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- Joining in Moment of Silence
- Al and Vinny
- openSUSE App Guru(s) Needed
- And that’s a Flourish Wrap-up!
- Summit March Status Meeting
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Joining in Moment of Silence
I share with the rest of the nation in grieving the horrific and senseless massacre of 27 children and adults in Newton, Connecticut and at Sandy Hook Elementary School. I will join with an estimated 100,000 websites that will participate in an online moment of silence at 9:30 a.m. Friday, December 21 Eastern Time.
At this time, this website will go dark for one minute and display only a banner which consists of a ribbon commemorating this moment and the lives lost and the drive that we, as a nation, will now embark to seek an end to such tragedies.
Join fellow citizens around the world in this moment.
Never To Be Forgotten:
Charlotte Bacon — Age 6 Daniel Barden — Age 7 Olivia Engel — Age 6 Josephine Gay — Age 7 Dylan Hockley — Age 6 Madeleine Hsu — Age 6 Catherine Hubbard — Age 6 Chase Kowalski, — Age 7 Jesse Lewis — Age 6 Ana Marquez-Greene — Age 6 Madeleine Hsu — Age 6 James Mattioli — Age 6 Grace McDonnell — Age 7 Emilie Parker — Age 6 Jack Pinto – Age 6 Noah Pozner — Age 6 Caroline Previdi — Age 6 Jessica Rekos — Age 6 Benjamin Wheeler — Age 6 Allison Wyatt — Age 6 Rachel D’Avino — Age 29 Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung — Age 47 Nancy Lanza Anne Marie Murphy — Age 52 Lauren Rousseau — Age 30 Mary Sherlach — Age 56 Victoria Soto — Age 27
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Al and Vinny
So, I’m spending much of this week winding down and closing up odds and ends from the openSUSE Summit this past weekend. And I’ll write more about that in an upcoming article. But I wanted to take a break from all this and about the big news that was announced during the summit… Al and Vinny. (Ok, either one of them is going to kick my ass for calling them by those names…)
In case you’re one of the very few people who missed the news, Alan Clark stepped down as openSUSE Board Chairman and Vincent Untz assumed the role as the third installation of openSUSE Board Chair. Kind of a weird moment for me when I first heard the news, sad and happy at the same time. But it also gave me a chance to reflect on my personal experiences working with these two great men. For both, I take special pride in appreciating them not for the reputation they bring to the table, but for the great work they do while *at* the table.
Alan Clark
I first met Alan in a teleconference call when I was on the openSUSE Board and I was assigned to do some research work for a possible Foundation creation. He was the point man on the Novell/SUSE side to work with the legal obstacles and identify points how we could come together with the company’s blessings. I was impressed in that phone call because I had never seen or heard of this man before and yet he seemed to know a great deal about the openSUSE community. Months later, when Michael Loeffler stepped down as Board chairman, Alan was appointed and I began to see more frequently how he works.
We often worked together to discuss initiatives and try to move things forward. Frequently, we also appeared together at events throughout the U.S. After I stepped down from the Board due to term limits, we continued to work together as co-chairs for the openSUSE Summit.
The thing that I most admire about Alan is that he will do anything he can to tear down barriers and get us the resources we need to accomplish our goals. While others, including myself, might be tempted to say no when an idea came across that seemed too outlandish or difficult to achieve, he never says no. While he readily admits to being a pessimist, he never lets his pessimism get in the way of what you want to do. If you care enough about something you want to do, he will support you 1,000% no matter what his own personal opinion is about it. He gives us the freedom and belief to know that he’s got our back when we push forward against what may seem to be impossible odds.
He’s a “barrier-tear-downer.” He’s the quiet guy in the background letting others take the spotlight, making sure your pathway is clear. Many people have complimented me for the success of the openSUSE Summit, but there is absolutely no way it would have been successful if he wasn’t there ensuring that we had the resources we need to make it all happen.
And as busy as he is, he always makes time to talk to you. I know many people who have had the privilage to speak with him and gain valuable insights. We’re all blessed to have him in our corner.
Now, OpenStack has claimed him for their own as the new board chairman. I can’t think of a better choice they could have elected. If they don’t know yet what he’s fully capable of doing for them and their community, they’re about to find out very quickly!
Vincent Untz
Just about everybody knows Vincent as “Vuntz.” I first met him on IRC the day he joined Novell. I was still quite active in the #opensuse-GNOME channel, organizing the weekly meetings. And here was this guy who comes in and everybody’s climbing over themselves to offer him some virtual ice cream. (FYI: virtual ice cream via IRC doesn’t taste anything at all like real life ice cream!) This was still in the heyday of the old team when there was a large presence and frequent activity going on. Not too long after that, there were some unfortunate changes in Novell and a number of people were reassigned or laid off. Soon thereafter, there was only Vuntz left from Novell that was actively working with the openSUSE-GNOME team.
When Vuntz is around, he commands great attention. Enter a room, and everybody looks in his direction. Yet, despite his celebrity-status, he employs quiet leadership instead of savoring the limelight. I’ll have to admit, this can be quite frustrating sometimes, but in the long run, I see the method to his madness bears great fruits.
With the almost overnight change in the team, something remarkable happened. Instead of dying, the team thrived. Instead of a continued dependence on Novell employees to do most of the work, the team became community-driven. Much of this was because Vuntz held a steady hand and availed himself as a mentor to others. Today, we have a team that probably reacts faster than ever before to changes from upstream to deliver those changes to openSUSE users. The dependency and conventional thinking that “it’s a paid person’s job to make all this happen” is gone.
Later in the year, the openSUSE Project fell into the unfortunate Desktop War. I have to admit, I was frustrated that Vuntz didn’t take a more visible stand in the open and often divisive debates that went on during this period. “C’mon Vuntz!” I kept thinking to myself.
But in the end, looking at today., most of the festering rivalry seems gone. Oh sure, there will always be those of us who strongly favor one desktop environment over another, but no longer do we have the testy relationships that seemed like a turf war out of “West Side Story.” Instead, we have harmony and acceptance of each other’s existence. And I believe Vuntz played an important role in bringing us to this place today. His steady tone, resisting temptation to jump into negative debates, and always accentuating the positive has made most of us follow in those footsteps. There are clear lessons to be learned, just by watching Vuntz, on how we can make the open source experience both positive and productive.
Going Forward
Alan and Vuntz both have unique characteristics that make them giants in the sea of thousands. No doubt, with the many changes the Project is undergoing now, Vuntz will bring some welcome changes to the openSUSE Board. I’m positive that under Vuntz’s leadership, we’ll see a wonderfully revitalized board.
But at the same time, while new, Vuntz also provides a constant. Alan recognized that his role was not to control or influence the board, but to provide support and ensure that the board as a whole works together. Vuntz’s proven actions in the openSUSE-GNOME team tells me that this important aspect of the Chariman’s role will continue under his leadership.
This is important because while SUSE gets to appoint the chairman to the board, the board itself is tasked with community direction and is an entity elected by the community. And both Alan and Vuntz are people who know that community comes first.
I’m going to miss Alan’s presence on the board. But I’m heartened to know SUSE made a wise choice bringing Vuntz in to fill some pretty damn big shoes!
Posted in Board, openSUSE | 3 Comments
openSUSE App Guru(s) Needed
As many of you know, I’ve been working hard to get ready for the first ever openSUSE conference in North America, the openSUSE Summit (summit.opensuse.org). We still have a lot of work to do before the big event in Orlando from September 21-23.
Across the big pond, similar efforts are underway for our annual openSUSE Conference to be held in Prague in October. (conference.opensuse.org.) Michal Hrusecky has been working diligently with his team to make that conference as awesome as ever.
Earlier today, Michal and I had a conversation. We agreed we need to move forth on getting an app ready for both events. It seems silly for each of our teams to find someone to develop an app. Why two stones for one bird? Right?
So we’re putting out the call now for anyone who has an interest in creating or enhancing existing phone app that covers the conference program and all activities happening around the conference.
Here’s some details:
- We had an app for Android for last year’s openSUSE Conference. The source is here.
- We did not have an app for iPhone. As geeky as we are, there are a number of people out there that carry iPhones.
- The apps are meant to reduce paper and increase communication to our attendees
- Ideally, the app would list non–Program events, such as parties and other things going on.
- Ideally, the app would update periodically for any program changes
- Ideally, the app is capable of receiving announcements throughout the conference.
- There probably needs to be two separate apps, one for each conference.
- You can reuse the existing source or develop from scratch. A “Dream App” would be cool.
- I personally would like to see some increased a11y features (like zooming, etc.)
- We might be interested in allowing users to switch to different language versions within the app.
If you’re interested and have the skills, please reach out to me and Michal and we’ll all work together to make this an awesome tool to enhance our attendees’ experience.
Posted in openSUSE | No Comments
And that’s a Flourish Wrap-up!
Yesterday, for a change, I actually didn’t have to leave town to promote openSUSE. Instead, I got others to come to my town where we rolled up our proverbial sleeves and got busy doing the usual stints.
University of Illinois-Chicago hosts a small FOSS conference called Flourish! Being in Chicago, they’re the only real game in town and I think the show has the potential to really grow into a much larger scene. As one Ubuntu developer who came by to talk to me, Chicago is largely a dormant FOSS community. It’s not that FOSSians don’t exist in this town, its just that we’re not well organized or highly visible. We kind of pale in comparison to other large cities like Los Angeles’s SCaLE or even small-town Columbus, Ohio’s Linux Fext, both of which attracts well over 1,500 people.
But that’s a subject for another day… the big subject here is Flourish!
The Flourish Logo
So Flourish! is this conference that holds sessions in two very large rooms along with a mini-exhibit hall. They really do take care of the attendees, making sure everyone is always fed. There was always food around even though it was in the Student Center and thus anyone could have just walked a few steps to a number of restaurants right there. I thought that was really classy of them. (Plus it kept me away from Dunkin Donuts!) And on Friday night, they hosted a party in the bowling alley downstairs. Although I didn’t go. Just had other things to do that evening (my poor excuse for drawing attention to my lousy bowling skills.)
And more importantly, they had some very good subjects covered in their tracks. In fact, my talk was up against a game developers talk session. That’s some serious competition I was up against.
But I did have several awesome treats for the weekend…
Treat #1: Meeting Shayon Mukherjee
Shayon shows a booth visitor why openSUSE is awesome
I take pride in encouraging people to take opportunities to work openSUSE booths and meet other openSUSE folks whenever possible, especially new folks who have only known each other online. I first met Shayon a few years ago online when he was still a youngster in high school. He has since moved to Green Bay WI where he is enrolled at UW-Green Bay and continues to show lots of dedication to openSUSE. In fact, he’s been instrumental in helping us design and maintain the recently launched openSUSE Summit website.
Flourish! was an opportunity I could not pass up to get Shayon down to Chicago and he showed up and worked his butt off with flying colors. Everybody was very impressed with him. He did an awesome job as a guest speaker during my “openSUSE: It’s not just a distro!” presentation.
Treat #2: Promoting openSUSE
Our Booth
It’s always fun to promote the openSUSE Project and open people’s eyes to the fact that openSUSE represents more than just a distro. Talking to people in the area. And I gave my previous “it’s not just a distro” talk a major re-boot and I think it converted well. I’m going to polish it up a bit more this week in time for the openSUSE presence at Indiana Linux Fext April 13-15.
We also did a booth re-boot. In the past, in the United States, we were fortunate to have a very cool, albeit expensive, booth kit shipped around to events. The problem was that this was proving to be extremely costly. (Average cost to ship the kit around was around $250-$500 depending how far to ship.) It just didn’t make sense to do this when we really don’t have that much money to burn. So, a couple of months ago, we took a look at some oppportunities and came up with a smart design that literally only cost about $50.
The result was a still-awesome and memorable openSUSE booth layout. I don’t mean to brag, but will anyway, I think we had the best damn booth in the venue!
The other cool thing was this is the first event post-Summit announcement, so it was a good opportunity to gauge people’s reaction. People reacted favorbably and a number of folks showed some interest but weren’t sure they could make it down to Orlando just yet.
Shayon guest-speaks during our presentation
Treat #3: My Mommy and Daddy!!
Even though we live in the same city, my parents and I don’t get to see each other that often. Hey, we have lives and things to do! But this weekend, I guess they couldn’t pass up the chance to see me in action. Mom’s already an avid openSUSE user, without much prodding from me to adopt it, and has been looking for ways to integrate it into her customers’ environments. So it was good for her to actually sit down and listen to what openSUSE truly is about.
And both of them seemed to fit in very well hobnobbing with folks around the venue. I think this is the first time they ever attended a FOSS event, and it was fun while standing in my booth and seeing across the room watching either one of them in their element with other FOSSians as if they’ve been in it all along.
And the booth itself, set up with my Dad’s second pair of hands to help me. Made it feel like “The house Dad and I built!”
And I managed to recruit Mom to be my interpreter during my talk session, even though she hasn’t worked as a certified interpreter in 30 years! But she came through with flying colors signing the questions from the audience. Thank you Mom! It’s great when the three of us are working on some project together again after all these years!
My parents and me!
Treat #4: Meeting Meg Ford
I’ve chatted with fellow Chicagoan Meg Ford a few times online. She’s been instrumental in designing a new set of high-contrast icons for low-vision users and this set has been released last week with GNOME 3.4. She gave a great presentation about GNOME outreach and community efforts and I had a chance to preview these icons. She’s a great speaker and I hope to see her give more talks about GNOME at FOSS events around the United States.
Meg Ford shows why you just gotta love GNOME!
Treat #5: The Bonus Surprise
About 20 minutes before my talk session started, Dad turns to me and says “This gentleman would like to speak to you.” I turn to the gentleman, he states his name, I didn’t hear him at first, so he stated his IRC nick… “Simon123.” My jaw dropped!
I’m a big fan of his work. He is an invaluable asset to the openSUSE wiki and is my go-to guy whenever I have questions about formatting or design issues on our wiki.
As I said earlier, I love the opportunity to get new people to an event. But I had NO idea Rajko Matov, aka Simon123, would show up. You see, he lives all the way out in St. Louis, a good 5-hour drive. This guy literally got in his car Saturday morning to drive to Chicago just in time to see our session and then shortly thereafter, drove all the way back home! Holy mackerel! It was truly an honor that he made such an effort.
Rajko, me and Shayon
This was a real treat for me. Although, admittedly, I’m not one to pass up chances to give people opportunities to do a bit of work. I handed Rajko a box of our PromoDVDs and asked him to distribute it to everyone in the audience. And he didn’t even blink. Anything for the cause! Right?
Overall
Overall, it was a good experience. We had a chance to meet some good people, I had a chance to talk to a few local organizations, I brought about 400 DVDs and I took home about 50 afterward. Not only distrubted at the event, but also gave some sets to UIC to distribute at their Computer Sicences department as well as some for Shayon to distribute at UW-GB and Rajko to spread around in St. Louis.
The booth set up concept seems to work well. People were definitely drawn to our booth and most frequently asked “So why should I install openSUSE?” It was a mixed crowd, not everyone was a FOSS user so I think we had a pretty good opportunity to reach beyond and not just “preach to the choir.”
And as always, it gives me a chance to further evaluate and polish up my presentation and delivery. I think I’m ready for the next two shows on my list: Indiana Linux Fest, April 13-15, and Northwest Linux Fest in Bellingham, WA April 28-29.
So if you’re in either of those neighborhoods, do drop by. I’d love to meet you!
Did you really expect me to show up without my famous openSUSE getup?
Posted in openSUSE | 3 Comments
Summit March Status Meeting
Earlier this weekend, all the various teams came to the monthly openSUSE Summit planning status meeting to check on where things are progressing. The primary focus was to identify what needs to be done before the formal public launch announcement of the Summit on March 30.
You can read the transcript here.
Our next monthly status meeting will be April 1st. No foolin’!
Statuses
- Artwork: Andy Silva’s Summit logo design is pretty much good to go. We are hopefully going to have posters and flyers ready for print by end of the week.
- Website: Shayon Mukherjee has a draft of the Summit website going and we’ll continue to fine tune it before launching it on March 30th. He’ll need to work with various other parts of the Summit committees to get relevant artwork and content ready.
- Promotion: Jos Poortvliet and Mike McCallister are working on preparing the media press release and other relevant texts.
- Program: You can read our status in my last blog post here.
- Sponsorships: Nothing formal yet, but we’re looking into it!
Volunteers
We’ve got quite a few volunteers stepping up so far. But we definitely need more. Particularly we need some volunteers for the Evening Entertainment Committee and the Venue Committee. Check out our Planning wiki page and step up to volunteer if you can.
Our Logo
Isn’t this a cool logo created by Andy Silva?
Makes you wish you were in Florida now, huh?
Posted in openSUSE | No Comments
Summit Program Team gets fired up
Earlier today, the openSUSE Summit Program Committee held its first meeting (transcript). You can see a summary of where things are currently on our Program Team wiki page.
We held our meeting for two reasons. 1) To get our butts moving (well duh!) and 2) There is a general openSUSE Summit Organization status meeting this coming Saturday at 18:00 UTC on the Freenode #opensuse-project IRC channel. If you are already one of the organizers, or are interested in becoming one of the organizers, please come to this meeting. See the main Summit organizing wiki page.
Where are we now?
Target:
We proposed the following statement to define the target focus of the openSUSE Summit:
“The openSUSE Summit aims to bring together the community in the Americas region to colaborate, meet new people, and provide an open and inviting atmosphere for those interested in open source.”
As the Summit is intended to be a regional conference focusing on the Western Hemisphere, we felt this was a good statement that does not supplant the main openSUSE Conference, tentatively set for November in Prague, Czech.
Tracks:
We proposed the following tracks, with the intention of keeping tracks simplified thus avoiding some of the complications of too many tracks at other events:
- Community (all things non-tech related to openSUSE)
- openSUSE Tech (all things tech related to openSUSE, incl. OBS, Factory, HowTos)
- FOSS (all things non-openSUSE FOSS-related but still of interest to the community.)
Important Dates:
As long as the stars stay aligned, we hope to adhere to the following scheduling goals:
- 23-March – Team agreement on Tracks
- Before 30-March – Website and Registration/CFP submission service (Indico) is ready
- 30- March – Formal announcement of openSUSE Summit and open Call for Participation period.
- 15-June – CFP period is closed
- 16 June to 23 July – Program Team evaluates and accepts CFP proposals
- 23 July – Formal publication of openSUSE Summit Program (But we hope it is done before this date.)
Just remember, nothing mentioned here is written in stone yet. If you’re just looking for a formal announcement, wait until 30-March.
Even if you’re not on the team, we welcome everyone’s comments. If you have any thoughts or suggestions, That’s what the comment section below is for!
Posted in openSUSE | 1 Comment
Lots of excitement for openSUSE in Florida
As promised, I’m blogging periodically to update you all on the progress of our soon-to-be-named openSUSE conference in Florida.
Name it!
With our naming poll closing this Saturday (11-February), the naming poll is getting pretty exciting. A last minute entry is gaining popularity and it looks like possibly it will be a toss-up between two proposed names before the poll ends. If you haven’t voted yet, why not? Vote here.
I wanna join!
On IRC, mails, and directly on our planning wiki page, people are volunteering to be a part of the planning. On the wiki page, you’ll see we’ve solidifed the types of committees we need and added some good notes to relevant committees. People have volunteered whether or not they think they can actually make it to the conference. A good show that just because you may not actually be there, that doesn’t lessen your value within the community.
I’m especially excited to see some good diversity on the program committee. Itxshell, from Honduras, is joining Alan Clark, Drew Adams and myself and will give us good mileage toward our goal of making this a great bi-lingual conference. We want to make this a welcoming experience for both English and Spanish speakers, both languages have high presence in the area.
Sponsorship Committee
Many of the committees that have immediate tasks to perform are moving along at a good pace after our kickoff meeting last week. However, one immediate need is the sponsorship committee. This is a vital function that needs to be organized in the very near future. As we have said already, we cannot expect guaranteed funds to cover all our conference expenses and we want to reach out to potential sponsor donors to help fund the conference as well as any possible travel sponsorships. If you can join the sponsorship committee, everyone would be ever so grateful.
What else is going on?
As said, our naming poll ends this Saturday. At that point, we’ll be able to move quickly with setting up our conference web page, promotional posters and flyers to distribute to events, and other things that depend on having a formal name attached to the event. Andi Silva is already hard at work coming up with designs for our posters and flyers.
Alan Clark has done a nice job of compiling a list of LUGS in the Florida area that can help our organizing efforts. I think we should expand that to include neighboring states since they’re so close by.
Alexia, the conference manager for SUSECon, will be making a trip sometime in the near future to do ground scouting of the area near the hotel. We’ll get some good information back about what resources exist in the neighborhood and a better idea for the lay of the land. This is going to be useful for when we add location information to our website for attendees.
It is my hope that we make a formal public announcement launching the conference by early March. We’ll tap into the expertise of folks like Mike McCallister and Jos Poortvliet to formalize the press releases, and in conjunction with a site launch and promotional materials printing, we should have a pretty good bang going on in March.
That’s not to say there’s already some excitement going on out there in the world about our conference. LPI has already jumped in and offered to provide testing services for the LPIC exam.
I’m having the feeling we’re stepping into something good!
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments
Name that event! Poll for openSUSE Event in Florida
As promised, the poll to name the openSUSE event to be held in Orlando, FL September 21-23, 2012 is now online. Please vote before February 11th!
Naming Poll
And as always, if you want to get involved in planning, please visit our planning page.
Thanks!
Bryen M Yunashko
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Moving Along for Florida’s openSUSE Event
As some of you may have noticed, SUSE will have their SUSECon event in Orlando, Florida this coming September. And because SUSE recognizes the importance of the openSUSE Community, they have graciously granted space for us to have our own conference of sorts immediately after SUSECon.
So, yesterday we had our kickoff meeting to start planning our event. We have yet to have an official name for it but we will be launching a poll tomorrow on our Connect site to see which name most people like. Stay tuned for the announcement to that poll link! And if you have a suggestion for a name, mention it now so I can be sure to include it in the poll.
I posted a detailed summary of what we discussed during the kickoff meeting. What I really liked about yesterday’s meeting was the obvious interest and energy of the community in attendance. The community has waited a long time to see such an event in the Western Hemisphere and now those voices are finally heard. This does not however replace our main openSUSE Conference which is held every year in Europe. The Florida event is more of a regional somewhat smaller-scale event that aims to bring together the Community in the North America region, though obviously it is open to everyone from around the globe.
It is an event that will be defined and driven by our community. And I’ll be sure to blog whenever I can to keep you updated on the evolution of this event.
So what’s next?
This is not a community event if the community isn’t involved. And that mean