Utah Open Source Planet

https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-May/msg00007.html

Get yours today! http://fedoraproject.org

Be sure and digg it too:

http://digg.com/linux_unix/Fedora_9_Sulphur_Released

Date: May 14th, 2008
Time: 7:30 PM - 9:30 PM
Location: Omniture, Inc.
Details: http://www.plug.org/

MySQL will be flying Jay Pipes (North American Community Relations Manager at
MySQL) in to Salt Lake on the 14th for the sole purpose of addressing PLUG
(and all other local SIGs). Please spread the word. Set your calendars. Blog
it. Spread it. Tell everyone.

To be clear: THIS WILL BE AN IN-DEPTH TECHNICAL PRESENTATION. Expect this to
be one of those killer, mind-bending, and deep technical presentations. The
kind that leaves you barley able to drive home. Jay will keep the presentation
as language agnostic as possible - and focus just on the SQL-fu Jay
specializes in. This is one presentation you don’t want to miss.

There will be prizes (books and MySQL swag). And we will have drinks. There
might be food, but don’t plan on it.

His bio:

Jay Pipes is the North American Community Relations Manager at MySQL.
Co-author of Pro MySQL (Apress, 2005), Jay has also written articles for Linux
Magazine and regularly assists software developers in identifying how to make
the most effective use of MySQL. He has given sessions on performance tuning
at the MySQL Users Conference, RedHat Summit, NY PHP Conference, OSCON, and
Ohio LinuxFest, amongst others. He lives in Columbus, Ohio, with his wife,
Julie, and his four animals. In his abundant free time, when not being
pestered by his two needy cats and two noisy dogs, he daydreams in PHP code
and ponders the ramifications of __clone().

-Ryan

— Books we have to give away:
- A book regarding Fedora.
- A “Head First” book from O’Reilly on SQL.
- Several very excellent “Pragmatic Programmers” books:
- Programming Ruby (very good)
- Java to Ruby
- Enterprise Integration with Ruby
- Agile Web Development with Rails
- Agile Retrospectives
- Practices of an Agile Developer

Well, usually I forget to take pictures, because either A) I forget my camera [I brought it this time] or 2) I get wrapped up in the event and forget to bring it with me.  But this release party, I plain just forgot to charge my batteries for my camera, oops!

Fortunately, I was able to snap a few pictures with some of the spare, also not fully-charged, batteries I did have on hand.  However, others took many pictures and I’ve listed them below.

• Sheri Bigelow took some great pictures.  She is a great local photographer, web designer and the local webmistress.
• Tristan Rhodes, a local Asterisk Entrepreneur posted a good blog post.
• Here’s the pictures I took.  Not nearly as many, or as good.

To summarize the party, much celebration was had with foosball, a chess game on one of the largest chess boards around, video games, air hockey and much more was provided by CodeGreene.  The FedoraProject and Utah Open Source sponsored the food and prizes.  If you’ve never had a Chipotle burrito, they are the best burritos around.

I was able to spend time with about 5-7 people myself sharing the Preview Release of Fedora 9 (codename Sulphur) including two who had never had previous success with Fedora or Linux in general.  It was very satisfying to see things work for them.

The Ubuntu folks were there in strength as well.  The Hardy Heron (8.04) CDs were being passed out, while we Fedoran’s provided LiveUSB versions.  I even saw people taking advantage and obtaining both!  Its great to see communities come together and celebrate together.

The party continued at Salt Lake Pizza & Pasta for another couple hours.  Lot’s of talk about the releases, upcoming events, and general mayhem took place including having Heartsbane shoot beer through his nose when I swore at him!

All in all, quite a successful evening and I look forward to helping others in November at our next release party.

Cheers,

Herlo

UPDATE: Another 70+ pictures have been added, check them out!

In case you haven’t heard or read already, Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) was released just a few days ago (April 24). I certainly have noticed plenty of talk about it on blogs and tech news sites. Fedora 9 (Sulphur) was scheduled for release right about now, but the fine folks at the Fedora Project decided they needed a couple more weeks to work out some kinks. In the meantime, there is a fine Fedora 9 Preview release available which can be updated to the official release when it is out (May 13, or so they say).

So what does all this mean? It means it’s time to party like it’s v0.99!

Code Greene, a programming shop located in Salt Lake City, is graciously hosting a release party THIS SATURDAY to celebrate these two latest distribution releases. What?! You’re a OpenSUSE enthusiast? A long-time Slackware user? That’s okay! You can still come and enjoy good food, good company, and fun and games. (Rumor has it these Code Greene people don’t actually do any real work, they just play foosball and videogames all day.)

Here are the vital details:

• Date/time: Saturday, May 3, 6pm to 8pm
• Address: Code Greene, 44 Exchange Place Salt Lake City, UT 84111

Now, if you’re coming, you should take a moment and RSVP via this friendly and easy-to-use Upcoming link.

This release party is being sponsored by us- the Utah Open Source Foundation, the Fedora Project, and Ubuntu Utah.

I just finished attending the Ubuntu OpenWeek Session: Packaging 101, presented by dholbach, King of the MOTU! ;).  It was a great presentation and I learned quite a bit.  I have studied packaging before and I always ran into issues.  I think his presentation made things very clear and he was great in answering the questions we ran into.

We packaged ed, a standard Unix line editor that nobody (except for one of my co-workers) actually uses, but it was a good practice run.  Even with such a simple package we learned how the basic principle works, which should carry over to more real-world packages.

If you’ve been interested in packaging this is a great time to dive in.  We’ve got a small window before Ubuntu 8.10 “Intrepid” starts and there will be help needed in merging everything and getting that release ready.  I would *love* to be a part of the actual packaging for that release so you may hear more about my journey toward MOTU during this release cycle.  I invite you to attend the remaining packaging related sessions at Ubuntu OpenWeek and pickup what you can.  Ubuntu’s success is very much based on the strength of the MOTU and the number of quality packages it offers.

If you haven’t yet, go check out OpenWeek.  Drop by #ubuntu-classroom on irc.freenode.net and join the fun!

Related

• “Ubuntu on the EeePC” : OpenWeek Presentation Went Well
• Follow My MOTU Journey…
• Presenting At Ubuntu OpenWeek - Ubuntu on the EeePC

The following two articles were published in the past couple days.  When they were published and made known to me, I was saddened:

Report: OLPC may eventually switch from Linux to Windows XP
Nicholas Negroponte on Sugar and One Laptop Per Child

It appears, that Greg DeKoenigsberg responded (it appears) to these two articles with a great rebuttal in this article:

OLPC Developers are *not* fundamentalists

Thank you Greg, thank you for saying what I feel inside.  As an open source advocate, I see the value and benefit of free software and its power.  I feel good inside when I contribute and don’t feel anything like a fundamentalist.

Again, thank you Greg.

Cheers,

Herlo

As many of you may already know, Fedora 9 (codename: Sulphur) has been pushed back 2 weeks to May 13.  Being the organizer of the Utah Fedora/Ubuntu Linux Release Party on May 3, its kind of hard to push it back because Ubuntu’s release is still on time.

I’m glad though that the major parts of this release are feature complete and its just a few blocker bugs holding it back.  I’m also really happy to point out that because the folks at the Fedora Project are willing to push the date back, the release will be much better off in the end.

This also goes to show that while many businesses would consider releasing anyway.  Mainly because they promised something, and not releasing would cost them revenue and possible customers.  Open source people don’t follow the same mantra, and I’m proud to say that while I like meeting deadlines, if deadlines slips a little to make a better product, timelines should slip.

In the meantime, enjoy the preview release made available yesterday.  Utah will party with this preview.  Shortly after the party, an update will be made available via yum.  There are some amazing things coming out in a few weeks.  Keep your ear to the ground and enjoy the new Sulphur in your life!

Cheers,

Herlo

My T60p.

[clints@herlo-lap ~]$ history|awk ‘{a[$2]++ } END{for(i in a){print a[i] ” ” i}}’|sort -rn|head
144 svn
144 cd
108 ls
104 ./manage.py
101 ssh
69 su
43 screen
26 vim
25 rm
15 ping

[clints@thor ~]$ history|awk ‘{a[$2]++ } END{for(i in a){print a[i] ” ” i}}’|sort -rn|head
266 git
260 make
71 cd
57 ls
55 vim
55 rt
26 rm
19 bin/send-patch
18 grep
16 bin/validate

I guess I love RCS’.

Cheers,

Herlo

Not only is 2008 the second year we will be holding the Utah Open Source Conference, it is also the second year we will be recognizing and awarding four remarkable individuals as part of the Utah Open Source Awards ceremony at the conference.

The Utah Open Source Awards will be given in four categories:

• Business
• Community
• Technology
• Education

In 2007, awards were given in three categories as the Education category was not added until this year. The recipients of the 2007 Utah Open Source Awards were:

• Matt Asay of Alfresco (Business) for his work evangelizing open source software in business
• Brandon Beattie (Technology) for his excellent contributions to the MythTV project
• Christer Edwards (Community) for his leadership in the Ubuntu Utah project

Now is the time for you to close your eyes and search deep in the crevices of your mind of who within the local community has made a positive impact on your experience using open source software. It could be someone who writes helpful documentation or blog posts. Perhaps you know someone who has developed valuable open source software. Maybe it’s someone who has made a difference in encouraging adoption and understanding of open source software. Whoever it is, concentrate on them. Now, imagine them receiving a big round of applause and a cool gift as thanks from the community. Okay, open your eyes.

When you have thought of at least one person, send a quick e-mail message to awards@utos.org with the name and a brief explanation of why you think this person is deserving of a Utah Open Source Award. There’s no limit to how many people you can nominate, but you can only submit nominations until August 1.

Winners will be announced (and awarded) during the 2008 Utah Open Source Conference held August 28-30, 2008 at the Salt Lake Community College Redwood Campus.

Fedora 9 (Sulphur) will be released April 29, 2008
Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) will be released April 24, 2008

All are welcome to join in the celebration of newly released Fedora and Ubuntu distributions. Ubuntu Utah has been gracious to allow revelers from the Fedora camp join in with the Ubuntu Utah team.  The entire event will be sponsored by the Utah Open Source Foundation who will also provide food.

FOOD IS FIRST COME FIRST SERVE, SO COME EARLY AND COME HUNGRY!

If you’ve never been to a release party, they are a blast, and this one proves to be nothing less than spectacular.  In fact, Code Greene’s owner Mac Newbold has offered up his office (or rather playground) for us to hold our party.  Code Greene has foosball, video games, pool, music and more for all to enjoy.

Why: Release of Ubuntu Hardy Heron (8.04) and Fedora Sulphur (F9)
When:  May 3, 2008, 6-8pm (or thereabouts)
Where: Code Greene, 44 Exchange Place Salt Lake City, UT 84111

Please RSVP via upcoming.org if you are participating.

Cheers,

Clint Savage / Aaron Toponce
UTOSF / Ubuntu Utah

I was perusing today, and maybe its just because its April Fools day and I’ve not posted, but I thought this was pretty hilarious…

If you click to add a new calendar item into Google Calendar, you get a new button “I’m Feeling Lucky”…

After clicking this new button I recognized, here’s what I got:

Woohoo!  So right before the Ubuntu/Fedora Release party on May 3, I have a date with Jessica Alba!  Nice!  I might blow off the release party if the date goes well…

I tried this a few more times and here’s the results I’ve received.  I’ve got dates with:

• Anna Kournikova on May 5 at 4pm
• Eric Cartman on May 10 at 6pm
• George W. Bush on May 6 at 4pm
• Matt Damon on May 8 at 8pm

Wow!  I’m popular.  Who else, what else did you get?

Cheers,

Herlo

The release of the next Ubuntu LTS (8.04 “Hardy Heron”) is just around the corner and as a community of Ubuntu members its our responsibility–nay, our obligation– to celebrate!  What are you planning to do for the greatest release to date?

If you’re part of a LoCo Team (you know who you are!) you need to have a release party.  If you’re not party of a LoCo Team you really should be!  Fill a room with geeks, add good food and drinks and toss in a reason to celebrate and who knows what might happen!

I want to remind everyone (particularly those in US Teams) to get cracking and post your release party details online here.

“What can we do for a release party?” you might ask.  Well, anything!  It can be as simple as meeting in a coffee shop with a few of your in-real-life buddies and celebrating Ubuntu’s latest achievement.  Perhaps meet up with your LoCo in a pub and have a toast to Ubuntu.  Maybe even go all out and have a big install fest in cooperation with your local university or LUG.  It doesn’t matter.  What does matter is that you’re celebrating the release and having a good time after six months of hard work!

It would be great if you could take pictures while you’re there and post them on blogs (and subsequent planets), flickr–even use twitter to share the fun.  Get the word out about where you’ll be, who can come and what’s involved.  Let’s really make it a big day and make sure the whole interweb hears about it!

If you’re looking for a local release party, or wondering if there is already one being planned, see the hardy release party list.

So I’ve done it.

Yes, I really have done it this time!

Well, maybe…time will tell.

I’ve gone and posted an idea for a project on the Fedora wiki page for the Google Summer of Code (GSoC), but that’s not all, no!

In addition, I took the time to apply to be a mentor at the Google Summer of Code Project page.  And what’s weirder, is I hope I get the opportunity to make this idea a reality, because I think its something that Fedora could really use.

I’m somewhat surprised it hasn’t already been created. A couple of people found this idea too, and have emailed me about it, and I need to reply.  Soon that will happen.

I am really excited.

Cheers,

Herlo

Get yourself some of that sulphur love!

From the mouth of the daring Mike McGrath:

The beta is live.  Go out, get people and try to crash the servers!  The
challenge is on :-P

http://fedoraproject.org/get-prerelease

Personally, I’ve been on Rawhide (the development tree) since February.  While there have been some bumpy roads, most of it has been smooth sailing.  These Fedora guys really know what they are doing :)

Tell me what you think of the latest and greatest of Linux releases?

Cheers,

Herlo

UPDATE: Feel free to digg this article if you like the beta

http://digg.com/linux_unix/The_Fedora_Project_releases_Fedora_9_Beta

Many of us in the Free Software community have a certain level of “activist” within us, pushing those around us towards the ideals that we cherish.  Ideals such as freedom.  Freedom of communication, freedom of data, freedom of choice.  This March 26th is Document Freedom Day, another occasion where we can band together and help promote Open Document Standards.

DocumentFreedom.org is a site that drives to promote the use of Open Document standards, such as ODF.  From the website:

The Document Freedom Day (DFD) is a global day for Document Liberation. It is a day of grassroots effort around the world to promote and build awareness for the relevance of Free Document Formats in particular and Open Standards in general.

To find out how you can participate this year, visit DocumentFreedom.org to find a team (or start a team!) near you.  Even if the best you can do is blog about it, do so.  One more person reached is one more “Open” mind.

As some of you may have read yesterday, Jorge Castro and I put together a twitter-powered Ubuntu Planet of sorts.  Our thinking is that we wanted a way to aggregate the army of Ubuntu users within the ‘twitterverse’, and give users a way to see what is going on within the Ubuntu community on a more up-to-the-minute basis than the existing Planet and blog formats.

So far the response has been really good and we’ve got a good collection of Ubuntu users and developers aggregated at the Pulse of Ubuntu.  If you’d like to see what is going on within the worldwide Ubuntu community check out the site, or follow the feed.  If you’re a twitter user and you’d like to be added drop me a line and you can become part of the Pulse!

If you’re not a Twitter user consider giving it a try, and we’ll plug you in.

One of the things that I always appreciated about the ‘old Ruby community’ was the incredible level of kindness that was exhibited by most posters. MINSWAN (Matz is nice, so we are nice) was the order of the day. As the community has grown, some of that feeling has fallen by the wayside. Recently though, I saw a wonderful return to ‘the way things used to be’. Since Zed blasted it, it seems

Mailing lists can be a pain in the butt, especially when discussions spiral into topics about which pizza delivery company is best, which text editor is best, which Linux distribution is best, which caffeinated beverage is best, etc.

We at Utah Open Source (UTOS) know you work hard day in and day out and deserve a break from the hardship of having to deal with meaningless discussions about what’s best. We give you something better — perhaps the best mailing list ever: utos-announce. We created this list so we can mail out announcements about upcoming UTOS events, but you can use it too, to announce anything you’ve got coming up… well, as long as it has something to do with open source in Utah.

Subscribing to the utos-announce list is simple: Go to < http://utos.org/mailman/listinfo/utos-announce >, enter your e-mail address, your name (optional), a password (also optional), and select the Subscribe button. If you’ve followed these instructions so far without making any mistakes or being distracted by a flamewar continuing on one of the other mailing lists you’re subscribed to, a confirmation message will be sent to your e-mail address with instructions on how to confirm your subscription. Follow those instructions (They’re real, real simple… like “click on this” simple.) and you’ll be ready to receive amazing, exciting announcements!

Subscribing to the utos-announce list is a great way to stay informed about the latest developments of the upcoming UTOSC conference. Find out who the keynote speakers will be before the story is aired on the local evening news. Learn what exciting schwag and promotions conference sponsors will be offering in their booths. Get the low-down on entertainment options while you’re attending the Utah Open Source Conference. Ahhh… the possibilities are endless.

What? You’re still here? Go subscribe already!

Before there can be another Utah Open Source Conference in 2008, there needs to be a list of people who will present on various topics. This is how YOU can contribute to the conference: by being a presenter!

The UTOSC Call For Papers begins now at <http://2008.utosc.com/>! Papers can be submitted until June 1, after which time chosen presenters will be announced.

Some people are natural public speakers and presenters while others are reluctant to imagine themselves in front of a group of people at a conference. Because this year’s Utah Open Source Conference theme is “HOWTO”, nobody should feel unqualified or inexperienced to present. We want presenters who can share information at all levels.

And now, some tough questions.

What should I talk about?

You should talk about Open Source software, philosophy, technology, etc. The theme for this year’s conference is “HOWTO” so your topic can be targeted at beginners, experts, or someone in between.

It may help to see what topics were presented last year. Go to <http://www.utosc.com/2007/sessions/> for information about 2007’s conference sessions.

This year, several sessions will be targetted at beginning or “newbie” users including those who are family members of an Open Source geek. Basic sessions on using OpenOffice.org, GIMP, or K3B are good examples of these types of sessions.

We are asking for presentations in one of the following categories, so bear that in mind also:

• Business
• Technical
• Community
• Education

What does a response to a call for papers look like?

You should come up with a brief outline, or abstract, of your presentation and who would be interested. You should also provide some information about you, your experience with open source software and the specific aspects you’re proposing to speak about.

Here’s an example of an abstract:

Title: Open source home security

This presentation will outline how I have used a
Linux server, IP cameras, and open source software,
to provide around-the-clock video and image
surveilance of my home which is archived for later
viewing and is available for viewing via the Web
when I’m not at home. 

The presentation will describe how to set up a
system similar to mine and what alternatives are
available for software and hardware in the system.

What’s in it for me?

There are lots of perks reserved for people chosen to present at the Utah Open Source Conference!

Resumé material

Having presented on a topic at a conference is a great thing to add to your resumé and could make the difference the next time you apply for a job.

Free admission

If you’re chosen as a speaker, we’ll let you — and your family — into the conference for FREE!

A picture and a paragraph

Speakers are asked to submit a digital photo and a paragraph of biographical information which will be seen by those viewing the UTOSC website and those reading the conference program.

Warm fuzzies

Being involved in the Utah Open Source Conference is a great experience. Just ask anyone who was involved in 2007’s conference.

What’s that URL again?

Go to <http://2008.utosc.com/> and get yourself an account. Then you can submit as many presentation ideas as you like.

Recently, I’ve been very interested in getting involved more and more with the Fedora Project.  In fact, the latest project in which I’m involved, the Getting Involved Guide (GIG).

I started with this guide because my so-called friend Jared Smith (hi Jared!), introduced me to the original creator of this document, Paul Frields at FUDCon a couple months ago.  I started the hackfest portion, not entirely clear where I’d end up, but somehow I rolled back to hang with Jared and Paul while they were working on this Contributor Guide, if I remember the name correctly.  I got involved late in the day, and either my misunderstanding, or pure genius took over and the Contributor Guide (intended mainly for developers), quickly turned into the Getting Involved Guide or GIG, which had a much broader focus.

While I am happy to be a part of this guide, and have had a hand in changing its purpose, I’m not at all familiar with much of the Fedora Community processes.  Which, for this document to be successful, I am going to have to learn, since that’s the point of this guide to begin with, helping others get started when they want to help the Fedora Project.
Think of it this way, if you are a corporate entity, an individual, or a small non-profit group (like my UTOSF group) and want to give back to the community that has helped you so much.  How do you do that?  What’s involved in getting started?  What projects are out there where we can help?  Do we need to be developers? If not, what else is there for us to do?  Well, those are all good questions, and I am sure there are many, many more we haven’t yet considered.

I guess what I am doing here is soliciting from the general communities at large, what they’d like to see in this guide.  What confused them about joining a large project.  I’d also like to hear stories about being a contributor to the Fedora Project, and why you think its a good idea.  I want to take these ideas and integrate them into the Getting Involved Guide.  I want to take these issues and make it clear for others how to get involved, why its important, and show that value.

Currently, if you are a Fedora Project member, I have a document in gobby.fedoraproject.org called GettingInvolvedGuide, which you are welcome to modify as you feel necessary.  I may also be hitting you up to answer questions regarding particular processes in your group as well.

Cheers,

Herlo

All I’ve got to say is “I had nothing to do with starting it, but it happened anyway.  And I had fun!”

Cheers,

Herlo

PS - I’m awaiting myspace friend approval for those in the know.

My apologies for the lack of updates this week.  My poor wife is nine-months pregnant and we’re expecting a baby any day now.  We even spent one evening at the Hospital wondering if that was going to be the big day.  She’s taking much of my focus this week, but with her fast asleep this afternoon I have a few minutes to catch up.

An update on the project I’ve blogged about recently.  I’m really happy to hear from all the people that have shown an interest in the project.  I did get a lot of responses and I’m, again, impressed in the great people we have in our Ubuntu community worldwide.

I was also a bit surprised to hear that this team already technically exists, but I found that its been a bit neglected.  So, it looks like we’ll be resurrecting a team instead of forming a new one.  I’m excited about this.  On the bright side there is already a Launchpad page, mailing list, etc.  We’ve got the tools (thanks to the initial founders for that work!), we just need to get to work.

If you’re interested in helping out with this project take a minute and subscribe to the ubuntu-classroom mailing list.  We’ll also try to have a meeting (again, apologies for the last minute nature) tomorrow in IRC.  We’ll try to use #ubuntu-classroom room if we can, at 12:00pm EST.  Stay tuned to the mailing list or, at worst case, my twitter page for last minute changes.

Let’s get this team going again and do what we can to make Ubuntu the best distribution on the planet.  With more people educated on how to participate we can only improve!

If you’re going to attend the meeting tomorrow you’ll want to be subscribed to the mailing list, join us in IRC and install Gobby for some group collaboration.  See you then!

Tomorrow night, 7pm, in Murray at my house, we’ll be eating pizza and hacking on ConMan again.

If you are interested in joining the fun, please feel free to stop by and learn some kick-a** django skillz.

The last two HackNights were all-nighters and were very successful.  Tomorrow’s HackNight is to refactor the views a little and build out the blog portion of the app as well.  Feel free to come by and stay as long or as little as you like.

See you all there.

Cheers,

Clint

Based on some of the feedback from yesterday’s post regarding my latest project I thought it deserved a little more detail.  I don’t mean to be cryptic about it, I think I’m simply having a hard time describing the team.  Something, obviously, that I’ll need to resolve quickly.

The best way I’ve found to describe this project/team is to think Open Week, just much more regularly.  One example (not related to this project) is that this week we’re having the Ubuntu Developer Weeek, and something like this fits right into the goals of this project.

Basically this team will plan and organize regular “Open Week” style events to educate Ubuntu users on how they can participate in the community.  Topics will range from bug work to documentation, packaging to loco activism, etc.  Pretty much every existing team within the Ubuntu community will have a chance to present on what their team does, invite others to participate and educate them on how they can join in.. and this team will be the engine behind making this happen.

The team itself will organize these events, market the events, and also try to follow up with users as they attempt to participate in the existing communities.  It has been interesting to follow some of the blogs on the Planet regarding the journey towards MOTU.  This team would also help track (and help the user track) their progress toward participation in their respective community projects.

I want to make sure that new users know how they can participate, who they can contact for help and when they can find ubuntu training events which will make their  transition toward participation easier.

I will be sending some reply emails soon to those that have contacted me.  I will also be planning a meeting for this upcoming Sunday (Feb 24th) in IRC (details pending) for continued discussion and organization.

I hope this helps clarify what I was trying to say in my previous post.  I think there is a real place for this type of project.  We’ve got the best community in the free software world, let’s really help show that by being part of a project like this.  A project which focuses solely on helping everyone learn how they can participate in one of the greatest free software projects in the world!

Ever since I attended the Ubuntu Developer Summit last October I’ve had an idea on my mind for a new Team within the Ubuntu Community.  I think there is a real need for this project and I’ve been cooking up some basic specs for it for the past few months.  The reason I’ve been sitting on it is that I want to make sure I do it right, and I want to make sure that it is properly organized.  I’ve had a good amount of team involvement over the past two or three years running the Ubuntu Utah LoCo Team and helping put together the US Teams Project, and I think I’ve learned a thing or two about the processes behind community involvement.  The focus of this team is #1 community involvement and #2 retention, something that I have some passion about.

At this point in the team development process I’m looking for a few determined, hard working volunteers that can help with the project.  I don’t (initially) expect that this will be an open-enrolled team as I want to have very defined roles, but there are a number of positions available.  Each of these positions could potentially be held by one or two individuals.  If you are interested in helping with a project that focuses solely on helping existing and future users get involved in improving ubuntu please see below:

Scheduling:  I am looking for someone that has experience with event scheduling (online events), perhaps with some experience with the Fridge and similar.  This project aims to have regular education events, teaching users how to get involved.  This position would be primarily focused on scheduling those events, securing presenters, selecting topics, etc.  Also making sure these events are properly communicated with the marketing position below.

Marketing:  This position is primarily focused on making sure the events and the purpose of the team are properly advertised prior to events.  This includes being added to prominent calendars, contacting prominent blogs, news, etc.  Be the public-face and get publicity to the events and the team.

Logging: I am also looking for someone that is good with the books.  We will want to track the team progress as well as that of those wanting to participate.  Experience with keeping logs, minutes, tracking contacts, etc would be great.  Helping document goals within the team and on a contributor-basis is critical in measuring success and monitoring improvements.

Sys Admin: We will need someone that can help maintain the facilities end of things.  From mailing lists to irc channels, wiki maintenance, etc.  This position won’t always be involved in the day-to-day education, but someone that can make sure the wheels of the organization are well oiled is critical.  We can’t work without the proper tools.

I will mention that I would like to try and organize this team in a very task-oriented manner.  It is important that we mesh as a group, and I want to make sure that things get done.  I want to make sure there are regular goals and things get achieved.  If you’re interested in working and making a difference please let me know.

I also want to make sure that this team involves the international community that we are.  If you have worked much with translations I’m sure we could use your help as well!

I don’t claim to have all of the workings of this project worked out so far, as most development projects it is a work in progress.  I would like to get started soon however.  I would like this project to be in full gear by the time Ubuntu 8.04 “Hardy” is released so that we are ready for the influx of Ubuntu adopters (yes, it will happen!)

Please contact me via my Contact Page if you are interested in this project.

Well, it’s a sad day for ruby-talk. This morning James Edward Gray II posted his last ruby quiz summary, finalizing his retirement. After running three years worth of quizzes, I retired as quizmaster and passed the project on to some loyal fans. New quizzes are still posted to the Ruby Talk mailing list so look for them there if you want to participate. Just because I knew it was coming

My request for an opensuse email account was accepted!!!  I am now the new proud owner of decriptor at opensuse dot org.  That’s not all!  I’m on the opensuse members page

The 2008 Utah Open Source Conference, to be held at Salt Lake Community College’s Redwood Campus August 28-30, 2008, will be a great opportunity for open source enthusiasts to gather, socialize, learn, and exchange ideas. In these ways, the 2008 UTOSC won’t be a lot different than the 2007 UTOSC. However, the planning and organizing team behind UTOSC 2008 does have some new and exciting changes for the 2008 conference.

In our previous blog posting, we described the theme the 2008 UTOSC is designed around: HOWTO. In this article, we’ll explain some of the ways we’re planning to abide by this theme.

Friends and Family

The 2008 UTOSC is designed to be more friendly to “newbies,” people who have only had a limited amount of exposure to the open source world, and to family members of those who eat, drink, sleep and roll around in open source every moment of their geeky lives.

Conference sessions on Friday, August 29, will include sessions targeted at those just getting their feet wet. Topics may include “Installing Linux,” “Using OpenOffice.org,” “Introduction to open source social networking tools,” and “Understanding SSH.”

The planning and organizing committee is excited about getting family members involved in what would ordinarily be considered fairly exclusive to geeks. There will be plenty of activities and conference sessions Saturday, August 30 targeting children and significant others so they can learn how open source may benefit them. We’ll have games and educational software for the kids like SuperTuxCart, SuperTux, Planet Penguin Racer, Gcompris, and KDEEDU. Session topics may include “Open source digital scrapbooking,” “Open source for the musician and music enthusiast,” “Open source and family history,” and “Open source artistry.” Great fun for the entire family!

To make this happen, admission on Saturday will be free to those who attend with a registered conference attendee.

Bar what?

Earlier this year, Utah Open Source Foundation (UTOSF) Head Cheese, Clint Savage, attended FUDCon, a conference for users and developers of the Fedora Linux distribution. One of the days of this conference was set up as a BarCamp, where attendees meet at the beginning of the day and decide, as a group, what conference topics and activities will take place that day. The BarCamp process is fairly informal, but there is one rule: Every attendee has to participate either by presenting or facilitating in at least one session.

Clint was totally amazed by this process and said it was one of the most satisfying conference experiences he’s had. He vowed that the 2008 Utah Open Source Conference would include one day of BarCamp. As a result, Thursday, August 28, the first day of the conference, will be held BarCamp-style. Be sure to show up early so you can participate in the entire process.

What now?

We’ll be posting more information in the days and weeks to come with more information about UTOSC 2008 including a Call For Papers and a Call For Volunteers. If you haven’t already, start thinking of topics you could present at this year’s conference with the above information in mind. Because this conference caters to a very diverse audience of varying levels of experience using open source or even using computers, nobody should feel they don’t have something to contribute.

For those of you waiting with bated breath, wait no longer. The Utah Open Source Conference volunteers have been hard at work year preparing an even more awesome conference for 2008.

Because 2007 was such a grand success, we’ve made some minor changes and improvements to help with a smoother conference. This year’s conference is at a different location and we’ve added a full day on Thursday.

The Utah Open Source Conference 2008 will be held at the Salt Lake Community College, Redwood Road campus August 28 - 30, 2008.

This years theme is HOWTO. The concept is that within the technology, education, community and business tracks, there will be plenty to talk about.

• HOWTOs will help others get started
• HOWTOs will help families use open source together
• HOWTOs will provide a stepping stone along the road to technology mastery
• HOWTOs will let those that are masters get together and make the products better.

These are just a few of the many things that HOWTO theme will accomplish during the Utah Open Source Conference (UTOSC) 2008.

The Salt Lake Community College Computer Science department is excited to be a sponsor of the 2008 conference and will be using it to improve students’ awareness and understanding of open source software.

The Utah Open Source Foundation is also re-dedicating itself to ensure the pricing structure remains reasonable for those who’d like to come and are on a budget. The pricing structure right now is tentative, but no major increases in the fees are planned for attendees.

We currently have a tentative plan on our wiki, so feel free to have a look. If you have suggestions, please join the chat anytime in the #utos channel on irc.freenode.net or email clints at utos dot org with your comments.

Watch closely over the next week for the Call for Papers, updates on the basic schedule, and the Call for Volunteers among other exciting announcements, including our keynote speakers.

See you all in August.

Clint Savage
Founder, Utah Open Source Foundation

OpenSUSE Linux Community members, rejoice. We have a new community leader, Joe ‘Zonker’ Brockmeier. I’m excited for this.

One of the major driving forces that makes a successful distribution is its sense of community. Where do you get tech support? The community. Where does the maintenance come from? The community. Who contributes patches? The community. To whom can you contribute if you want to help out? The community.

I’m sensing a pattern.

If you can take the concept of the community and reach out to them, you will likely enjoy more success than if you do not do this. People want to form communities, and will with or without a little guidance and direction. So, why not take someone who knows about communities, an operating system that thrives through communities, and people who want a community, and put them all together? That looks like exactly what they are doing with Mr Brockmeier. Go Zonker!

Excerpt:

“I’d like to give a warm welcome to Joe ‘Zonker’ Brockmeier who joins the openSUSE project as “openSUSE community manager”. You can reach him directly at zonker@opensuse.org. He has his own openSUSE blog at http://zonker.opensuse.org, I advise to go over and see what he has to say himself!

He is a long time Linux user and does a lot of writing about Linux and open source for several publications and conributed to books as well. Prior to his new role as community manager for openSUSE he served Linux Magazine as Editor-in-Chief. His personal webpage is http://www.dissociatedpress.net.

The openSUSE community manager will act as community advocate and ombudsman thus relaying openSUSE community and users needs back to Novell. Therefore you will find Zonker on many community events. He will also drive marketing programs around openSUSE to make the project more successful and attract more developers and users.”

Read “openSUSE Welcomes Zonker - The New Community Manager

This week’s Local User Group meetings:

• Layton.rb - Feb 4, 7pm - Topic unavailable
• BYU UUG - Feb 7, 7pm - Basic DNS With Bind by Stuart Jansen
• Ubuntu Utah - Feb 9, 6pm - Debian/Ubuntu Packaging by Tim Riker

A special thanks goes out to TierFour for the streaming and podcast bandwidth to share these meetings. Please feel free to join the streaming discussion this week for the Ubuntu Utah meeting at http://stream.utos.org

The UTOS Confrence Manager or ConMan, is really coming along.  Tonight’s HackNight didn’t last quite as long as last weekend, but there was some definite improvements.

One of the really nice improvements was the addition of the logo by James Hancock who’s really good with his inkscape skills.  Other improvements included a better gui, backend administration, refactoring much of the user creation to better accommodate future enhancements.

One of the best features that has been added tonight was the blog functionality by Kevin Kubasik of GNOME fame.  When a conference is upcoming and during the conference itself, this feature will be front and center.  Nice work!

Things that are left include registration, including payments with google checkout, paypal or a merchant backend.  Sponsor management is another, as well as schedules for volunteers, speakers, attendees and sessions, bofs and events.

I’m even sure there are items not yet considered above, but that’s the functionality we hope to have in place within the next few months.   Feel free to download the project, and submit patches back to us anytime, we dig the help.

We’re looking forward to deploying the Call for Papers components tomorrow or Sunday in our official call for papers announcement, so keep your eyes peeled.

Cheers,

Clint

A special thanks to Guru Labs, Kevin Kubasik, John Weis, James Hancock, Will Smith and Trevor Sharpe for sticking it out much of Saturday night and into the wee hours of Sunday night.

The chinese food arrived at around 9pm, and we sat around talking design and ideas for the next 30 minutes, and about 11pm we really started digging into the project.

After about 12-13 hours of good coding, and time troubleshooting, learning, drinking loads of caffeine and a bunch of other good stuff, I’m proud to announce the first real progress on the ConMan project from UTOSF.

The general idea is to improve upon otherwise incomplete or sucky open source conferencing systems. ConMan (Conference Manager) is seeming to become quite good, with some good coding from Kevin Kubasik, good web design by John and some good perserverence as well by yours truly. Most of the group crashed out somewhere between 2am and 8am, Kevin and I however, continued to hack until we had something semi-solid at around 11:30am.

It was a great time had by all and a good framework has been built. Django seems like the perfect solution for this and we will even have CAPTCHA and email confirmation early in the 0.0.2 release.

For now though, if you are interested in seeing the Call for Papers, Call for Volunteers and Contact applications, please feel free to download it at http://code.google.com/p/utos-conman. We look forward to bug reports (which you can also make at the google code site, you just need a google account) and fixes in the future. Also any recommendations that are made will be taken into consideration.

In addition, keep an eye out for the “Call for Papers” to appear at http://2008.utosc.com very soon.

Cheers,

Clint Savage

As part of the Utah Open Source goals to help every LUG (Local User Group) grow, UTOSF plans to provide timely reminders to all who are interested about when, where and the topic for each of the LUGs we track.

In addition to this feature, UTOSF will also be providing an announcement service for podcasts of LUG meetings that were streamed and recorded.

This service should start around the beginning of February 2008 and hopefully provide simple, yet easy to read posts with all of the details needed.

If your group is not listed on the current UTOSF Groups page, or want your meetings streamed and recorded, please leave a comment, or contact clint At utosf (dot) org and we’ll get it added.

Cheers,

Clint Savage

I attended Ubuntu Live last year and I really enjoyed it! I met a lot of great people there and I decided last year that I’d be back the next, and also that I’d submit a paper for presentation this year. I meant to last year but at the last minute decided against it (which I’ve been kicking myself for since.)

The call for papers will end on February 4th, and I can’t decide what I want to present on. I’ve got a few ideas, but I thought I’d just drop a line out and see what suggestions you all might have.

Ideas I’ve been considering:

• LTS Tutorials - Using Ubuntu in Enterprise
• Community Participation - Building Ubuntu Worldwide
• Moving to Ubuntu - How To Transition From Another Distribution

If you were to attend Ubuntu Live, what type of presentation would you like to see?

Another podcast is up at http://podcast.utosf.org from the Ubuntu Utah User Group.

This podcast is on “Shell Basics” from Aaron Toponce.

Enjoy,

Clint Savage

Today I spent a good bit of time up at the Utah CodeAway at Wasatch Wingz in Salt Lake.  It was amazing.

What is CodeAway you ask?  Well, essentially, its another social channel (read disparate tech group) to get together.  In this case, its great to get together if you are a software dev or interested in improving your skill.  People with all types of coding skillz are there and can help (and learn).  The mood here is playful and fun, but if you want to code, there are plenty of little nooks to hide and burn out a bunch of code.  If you cant figure out a piece of code, just ask, you’re bound to find an answer with this many experts in the building.

The wings were amazing, and Wayne (sp?) was quite a friendly fellow.  He and another business partner run this little eclectic wing shop / internet cafe / hang out.  Its a very intriguing ideal and I was glad to chat for a few minutes before the crowd really showed.  Wayne explained that Wasatch Wingz really likes the idea of having people come in an hang out on their computers as they bear down on a dozen awesome wings.  I had the “voodoo” wings, which were tasty with a bit of spice, quite good.  Wayne has outdone himself here and if his hospitality and food are any indication, Wasatch Wingz are to be a huge hit.

Back to the event and some thoughts.

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when I showed up today, but after spending a few minutes talking with Laura Moncur, I felt right at ease.  She’s an amazing lady!  During our discussion, I discovered her desire for this sort of thing was because at one point she was so desperate to spend time with others of like mind.  It reminds me so much of UTOS, just slightly different in focus.

After talking, I realized we had so much in common and its clear that there are likely tens of groups who are just like CodeAway and UTOS out there.  And that the more we find ourselves in these groups, there are another hundred who are looking for this sort of thing.  And to that end (and if I have anything to do with it), we’ll see some combined efforts to provide facilities and opportunities for those interested to get involved.  I wouldn’t even be surprised to see advertising become more prevalent and attendance to these sorts of events sky rocket.

It appears the next event will be February 23 from noon to 6pm (also at Wasatch Wingz) so I’d recommend getting there early and getting a good seat.

See you all there!

Cheers,

Clint Savage

Its coming soon, the Utah Open Source Conference 2008!

and we need some help getting our registration system off the ground!

If you are interested in working on a really cool project, want to learn Django and enjoy some good food, come on over and hack.

The Hackfest will be held at my new home in Murray, Utah! So come and enjoy the new surroundings and hopefully we’ll have the projector and screen up, which means movies and video games. I’m also working on internet access (its Qwest/XMission for now. Soon to be UTOPIA/XMission), but it should be installed by Saturday. If not, we’ll let everyone know an updated location nearby.

Here’s the details:

Date/Time: Saturday, January 26, 2008 / 7pm

Location: Herlo’s house: 5225 Gravenstein Park, Murray, Utah 84123 - Map

Please feel free to ping me on IRC if you have any question.

Cheers,

Clint

I just realized that I no longer have the blog license published in the footer like I did in my previous theme. For that reason I have created a page outlining the license restrictions for use with these tutorials.

Basically, the contents of this blog are licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Exceptions to this license have been given to Ubuntu Community Members for use within the Ubuntu Development Wiki and Ubuntu Community Wiki. Currently no other exceptions apply. If you would like to request other exceptions you can contact me.

The Utah Open Source Foundation would like to announce the availability of a new podcast available for meetings that have been recently streamed/recorded.  They’re available at http://podcast.utosf.org.  These presentations are available from many of the LUGs around the state.  Check them out…

Please let us know what you think as we’d like to do more and better versions in the future.  If you’d like to have your meetings streamed and recorded, please let us know.

Cheers,

Clint Savage

Okay, this time we fo