| rmll, day 1.5 |
[Jul. 10th, 2009|03:55 pm] |
1300 - 1400: Booth duty, chatting w/ Thomas, etc. Queued up some emails to send when I finally get on the VPN. The crowd has really picked up this afternoon. Walking around is difficult, and most booths have 3 or 4 people in front of them.
1400 - 1530: Attended the 2020 FLOSS Roadmap talk. This was a group discussion by the team that is working on a prospective roadmap for what the future of free software might look like, including public policy, sustainable development, etc. The talk was listed as being in English, but when they asked for a show of hands, I was the only non-French speaker in the room. I told them that I would not be offended if they did it in French, but they did it in English anyway. I was a bit embarrassed, but the talk was quite interesting. It echoed some points that I often hear from Jan Wildeboer and Michael Tiemann, as well as some points that seem to be directly in Red Hat's business model and potential technology roadmap. In fact, Michael will be speaking at their big Open World Forum in Paris in October.
Now, just hanging out at the booth, wandering around the conference, and hopefully getting dinner with some of the Fedora crew. |
|
|
| rmll, day 1 |
[Jul. 10th, 2009|12:58 pm] |
0700: Woke up.
0730: En route to the event, via tram & bus.
0805: Arrived at the event and set up the booth.
0815: Was unable to get on VPN, so I blogged & did some personal mails.
0830 - 1045: Somewhat busy at the booth, especially considering the early hour. A number of folks stopped by, and I had conversations about RPM, Fedora 11, PackageKit, CentOS, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. I gave away some swag (32 & 64 bit DVDs, stickers, tattoos), reviewed my notes for my talk, and met Quentin, who is both a Fedora Ambassador and member of the RMLL staff. Mathieu arrived, bringing with him more shirts, stickers, and Live CDs to add to our swag inventory.
1050 - 1130: Gave my talk, to an audience of about 20. Eschewed slides in favor of writing on the white board. Covered the four foundations, the importance of growing contributions, the inverse-pyramid of contributor growth, and the Fedora build system and remix culture. A question about FUDCon led to a brief discussion about the manner in which Fedora events are organized worldwide. Questions about virtualization led to a discussion of Fedora 11, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and the progress of different virtualization technologies over the last few releases. Had a question about a Fedora Netbook Spin (what is our story there?), and used that as a segue to discuss XFCE and LXDE. Patrice attended my talk, and he discussed the Fedora Electronic Lab as an example of another Fedora spin. Patrice is a professor at the University of Bordeaux, and his students are using Fedora in their embedded systems class. Sometimes small crowds are terrible, but in this case, the smaller crowd led to personal engagement and a nice energy. I enjoyed this talk quite a bit, and could easily have gone for another 45 minutes.
1130 - 1230: Lunch in the university cafeteria. More college flashbacks.
1230 - 1300: Back at the booth, with Mathieu and Thomas, who (along with Armel) has recently started a new job at Mandriva. Wrote this blog post. |
|
|
| rmll, day 0 |
[Jul. 10th, 2009|08:17 am] |
In which I am the source of my own trouble.
A while back, Thomas and Armel asked me if I could make the trip to RMLL this year. RMLL is one of the larger events in France -- about 2,000 attendees, from what I am told -- and it has a nice community feel to it. It reminds me of smaller Ohio Linux Fest in North America, or Chemnitzer Linux Tage in Germany.
My schedule has been a bit crazy, and I knew I'd only be able to make it to the Friday of the event, but I signed up to give a talk and I wanted to have a chance to see some of our French team anyway.
Armel was kind enough to offer me a bed in his home (about an hour away). I should have said "yes", but I didn't want to cause extra trouble for him and I also thought that I might want to stay an extra day over the weekend and see some of Nantes, so I figured I'd just get a hotel room close to the event, and that would be that.
Of course, I neglected to account for my own general level of dopeyness and busyness. Being distracted by other work-related stuff, I forgot to book a hotel room, and at the last minute I made a reservation to stay in a block of university dorm rooms that were being rented out to conference attendees for something like 20 EUR per night. Points for me under "maximizing shareholder value".
I assumed that I'd have internet access on the train from Amsterdam to Paris (~4 hours), but of course they had technical difficulties, so I was able to queue up some mails, but not actually send anything. There was no internet on the train from Paris (~2 hours), and by the time I got to Nantes and made my way via two trams to the dorm, it was too late to head over to the event (another tram and bus ride away), and therefore I was unable to get my access code for the internet, meaning that I was offline for all of Thursday.
Ranking up there on the forgetfulness scale, I neglected to bring the phone numbers of Thomas, Armel, or Mathieu, and therefore I found myself in a dorm room in Nantes at 6 PM with no internet and no means of contacting anyone.
Undaunted, I walked down the street to a supermarket where I was able to pick up some soap as well as bread, water, peanut butter, jelly, and a knife. Everything I needed to authentically re-create my college days. Naturally, I forgot to bring a towel with me, so I'll be using an extra "I *heart* Fedora" tshirt to fill that role. C'est la vie.
Anyway, all's well that ends well. I'm posting this from the Fedora booth at the event, and I'm excited to see the French Ambassadors on Friday. I've got what I think is a pretty good outline for a talk, and I hope that we'll all have a chance to go out for a nice dinner on Friday night.
Au revoir, for now. |
|
|
| the coming week |
[Jul. 5th, 2009|06:12 pm] |
Monday: Normal work day.
Tuesday: Short work day & concert in Amsterdam.
Wednesday: Normal work day and dinner with a group of Dutch Fedora contributors, as well as Luca Foppiano and Andreas Thienemann, who have both recently moved to the Netherlands.
Thursday: Travel to Nantes for RMLL and to see several of the Fedora France guys, arriving in the afternoon. I'll be bringing tshirts and stickers with me.
Friday: Giving a talk and spending the day with the French team.
Saturday: Travel back to Amsterdam in the afternoon.
Sunday: Do something fun. |
|
|
| a dutch 4th of july |
[Jul. 4th, 2009|11:51 pm] |
It just so happened that today was the Red Hat Netherlands summer party, at the home of the Head Honcho for the region. A beautiful day, a great barbeque, fun people, a swimming pool, and an awesome DJ who played a combination of American and Dutch vinyl records, all from the 80s, and also played an accordian.
Good times! |
|
|
| fudcon berlin postmortem |
[Jun. 30th, 2009|11:34 pm] |
I've been to many FUDCons, but I've never really attended a FUDCon. By that, I mean to say that my presence at every FUDCon has been as that of the organizer/coordinator, and as such I've never really been able to do more than just poke my head into various sessions and take the general pulse of the event.
Now that I'm home following FUDCon Berlin, I wanted to take a few moments to share some thoughts about the event.
* Meeting new people is great. Tristan Santore attended his first FUDCon, and really stepped up to help out over the course of a few days, which was much appreciated. Similarly, it was great to meet John J. McDonough and his son, John P. McDonough, who made the trip all the way from Michigan to Berlin.
* It's always nice to re-form bonds with folks who we communicate with often on email, but don't see face to face all that much. Having a chance to do two podcasts with Paul Frields was lots of fun, and seeing a bunch of the Fedora Engineering crew (Spot, Jesse, and Mo) was also great.
* I thought that the general attendance for FUDCon was fine, and in line with past events. It felt smaller because of our giant building, but based on signups, shirts given out, and foot traffic coming from LinuxTag, I'd say we had somewhere between 175-200 people attending the event, and a good core of people at all times.
* Jeroen's "Infrastructure Track" had excellent attendance, and I was pleased to see that our German talks were also well-attendeed. I know that some people were bothered by the fact that we did talks in German, but that was a conscious decision based on our location and our desire to not forget the "U" (Users) in FUDCon.
* Nicu takes wonderful photos, and I'm so grateful that he was present once again to chronicle our event.
* The FUDPub social event seemed to go well -- we had at least 150 people there, and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, even if the pizzas were slow in arriving. The restaurant had ample warning, but I guess they can only start cooking so far in advance!
* Hackfests on Sunday were really good, but Friday's hackfests were very disappointing to me. Spot reiterated a previous point that it's a bad idea to sandwich the hackfests around the presentation day, and he's probably right. If I organize another FUDCon, the BarCamp day will be first.
* My thanks to our LinuxTag and FUDCon organizing team for all their hard work in making this joint event happen. I would like to hear feedback from people about whether or not they would like next year's EMEA FUDCon to be standalone, or joined to another event. Last year, the feedback was "join it to another event" but then I heard a lot of complaining at FUDCon that there were too many distractions from LinuxTag.
* Any other feedback -- both good and bad -- please leave in the comments. We can't improve if we don't know what you liked or didn't like. We need both positive and negative feedback! Thanks. |
|
|
| fudcon berlin, day 1 afternoon |
[Jun. 26th, 2009|03:06 pm] |
We inch closer to the BarCamp pitches which close the day, but things are going pretty well. The Wireless Summit and Security Team are having nice hackfests. The Sugar/OLPC guys are holed up somewhere getting work done, and a pretty steady stream of people have wandered over to FUDCon from LinuxTag.
All talks have been well-attended, including "How to Join Fedora" in German, an update on Linux wireless in English, and concurrent RPM Packaging sessions in both German and English.
As always, I wish for a larger audience, but things are going pretty well, especially for the "hackfest" day of FUDCon. |
|
|
| fudcon berlin, day 1 instant feedback |
[Jun. 26th, 2009|11:44 am] |
We're about two hours in to day 1 of FUDCon Berlin, and here are some thoughts:
Good:
* Jan Wildeboer's presentation: brilliant as always.
* Jeroen van Meeuwen's talk about Puppet in the Infrastructure Track. The room had about 50 people in it, and the energy carried over into Francesco Crippa's talk about Func & Symbolic.
* Fabian Affolter's talk about Fedora 11, which has a nice crowd and great looking content (it's in German).
* The FUDCon building, the decorations, and the organizational team.
Bad:
* People who commit to giving talks, and then don't show up, without any word to anyone about it.
* People who complain when we hold standalone FUDCons ("we don't like to travel to an event only for FUDCon") and then also complain when we co-locate FUDCon at another event ("we don't like having FUDCon with another event, because it's too distracting"). Maybe we should just abandon FUDCons altogether for Fedora Activity Days.
* People who sign up for one size tshirt, and then take a different size tshirt, thus messing up our inventory.
* People who sign up for hackfests, and then don't show up for them. |
|
|
| linuxtag booth & fudcon |
[Jun. 25th, 2009|05:45 pm] |
FUDCon Berlin starts at 10AM on Friday. Come a bit early to get your tshirt!
In my opinion, the goals of our LinuxTag booth on Friday and Saturday are simple:
(1) Have a small, rotating staff to keep it going.
(2) Broadcast the FUDCon schedule on the projector.
(3) Try to get every single person who stops by to come to the Marshall Haus. |
|
|
| fudcon berlin preparations |
[Jun. 25th, 2009|12:32 pm] |
FUDCon Berlin preparations are in full-swing. If there's any of the Fedora crew at LinuxTag who are looking for a few tasks to help out, feel free to drop by the Marshall Haus and you can pick from a list of things that need doing. |
|
|
| linuxtag & fudcon berlin scheduling notes |
[Jun. 24th, 2009|11:06 am] |
Wednesday 12:00 PM -- I have a little talk in the "forum" that is directly across from the Fedora booth.
Wednesday 6:00 PM -- A meeting (open to all) of the Fedora EMEA non-profit organization.
Thursday -- A general day at LinuxTag. Anyone who is looking for something to do is welcome to help me get the Marshall Haus set up for FUDCon on Friday. The LinuxNacht social event is on Thursday night.
Friday 10:00 AM -- Intro to FUDCon, and the beginning of our scheduled talks in the Marshall Haus. Tom Callaway will also lead the brief hackfest intro, and people will get to work.
Friday 5:00 PM -- BarCamp pitches! This is when the schedule for Saturday will be determined, and everyone should be there! It will happen in the main area of the Marshall Haus. Following this, we will head to the FUDPub social event.
Saturday 10:00 AM -- Our start time, for the most important day of FUDCon. |
|
|
| linuxtag 2009 (day 0) and fudcon berlin (day -2) |
[Jun. 23rd, 2009|11:25 pm] |
Tomorrow is the first official day of LinuxTag 2009. Here's how I spent my day today:
* I started the morning with a nice breakfast at our hotel, and then rode with Joerg Simon and Thomas Woerner to Red Hat's Berlin office, where we picked up signage and tshirts for FUDCon Berlin, as well as three demo laptops (thanks Dell!) and somewhere around 3,000 Fedora 11 CDs and DVDs.
* We made our way back to the hotel and dropped off the stuff that we don't need until FUDCon on Friday, and I had a chance to meet John McDonough, who made the trek all the way from Michigan for this week's gathering.
* Sandro Mathys, Gerold Kassube, Thomas, Fabian Affolter, and I went over to Messe Berlin and built up our booth for Wednesday - Saturday. It's smaller than last year, but that's a strategic decision because we're putting most of our focus on FUDCon (which is in its own building), and we hope to drive a lot of people from the booth to FUDCon, as opposed to having 100% of their interactions with Fedora take place at the booth. We're also making excellent use of a projector and a giant wall to enhance the Fedora experience. I'm sure there will be pictures tomorrow.
Things look pretty good over at Messe Berlin. The building that FUDCon will be in is used on Tuesday and Wednesday, but we peeked in and it looks like the setup will be great for us. Gerold and I made a trip back in April to check it out as well, but this is the first time we've seen it with all its furniture and set up for conference mode. There are a bunch of FUDCon signs all over the place that Messe Berlin created for us. I'm sure that mizmo will be disappointed to see that the font isn't quite right, but they still point people in the right direction.
* I bumped into Joe Brockmeier, who was setting up the openSUSE booth, and had a nice chat with him.
* I'm giving a talk on Fedora Electronics Lab on Friday, on behalf of Chitlesh who will not be arriving until late Friday night. He and I spoke on the phone and planned out our strategy for the talk. He walked me through his slide deck, and I suggested some places where I could say useful things, even though I don't know much about electrical engineering (having not done any of it since college).
* I had a three-hour dinner meeting with Gerold, Fabian, Jeroen van Meeuwen, and Paul Frields, in which we discussed a few issues that impact the non-profit group that the Ambassadors have set up here in EMEA to support the mission of the Fedora Project.
* After dinner, I chatted a bit more with Paul and Jesse Keating, and then triaged a bit of Red Hat email and wrote this blog post.
See you all tomorrow. Highlights include a little talk by me at noon (an introduction to FUDCon for the general LinuxTag audience), as well as a general membership meeting for the Fedora EMEA non-profit group from 6-8pm. |
|
|
| internet sharing in berlin |
[Jun. 23rd, 2009|09:31 am] |
Greg plugged into the wired network in our room (not free -- we tried to negotiate that in for free, but failed), and then set up wireless network sharing, which is enabling me to get on the network as well.
Just a small tip that folks might want to try.
Most of my day will be spent getting stuff from Red Hat Berlin, and then helping with the booth organization and setup over at the fairgrounds. |
|
|
| linuxtag & fudcon berlin travel |
[Jun. 21st, 2009|11:23 pm] |
Excerpted from a previous blog post:
Airport to Hotel
The hotel is in a very good location to take advantage of public transportation. From Berlin's Tegel airport, I got in a taxi and was at the hotel in less than ten minutes. The cost of the ride was 10 EUR, plus a small tip.
Travel to FUDCon and LinuxTag
A 5 minute walk from the hotel brings you to the Rohrdamm metro station, where a day ticket is 6 EUR, and a week ticket is 30 EUR. Take the the U7 line for about 7 minutes (in the direction of Rudow), and at the Jungfernheide station change to the S42, which is another 5 minutes or so to Messe-Nord. Since the fairgrounds are enormous, it is about a 10 minute walk to get to the LinuxTag & FUDCon area. My guess is that once everyone buys their tickets, it will take around 30 minutes to get from the hotel to the event each day. |
|
|
| fudcon berlin and linuxtag e-tickets |
[Jun. 20th, 2009|04:20 pm] |
Information about retrieving your e-tickets for the event has been emailed out to the list of folks who are pre-registered for the event.
If you have not received the information needed to get your e-ticket, and you are attending LinuxTag and FUDCon, please send me an email, and I will forward the information to you. It's possible that a few names on the attendee list were missed.
See you all next week! |
|
|