Sexy Sexy Penguins

Well, after staying up until around 4am hacking (2am with David and Cade), I finally finished my presentations slides and went to sleep for a measly 3hrs 45mins.  But that was enough to get me through the rest of the day.  And what a day it was!

When I arrived downstairs just after 8am, people were setting up for FAD NA.  Jeffrey Tadlock had arrived and was loading the food in from the car.  Bagels, donuts, fruit, coffee and orange juice.  Nice array of foodstuffs for the morning.

My presentation went pretty well, we had fun with it and I really enjoyed the gag about the Ambassador Class Starship.  Unfortunately, I forgot to grab the vga cable for my projector so we couldn’t use it but I did have pdfs of the slides online.

I brought up a lot of thoughts about how we should be ambassadors, how we should act and especially how important it is that we represent ourselves well to the community.  I talked a bit about the message we should spread and ways we can represent Fedora to the community.  I think it was well received by the ambassadors and I hope it made a good impression.

The rest of the day was very well focused, we made some serious progress in areas I wanted to see the progress as well as things I hadn’t even considered.  Pascal was gracious enough to take notes and place them online already.  I learned a ton about how FAmSCo works and what we need to do as ambassadors to make sure they will provide us with the tools we need to spread the word about Fedora.

After a good long day, we cleaned up (most of us anyway) around 2pm and started heading out, though my flight wasn’t until almost 8pm.  Brian Pepple, Jon Stanley and I headed to a coffee shop after dropping John Rose off at the airport and me shipping my projector and phone home.  It was a nice relaxing conversation.

UPDATE: Pictures are being uploaded as we speak to my flickr account

Tags: 2008, ambassadors, fadna, Fedora

Well, the incrementing continues and we’re closing in on the end of our time in Ohio.  I’ve really enjoyed the conference so far and the Fedora Ambassadors are awesome!  13 of us showed up to the booth (pictures coming later) and we interacted with hundreds upon hundreds of interested folks.

As usual, the biggest hit was the One Laptop per Child (OLPC).  The kids would show up (and many adults) and play for some time.  I really enjoyed showing the kids the cool activities and items on these awesome computers.  I’m really looking forward to the updates coming out in the next update!  The kids loved the camera and voice wave activities and the adults really liked the idea of kids learning to program and do amazing things.

A good friend of mine John Weis, who lives in Columbus was at OLF too and so we met up and hung out a bit at the conference.  Still working on converting him over to Fedora, but at least he’s using Linux.

As for others, we had a run on shirts around noon, I think I gave out about 15 in a span of 10 minutes.  The rule was that they had to put them on right then so people could see the fedora on their person!  It was great fun and we have some fun pictures, which I’ll post with tomorrow’s updates.

At the end of the day, I had attended 3 presentations.  The teenage girl who uses open source, one on alsa, and the closing keynote by Jono Bacon.  I, unfortunately, missed Zonker’s presentation, I hear it was just like the one at UTOSC :)  Good stuff!

We headed out to dinner at this greek restaurant where I was able to enjoy some ‘Flaming Cheese!’  Quite a good restaurant.  Grape leaves are good as well, and I got to mock John Weis with some draft NewCastle ale (since he’s only 20) which was also quite good.

After dinner, we returned to the convention center for the after party.  We had a good time and I did the moonwalk to represent Fedora during the dance competition.  I’m pretty reserved though compared to the other distro dance representatives who shook their butts and removed clothing!  After the first round, I bowed out, but it was funny…

Apparently, there as an after after and an after after after party as well.  I heard rumors of bottles being broken and a fight that almost happened.  Hopefully nothing came out of it as it was great conference and I really enjoyed myself.  Fedora was well represented as well and I look forward to seeing another OLF in the future.

Tomorrow is FAD NA and I need to rewrite my slides again (now that I’ve the thoughts more organized in my head), and I’m really looking forward to working with these guys on some really cool projects coming up.

Cheers,

Herlo

Tags: ambassadors, fadna, Fedora, ohiolinux, shirts

In last night’s FAmNA meeting, we discussed the fact that nobody had remembered to register to help at the Fedora booth at OLF.  David brought it up and within a few minutes we had most of the spots filled.

As an event organizer, I understand the importance of having a booth manned at all times.  If you have a moment, head on over to the OLF Planning page on the wiki and add your name to a slot.  We could use at least 2-3 people in every spot.

There will be a ‘USB Creation Station’ there run by my little 7″ ASUS EEE PC as well as some XO laptops and other cool swag like stickers, t-shirts and buttons (thanks John).

Thanks to Jeffrey Tadlock for heading up the organization and it will be great to see him at FADNA on Sunday as well.  It will be great to meet all the gang and put faces to names.  Don’t forget to bring your camera!!

Cheers,

Herlo

Tags: booth, fadna, Fedora, ohiolinux

Get your name on the list for the Fedora Ambassador Day - North America, October 10-12, 2008.  It’s coming in just 2-1/2 weeks in Columbus, Ohio while we’re enjoying the Ohio LinuxFest.  The agenda is being formed, we’re planning a FADPub (maybe), and might even have some FAD - NA shirts to give away.

If you are coming to FADNA, please take a moment and sign up on the wiki page.  OLF doesn’t have any more rooms at the Drury, where some Ambassadors are staying, so many of us are staying a short while out of town at the Holiday Inn Express in Grove City.  If you haven’t reserved a room, they have pretty good rates, even cheaper than the Drury.

In addition, if you haven’t taken a moment to sign up to help at the Fedora booth, we would like to make a good impression there as well.

Many of us will be carpooling in each day and we’re working to reserve a room at the Holiday Inn Express for Sunday’s Meeting.

See you all at FADNA.  I am very excited to meet many of the North American Ambassadors at OLF.

Cheers,

Herlo

I'm Going to FAD-NA

Tags: ambassadors, fadna, famna, Fedora, ohiolinux

5 years! w00t!

Tags: birthday, Fedora, five

Hi all,

Just another quick reminder that if you are an Ambassador in North America and are wanting to get your input in on what will happen at FAD - NA, come to the meeting tonight.  It will be at 20:00 EDT in #fedora-ambassadors on irc.freenode.net.

Previously, I stated that this was for North American Regional Ambassadors.  I was corrected recently that it could be for any Ambassador with interest, so please feel free to put your $.02.

Sorry for the confusion.

Cheers,

Herlo

Tags: fad, famna, Fedora

Following up with our FAMNA meeting this week, the FAMNA regional ambassadors are meeting tomorrow night at 20:00 EDT in #fedora-ambassadors (irc.freenode.net) to discuss the agenda and events surrounding the Fedora Ambassador Day - North America.  I’m not sure if this is the first FAD - NA, but we’re definitely in a good resurgence with some good folks involved.

In commemoration of this exciting event, which will be held concurrently with the Ohio Linux Fest, October 10-12, I created a badge similar to the one created by Nicu Buculei for FAD EMEA.

I’m excited this looks as good as it does and will show pride for those Fedora Ambassadors in North America who will be joining us at OLF.

Cheers,

Herlo

Tags: fad, Fedora

Day 2 seemed to be even smoother than day 1, much of the time, running around putting out little fires, but not too many.  I was the room manager for Paul’s Fedora Remix talk, quite enjoyed that, even though most of it I already knew.

I also got to enjoy both keynotes today.  Howard Tayler was quite entertaining with his bit about ‘The Price is Right’ and making content that doesn’t suck.  Joe Brockmeier’s keynote was a bit down to earth, yet had some very fun elements.  I really enjoyed the ‘Dairy Council’ idea for Linux that was brought up during the Q&A session.  It reminded me that I need to send him an email for a similar idea with community conferences.

The Fedora booth was going smoothly.  Unfortunately, Paul spent most of his time there, except for his presentation.  Jared Smith and Nathan Blackham helped out while he was gone.  Next year, I want to make sure that if we have Paul or Joe at our conference, they don’t have to spend time in the booth.  It would seem they could help better in other ways.  Maybe I’m wrong?

In the evening, we headed out to Tucanos Brazilian Grill at the Gateway for the UTOSC Geek/Blogger Dinner.  This dinner was a complement to UTOSC 2008 so some who weren’t attendees showed up to join us.  I was able to purchase brazilian lemonades for the entire group.  Its so much fun spending time with geeks of my sort.  Both Paul and Joe were able to attend as well.

After we consumed large portions of meat, socialized and drank ourselves into a stupor, the group started to disperse.  A few of us decided to take light-rail home afterward, which was a nice departure from all of the driving I had done recently.  It also gave me an opportunity to spend a few more minutes with my sweetie, Jennifer.  She’s been so great throughout.  I’m just happy to know she’ll support me, and she said she had a lot of fun as well.

Many, many people came by the booths from what I saw.  I know the OLPC would be a big hit on Saturday, Family Day.  Time to get out the little fedora shirts and show off the coolness that is Fedora.

Cheers,

Herlo

Tags: Fedora, geekdinner, utosc, utosc2008

In the next 3 weeks, I will be among the busiest people I know.  Probably the only people busier are Presidential hopefuls, Olympic organizers and sadly, those fighting in Georgia.  The reason I am writing this post is to help me remember what I have left to complete between now and the Utah Open Source Conference 2008 on August 28-30, 2008.

Recently, I learned that our website doesn’t render well in Internet Exploder, Safari and some older versions of Firefox.  I’m guessing its due to the inability I have to create and maintain css, because well, I’m not a design guy.  Because of this, we’re having a hackfest tonight, both at my house, and online.  Feel free to come by at 8:30 and help out.

Prior to the hackfest, I will be working with Fedora Ambassadors to grow the North American region.  We’ll be discussing such things as AmbassadorKit, EventBox and of course, Fedora’s presence at UTOSC 2008.  This meeting tends to get a lot of good people making the world a better place.  I am interested in making this happen starting with North America.  If you are interested in helping out, or just lurking, feel free to drop by #fedora-meeting on irc.freenode.net at 1:00UTC (9pm EDT).

Prior to the Fedora NA meeting, I’m planning on working on the PCs that we’ll be using for the Utah Open Source Conference.  This will be done over at a friends house, who is loaning the PCs to UTOSC for the week of the conference.

I am attempting to record every presentation this year with either audio or video.  We have been rewarded again this year by having our friends over at KnowledgeBlue come and video record much of the conference, but they don’t have enough staff or equipment to simultaneously record 4-6 rooms.  So the plan went to me to setup recording devices in each room.

The plan is simple setup 6 PCs with Linux, install audacity and darkice.  This way we can stream the keynote audio live over our streaming server and also just record the audio from other presentations to be published at a later date.  I anticipate I’ll be able to install and complete this task pretty quickly.

Well, its now 7:40am here at my desk in my house.  I still have head into the office today for a bit of work, so off I go.  Feel free to come by #utos anytime today and wish me luck (or help if you are so inclined) with anything you can suggest.  Hopefully, today won’t be too long.

Herlo

Tags: ambassadors, audacity, darkice, Fedora, hackfest, na, recording, utosc

I’ve been very busy this last two weeks updating pages and working on finalizing details for UTOSC 2008, held August 28-30, 2008.  For instance, the Fedora booth is coming along nicely.  For a conference of around 400, we should have a pretty good booth turnout.  I had Jeffrey Tadlock, Paul Frields (who’s also keynoting btw) and its possible other NA Ambassadors may attend.  I’m really excited about this development.

In addition, Joe Brockmeier of OpenSUSE will also be keynoting and we’ve got quite a list of presenters on our website.  Our goal is to help open source grow in Utah, and by providing this conference once a year, we can help our local LUGs and open source leaders.  We have approximately 50 presentations, plus events and other fun stuff up our sleeve over this 3 day conference.

One of the great events returning this year is the Guru Labs Troubleshooting Challenge.  We hope to have this event bigger and better this year, with cash prizes for the winner(s).  There will be sign-ups available on Thursday morning at the registration booth and the contest will run all day Friday, crowning a winner Friday night!

Another great return from last year is KnowledgeBlue.  With opensourceTV, they’ll be recording the video for several of our presentations and keynotes.  They’ll be working just like last year (only better) to provide interviews as well with some of the leaders of the open source community.  We expect you all will enjoy the videos as they go up on youtube.  This year, they will focus on multiple angles and getting a good quality presentation from the presenters.

Lastly, I’d like to talk a little bit about Family Day at UTOSC, August 30, 2008.  If you take a look at the presentations on Saturday, you’ll notice a bit of a trend.  With a few exceptions, presentations are intended to help the family. Also, we are working on activities for the kiddies such as an OLPC, videos on MythTV, edubuntu, Fedora Electronics Lab demos and more in our try-it lab.  We’re also working to acquire a moon bounce and sumo suits (for the big kids).  Saturday looks to be a ton of fun.

NOTE: This doesn’t mean that we have enough family stuff, and in fact, we really don’t.  One thing I’d like to see, is a presentation on content filtering for the family.  Something like “Howto use Dan’s Guardian effectively” or a discussion of pfsense, smoothwall or other firewalling/filtering tools.  If you have a presentation you’d like to suggest in this area, please let me know by commenting or emailing me.

I hope to see many of you there as the cost is quite low at $70 and if you are LUG member, its only $35 until August 7 for the early bird pricing.  Read more on our website at http://2008.utosc.com or register directly with eventbrite at http://utosc2008.eventbrite.com.

See you all there.

Herlo

Tags: 2008, conference, Fedora, opensuse, utosc, video