRC and will have a very transparent meeting summary and action items, that other contributors in EMEA can help with. We've also had some heated discussions, but sometimes that's what happens between family. |
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| saturday morning @ fad emea |
[Sep. 26th, 2009|05:19 am] |
First things first -- here is the IRC log from Friday night's phone call with Paul Frields & Pam Chestek.
We slept in a German castle. That was pretty cool. I felt like one of the Hanoverians.
Everyone gathered together this morning, with fresh faces, fresh attitudes, and two additional members of our team. The final attendee list for FAD EMEA is 9 people.
Yaakov has done a fantastic job of being our secretary in #fedora-fad, which is where we will continue to log our meeting for everyone, and where MeetingBot will give us our action items. So far this morning, we have covered the following topics:
(1) What do we need from Red Hat? I led this session. First, I made some opening remarks reminding everyone of our overall strategy of building regional autonomy and leadership. It is not enough to just stand at a booth and smile. Ambassadors need to have goals of recruitment, teaching, problem-solving, etc. I also made a point of asking the same questions this year that I asked last year. The main actions that came out of the conversation were the need for an EMEA shipping account (similar to what we have implemented in North America), additional visibility and interaction between Red Hat employees in EMEA and the Fedora community, and to try once again to get discounts for Fedora contributors in Red Hat training courses, and this time to make them permanent. There were not really any complaints about budget, which was not surprising. I think that we are well-funded in EMEA, and worldwide. We are having a separate agenda topic about events & swag later in the day.
(2) Pierros led an excellent sessions about the growing Fedora community in Greece, as well as his proposal for an entry-level "Fedora Coffee" event, which can help build awareness and userbase in an easily repeatable, scalable, and inexpensive way. One of the most interesting things that Pierros said was that he recently met a large community of Fedora users in Greece who had built their own community, IRC channel, etc. without ever discovering what all of us think of as the "standard" Fedora collaboration tools -- the wiki, planet, mailing lists, IRC, etc. He's now working on integrating these two Greek communities, which makes everyone stronger.
(3) Joerg and Fabian led a discussion about the current status of mentoring within Fedora Ambassadors, as well as the various Trac systems that are being used -- FAMSCo has one, the North American ambassadors have one, and the EMEA ambassadors have one. Fabian also discussed the various scripts that exist, which help manage things like the Ambassadors-roster-by-country.
Each of these topics was obviously more detailed than my brief summary shows, and Yaakov will be getting the logs and MeetingBot output posted on the FAD EMEA 2009 page, and it will be distributed via Planet and fedora-ambassadors-list, where it will also end up in Fedora Weekly News.
Break time is almost over, so back to work.... |
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| more updates from fedora ambassador day |
[Sep. 25th, 2009|05:20 pm] |
We spent the final 3.5 hours of the evening talking about the Fedora Trademark License Agreement, as it relates to various websites. We also discussed Fedora EMEA e.V.
There is a log of most of that conversation from #fedora-fad on IRC. It's been a draining, emotional night. This was not the stuff that I wanted us to spend our energy on during the FAD, and I hope that we can all recover tomorrow to work through the existing agenda. |
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| fedora ambassador day emea 2009 gets started |
[Sep. 25th, 2009|11:10 am] |
Yesterday evening, Gerold and I walked to Switzerland with his dog. We did some initial thinking about how to handle the agenda, and keep things focused and on track. My idea was to open the floor up in 30, 45, or 60 minute increments for people to bring up their topics, and that by introducing a topic into discussion, you are taking ownership of that topic. We discuss various ideas and make decisions, and the owner is clear from the initial start, which is useful for online followup.
This morning, we both did our own personal work emails, and waited for folks to arrive. Joerg arrived first, and shared a few stories about the Ambassadors at OpenExpo the day before. By about 1:00, our group had expanded to four, with the arrival of Fabian. Gerold and I picked up Yaakov at 3:00, and he and Gerold went off to get some banking done, since Yaakov is now the treasurer of the EMEA non-profit organization.
As the afternoon progressed, I had a phone call with Robert in which we discussed some Fedora trademark-related stuff, and then I worked with Paul and Pamela Chestek to set up a phone call with a larger group of the EMEA ambassadors. That phone call will be at 9:15 PM CEST tonight, and the details are available in #fedora-fad.
More updates from Rheinfelden later on.... |
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| one of the perks |
[Sep. 24th, 2009|12:40 pm] |
After 12 hours of travel I found this wonderful cookie/cake treat waiting for me, courtesy of Gerold's daughter.
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| fedora activity day emea 2009 pregame |
[Sep. 24th, 2009|06:55 am] |
Random coincidence: Michael Tiemann was on my flight out of Raleigh, en route to some meetings that he has in London and Paris. We had a chance to chat for a little bit, and he gave me his review of Cultivating Communities of Practice (as well as his copy of the book itself) which will give me some reading material for the flight home on Sunday.
I used my three hours of battery life on the plane to do a bit of email triage, to make notes about some Fedora and Community Architecture expenses that need to get filed in the next few weeks, to begin this blog post, and to do some general planning for what's important to the Community Architecture team over the course of the next month. We have about 5 months left in the fiscal year, and this is the time when we remind ourselves of the initial goals, and take stock of what we have achieved, and what work still remains.
I am unable to sleep on airplanes, so once my laptop battery died, I amused myself by listening to the Librivox recording of The Count of Monte Cristo, which has always been one of my favorite novels.
I'm now sitting at Gerold's kitchen table, trying not to fall asleep, and continuing to go through emails. The actual Fedora Activity Day will have a rolling start on Friday as people show up, be tremendously active on Saturday, and then conclude on Sunday. |
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| where's max? (sep 23 - oct 4) |
[Sep. 22nd, 2009|12:14 pm] |
From Wednesday September 23 - Sunday September 27, I'll either be on an airplane, or attending Fedora Ambassador Day EMEA 2009.
From Monday September 28 - Sunday October 4, I will be taking my "summer" vacation, and have almost zero access to my Red Hat email. Karsten, Mel, or Greg are the folks to get in touch with while I'm gone, for anything that would usually require me. |
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| rhce loopback |
[Sep. 17th, 2009|10:45 pm] |
One of the things that my team cares about is building community in realms that are related to Red Hat, but that aren't necessarily Fedora-branded.
However, the successes that we've had in Fedora can help us figure out what kinds of activities might help to build community in other parts of Red Hat's world. For a while now, we've been sharing the general-case of the FUDCon and Fedora Activity Day model with folks all over Red Hat who were willing to listen. Here's what it sounds like:
"Get your customers together -- not the suits, but the people who are actually doing the work. Give them some space to collaborate, set a broad theme for the event, and see what happens. Let our customers or users speak to each other, educate each other, and solve each other's problems, with Red Hat playing matchmaker."
Our good friend Gunnar Hellekson liked the idea, and now we are trying something simple on October 8: RHCE Loopback. It's a free event in New York City for Red Hat Certified Engineers. There will be some technical discussions about cloud computing, as well as plenty of opportunity for free-form discussions and information sharing.
The other piece of this that is particularly important is that we're going to have a number of very technical Red Hatters at the event, and I think that is the most critical thing to creating an authentic event that provides value to engineers.
My hope is that this event will be a proof point for a variety of events in a similar vein. |
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| evil robot conference |
[Sep. 11th, 2009|03:23 pm] |
Tomorrow, I will be speaking about Fedora at the Evil Robot Conference, an unconference-style event for those who are interested in talking about, sharing, or learning more about Open Source technology.
We'll be in Red Hat's main building starting at 9:00 AM, for a fun and informative day. If you're in the Raleigh area, come and listen to what will be the most unique talk that I have ever given about Fedora. It will be in either the 10AM or 11AM slot, since I have to be somewhere else in the afternoon. |
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