Chasing Nuts

Some of you may know that I have been using open source software for years and have been involved in OSS at varying levels for some time. At Penguicon on a few occasions I have tried to explain the varying ways people are involved in the OSS community, unfortunately I feel I have never done the job proper justice. Luckily Bruce Byfield wrote a great article about this topic worth checking out:

A Field Guide to Free Software Supporters

On a completely different note the new SuSE 11 install is looking amazing! Check out Stephen Shaws’s post on how it’s coming along:

OpenSuSE 11 Alpha 1 Screen Shots

This weekend I had the pleasure of attending and running High Voltage ConFusion. This year I was on the convention committee and responsible for running registration. I lined up two great staff helping me and the experience was so enjoyable that I intend to run registration again in 2009. Everything went smooth however there were a few lessons learned for next year.

• Make a special badge for Kids-In-Tow
• Make a special badge for KidFusion
• Make sure we track on a separate sheet at the door KidFusion registrations
• Use 24pt font and a high contrast background on the badge.
• Have a couple volunteers to do nothing but data entry over the weekend.
• Never attack Russia in the winter while fighting a war on two fronts.

One highlight of the weekend was Sunday night when I was able to spend time with our author guests of honor Scott Westerfeld and Justine Larbalestier. The two of them totally rock and I have a new goal in life, try and become a crazed fan of Justine’s.