Sexy Sexy Penguins

So I am sitting in my hotel in Los Angeles, preparing to head back to Utah, its 2:37am PDT and I have been meaning to post the rest of my experience at FUDCon.  First off, I’d like to thank Mo and Ray for letting me stay at their home with them.  They were great hosts!  I’d also like to re-thank Max and Paul and the FedoraProject for sponsoring me out to Boston on such short notice.  I still feel grateful to be part of such a great community!

FUDCon F10, for me, was a time of realization.  Understanding what it is to get involved in projects that scratch that itch.  For providing services toward something I’m good at, into a larger community who could really take advantage of that service.  And while I am still feeling my way through the Fedora world, I think a few things are clearer now after reflecting on this last FUDCon.

I want to record and stream audio and video.

I’m thinking that along with the Fedora Talk project, I could configure and use tools to provide a non-interactive streaming server for certain events/presentations.  What I am thinking of here is things like FUDCon keynotes and sessions.  In fact, I plan to purchase a higher quality microphone / mixer combo to better record the audio at the source.

Video and screencasting in real-time seems a bit more of a challenge.  Putting that together with the streaming audio seems like a fun project and scratches several itches I’ve been experiencing lately.

I need to learn how build better RPMs

Spot taught a great session at FUDCon F9 in Raleigh about RPM packaging, and Rex Deiter talked this time about becoming a package maintainer.  I’ve got a few packages that I’d like to get into the fedora tree, and I think by the end of this year, that can happen.  I’m okay at packaging, but haven’t ever submitted a spec file to spot.  While I’m nervous about how ugly the first package will look, I’m also excited at the prospect of learning better and more efficient ways of building useful tools for the masses.

I think everyone should build their own spin of Fedora

After the 5+ hour session on Friday’s hackfest regarding the spins website and what the spins SIG has already accomplished, I’ve taken some initiative and started to create content to help the prospective spin enthusiast.  I’m a big fan of the Eee PC and am looking forward to purchasing the 901 in the winter.  Until then, I’m planning on helping improve the spin process so we don’t fail to release spins again.  The custom and official spins ‘built with Fedora’ can be so much more prolific if we just provide the right tools to build a spin.  It really should be nothing more than, here’s my kickstart, build me an iso.  This would of course have to follow the general standards for acceptable software.

The relationships (FUDBuddies) made at FUDCon are up my alley

I met Rex Dieter, Mo Duffy, Ray Strode, Dennis Gilmore and Ian Weller this time.  We had great conversations about the world and of course Fedora.  I also got to talk more to Toshio, Greg and J5 who I had met previously at FUDCon F9.  I indeed learned a bunch from Toshio about TurboGears too.  Its something I’ll treasure for releases to come.

To end this post, I’ve got some audio of the olpc session and paul’s keynote, as well as some photos I’ve posted around the interweb, enjoy.  Paul’s keynote will also be up on our new FedoraTV Miro channel, check it out!

Cheers,

Clint

Tags: audio, boston, f10, fudbuddy, fudcon, spins, streaming, video

While I am working on a post-fudcon report.  Its kind of hard to work when the network continues to drop packets.  Currently, I’m on-site in Los Angeles, teaching a course.  Why, oh why does this happen?

Cheers,

Herlo

Tags: Level3tehsuck, mtr, xotehsuck

Got to FUDCon today after a nice semi-sleepy red-eye flight.  I was surprisingly awake for a person who has had less than 3 hours of sleep in the last 24+ hours.  As I arrived, following Max’s instructions to the Hyne’s Convention Center, an announcement.  The spins hackfest was beginning.

I quickly grabbed some coffee and an apple and headed in after Max.  Little did I know how great this fest was going to be, all 4+ hours of it.  After a good list of goals, Max handed control over to Mo and off we went.

Discussion surrounded three main stories, one for a user wanting to download a spin, one desiring to submit a spin and one for reviewers of spins.  As it turns out, developing stories for the first two were pretty easy, and just before 11, we had a good idea of how to implement applications for these two users.

However, the third story, the one for reviewing.  Yeah, that one.  Well, I guess I just need to ask one hard question.  The question I had was a simple one, but the answer is apparently much more complex, including both technical and legal questions about third-party distributions.  And while it seems like a simple distinction, I brought this upon myself, uncovering a discussion that has been going on for 2+ years now.

The biggest problem is for those spins that include software not in the fedora repositories.  How do we treat these spins?  The discussion ended up being that while hosting these spins might not be feasible, we’d like to have a way to market the spins as built on Fedora or something similar. It seems that this is a good choice, but it needs to go through legal.

After an hour long discussion about these details (which I caused), we tabled it and came up with a good list of tasks to get the project started.  Thanks to Ian Weller, there’s a good wiki page covering much of this discussion.  In fact, I have a couple of tasks to complete this week.

At the end of the day, I ended up with some Red Hat folks at Legal Sea Foods, good wine, great company.  If I wasn’t so tired, I’d have stayed much longer.  Good times…

Tomorrow’s FUDCon barcamp looks to be pretty interesting.  I plan to attend the video tools, the getting contributors and bug triage.  In addition, there will probably be a couple that will come up tomorrow morning, so we’ll se how it goes.

Cheers,

Herlo

Tags: barcamp, Fedora, fudcon, spins

As I was watching Dr. Who this afternoon during my packing up of my clothing and power cords for FUDCon tomorrow and Saturday, I was thinking a bit more about how I could help.

It turns out, that while we have some great presentations, a suggestion was made to put the User back into FUDCon.  I think this is a great idea.

While I was reading Jesse’s post, I was thinking what could little old me do to help users of Fedora.  I was thinking a simple bug triaging process management, or helping users find documentation for which things they are looking.  But each of these things as I thought about them were more on the contributor side, which seems more like what we want.

A basic user in the Fedora Project, to me, while useful, might not really be those who attend FUDCon, but more of a person who is a user, interested in contributing back to the community.  I feel I fit in that realm.

Not knowing much about the FedoraProject a year ago, and still feeling pretty naive, I have wanted to get more involved.  As such, I’ve made some forays into helping, including my attempt at helping to do some videos and screencasts for the marketing team.  Watch for me this weekend as we will be attempting to record your mug :)  I’ve also done a little bit in the documentation area, logged a few bugs and been a generally good ambassador by handing out tons and tons of LiveCDs and DVDs almost every week.

I’ve also been thinking about how we can get more people from that ‘well, I like Fedora’ user, to a ‘cool, I want to give back’ user.  I think the Fedora Project is built very well for this kind of user (and possible future contributor).  While the project can sustain users who just participate, I’d like to see some education surrounding how one can help with things that are either less technical, or helping someone get into the more technical areas, with something like mentors.

During FUDCon, we could come up with a simple presentation or two about tools that help individual users contribute.  Things like smolt, logging bugs, testing and other items can really be helpful tools to get people attending FUDCon involved in hleping the actual process.  I also think it’d be great on hackfest days to have a ‘how to help’ intro for a few who might want to help, but really don’t know where to start.

I’ll be talking with others as I think more about these things this weekend.  I look forward to a fun two days!

Cheers,

Clint

Tags: contributors, Fedora, fudcon, planning, users

So it looks like my whining and moaning paid off!  I didn’t expect that anyone could help me, the money had been spent, things were cancelled and I was screwed!

I recieved a comment on my blog from Mo inviting me to stay at her and halfline’s place for the weekend of FUDCon.  So nice, but I still didn’t have the $600+ it would cost to come to FUDCon.

And then I received this email:

Clint,

Don’t cancel your trip.

Give me receipts,…

–Max

Wow! So I’m coming to FUDCon.  I’d like to thank Max, Mo, Paul (and any others I don’t know about) for helping me get to Boston.  I’m sure it’ll be a blast.

I’ve got some serious plans to make it worth Fedora’s while :)  I don’t think there’s a better way than to be included in the community than to know people care about you and want you to be a part of the community as a whole and to succeed.  I’m going to do all I can to make sure the money will be well spent.

So as I said in my reply email to Max.  Thank you! thank you! thank you!  FUDCon will be a blast!

Cheers,

Herlo

PS - I would also like to thank my employer, Guru Labs, for being so kind to let me attend my second FUDCon.

Tags: Community, Fedora, fudcon

Welcome to my disappointment.  Welcome to my frustration.  Welcome, welcome to my not being able to attend FUDCon!  Did I mention I was frustrated and disappointed?  Well, if I didn’t, I am!

Here’s the story.

Many of you probably know that I work for Guru Labs, and as such, I teach Linux for a living.  This coming week, I was on my way, I really was, to New York City to teach a Local System Administration class.

It was all set.  I was going to fly from NYC to Boston on Friday afternoon after my class.  The room was booked at the conference, I even had committed to helping do video recordings of each of the FUDCon attendees (something like 150 of them) on cheese.

Then Friday the 13th happened….

Normally, I like Friday the 13th, and with the exception of this event, it was a great one.  At the last minute, I was informed the class had been cancelled.  Now, this isn’t an abnormal thing and usually I’m not this upset about a class being cancelled.  Saying that means I was banking on some things which normally pull through, but they didn’t  All in all, I’m only frustrated that I can’t go to FUDCon!

I tried hard to still go.  In fact, I finagled and attempted to convince any of the other instructors I could into letting me teach their class.  I hit up my friends for $600, all to no avail.  The cost of the hotel was $400 already, adding another $600 is not in my budget, I’m afraid.  And people say that airlines don’t make any money!

So I will miss you all and the wonderful barcamp sessions I was planning on attending. I’ll miss Paul’s first State of Fedora address.  I’ll miss chatting Seth up about yum, Spot about RPM and politics in general, or Michael about cobbler and func.  In fact, I wanted to spend a bit of time talking with Jef about video and gstreamer, but I guess I’ll just have to wait until FUDCon F11 in 2009 :(

Could someone video record each of them and post them?  Or at least the audio?  Hehe, I know that’s a lot of work, but hey, it can’t hurt to ask.  In fact, if you are willing to stream audio, I have an IceCast server and I’d be happy to help configure your client to accomplish this task.

Cheers,

Clint

Tags: audio, fudcon

This Friday, I’m taking some time early in the morning, prior to work, to help a good friend of mine, Matt Reinbold with a conference which he’s put some serious effort, the Blogging for Business Conference.

While it seems something ahead of its time, much of what Matt is hoping to share is to help all kinds of business people understand what much of the open source community already knows.  A good image with your customers (aka community members) is of utmost importance.  The B4BConference looks to be intended to help business leaders understand this concept among other great tools of the trade.

Just think, Mr/Ms/Mrs business person, how cool would letting your customers know of a new product, service or when something has changed, almost instantaneously?  That’s what you can do with the a good blog post.  What you used to do by sending a press release or letters by mail/email, you can now do with another resource, the blog!

Either way, I am looking forward to helping out.  I’m also looking forward to sneaking into the former Lego directors presentation, and maybe the talk by Cydni Tetro of Next Page.

If you are interested in hearing about how to better improve your image, or just want to learn what benefits there are to blogging for your business, I’d take a minute and check out their site.

Cheers,

Herlo

Tags: blogging, business, Conferences, Tech

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• Blog Post: Tweets for 2008-05-26:
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• Just realized it was monday. Didn’t call my son because I thought he was in church… #

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