FOSDEM 2013′

This past weekend I attended and presented at FOSDEM 2013 in Brussels, Belgium. I arrived in Belgium early on Friday morning, and spent the first hour hanging out at the bus station chatting with Nick Daly and Christopher Webber waiting for a bus that, it turned out, wasn’t coming. So, I hopped a random bus towards the center of town and somehow found my way to the NH City Centre Hotel. After checking in and dropping off my stuff I made my way down to the ULB Campus Solbosch where I proceeded to help in the build-up for FOSDEM.

Build-up for FOSDEM was actually a lot of fun and I met a lot of awesome folks, many of whom have been volunteers for several years. I primarily worked on the buildup of the K Building, where we were almost entirely done by around 4pm, which was apparently a record and had everyone (especially the veterans!) pretty shocked. Around 6pm we had pizza and then headed to our respective hotels before meeting up at the Delirium Café for the FOSDEM Beer Event. Delirium was absolutely packed, and I ended up talking with folks from Aberystwyth University, some of whom who I’d met during buildup. I left Delirium fairly early (12-1am) as I wanted to get to FOSDEM early the next morning to get the GNOME booth setup.

On Saturday I woke up and had a quick breakfast at the hotel and then made my way down to FOSDEM. I was the first one from GNOME to arrive and hung out for a a little while before the event box and t-shirts, arrived and we could setup. The rest of Saturday was spent at the booth except for a brief hour or so when I went down to the H Building to give my talk and get some fries. My talk (Growing GNOME) went well, though I was pretty nervous. After my talk I returned to the booth where I finished out the day before heading back to the hotel, and then to the GNOME Beer Event at La Bécasse. Though the beer event got off to a slow start by around 9 or 10pm it was in full swing with dozens of GNOME users and contributors in attendance.

On Sunday morning I slept in and so didn’t arrive at FOSDEM until around 10:30-11am. I hung out at the booth for the rest of the morning and early afternoon before heading off to help with the cloakroom. I stayed there through the end of the day till we started tear-down around 6pm. By the time tear down was done and we’d had a bit to eat it was ~8pm at which point I headed back to the hotel, before venturing out for one last evening in Brussels.

On Monday I ended up taking a cab back to the airport after a failed attempt at navigating Brussels public transit back to the airport… after our fiasco last year when we missed our plane, I figured 45€ for a cab was preferable to missing my flight. It turned out that I was on the same flight back as Nick Daly & Chris Webber, and that Nick & I were actually sitting next to each other. As a result we had some interesting discussions, especially related to 3D printers and the possibilities of printing pamphlets, schedules, etc in braille for conferences.

Anyhow, I had a great trip to FOSDEM, and am extremely grateful for the GNOME Foundation’s help in making the trip possible. With a bit of luck I’ll make it back again next year – FOSDEM is an amazing place to meet new people from all over who are interested in free and open source software. If you haven’t made it to FOSDEM yet, make an extra effort to do so next year. Its worth the trip 🙂

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FOSDEM 2013!

Tomorrow I fly back to Brussels, to attend FOSDEM 2013, where I’ll be presenting on GNOME’s community, my experience becoming involved over the last year and our efforts to expand it. Assuming all goes as planned I’ll be arriving in Brussels around 8:30am on Friday and am planning to help in the setup of FOSDEM in the afternoon, maybe  catch a nap and then off to the FOSDEM Beer Event. On Saturday & Sunday I’ll be (mostly) hanging out at the GNOME booth, answering questions and hopefully meeting lots of new people 🙂 If you’re around, stop by and say hi!

In any case a big thanks to the GNOME Foundation for sponsoring me!

FOSDEM

The last week has been pretty crazy. Kevin & I flew out of Columbus on Thursday ~1:30pm and arrived in Brussels ~8am Friday morning. We were to fly out of Brussels at 10am, but missed the check-in time by about 10 minutes due to cancelled trains, which led to us having to rebook for another flight which was supposed to leave at 12:10… but due to mechanical issues didn’t actually take off until nearly 2pm. So, we’re now supposed to arrive back in Columbus ~7pm, assuming we don’t miss our connecting flight in Washington DC. Of course, once we get back to Columbus we still have a 2.5-3hr car ride home, and then school and work all day Wednesday. Here’s hoping we make it in time, and survive the next couple days of insanity.

Anyhow, our trip to Brussels & FOSDEM 2012 has been amazing and certainly something that neither of us will soon forget. Its been a crazy whirlwind tour, and I know we’d both have liked it to last a bit longer, but its still been fun. FOSDEM 2012 was my first conference & Kevin’s first time in Europe, and I think we made the best of it. We got to met tons of great people both at FOSDEM & all around Brussels, wander around the city, see some, though certainly not all of the cool stuff in Brussels, and have just had a great time.

At FOSDEM I met dozens of amazing and inspiring people including Karen Sandler, Allan Day, Dave Neary, Seif Lofty & many, many more. After arriving in Brussels on Friday we spent the next 4 hours incredibly lost before finally finding our hotel & taking a much-needed nap. The afternoon was spent seeing Brussels, getting lost again, and finally finding the Delirium Cafe where the FOSDEM Beer Party was held, which was fantastic. We ended up spending most of the night with a group from Barcelona Spain, with whom we went out to eat & then to another bar across from the Manneken Pís before finding our way back to our hotel rather late.

On Saturday, Kevin & I walked to FOSDEM, where I spent most of Saturday manning the GNOME booth in the K-Building, though I did get to attend a couple of sessions, including part of the Legal Issues room fill in and Grey Areas of Software Licensing by Dave Neary , as well as the Cross Desktop group picture & Allan Day’s GNOME 3: Every Detail Matter’s, which hopefully reminded people that the little things really do matter!

That night we went to the GNOME Beer Party at La Becassé which was a blast. Kevin & I spent most of the night chatting with Mario Sánchez Prada of Igalia about pretty much everything – computers, kids, video games, languages, and just life in general. I/we apparently stayed up a bit late though which led to me missing a couple of the talks in the morning which I was hoping to catch, most notably GNOME 3.4 accessible: Status, news, future by Alejandro Piñeiro Iglesias and The Anatomy of a role playing game by Arthur Huillet.

I did manage to make it back to FOSDEM & the GNOME booth in time for the mini-marketing meeting, during which we touched on a wide range of issues. Topics included the redesign of the website, the Annual Report & the overall direction of GNOME in the coming months/years. One of our most important tasks in the coming weeks will be the publication of the annual report, which covers both 2010 and 2011. Another major topic was the re-design of news.gnome.org being done by Christy Eller & Allan Day, including the future of the news site, GNOME Journal, Quarterly reports, the GNOME Foundation site and how to better streamline all of them. One over all theme seemed to be a need for new content, on everything from news articles, how to articles on specific applications, interviews of developers, hackfest reports and pretty much anything else. If you’re interested in writing please let us know!!

After the mini-marketing meeting I spent the rest of the day attending sessions. I started with Seif Lofty & Allan Day’s How to trick a developer into becoming a designer, which was informative while also being humorous and engaging. I next attended a Lightning talk on libre.fm & GNU FM by Michael Sheldon, and caught part of the lighting talk on Netmagis by Jean Benoit, before returning to the Cross-Desktop room.

My last couple hours at FOSDEM were spent in in the Cross-Desktop room attending the last 3 sessions there – WebKitGTK+ status and roadmap to WebKit2 by Mario Sánchez Prada & Philippe Normand, Getting into GNOME by Ekaterina Gerasimova & David King and finally Web applications in GNOME by Xan López.

Getting into GNOME was the most interesting for myself, mostly since I felt that they were speaking to me & many others in my position. There are literally millions of users of free and open source software, but only a thousand actively contribute. Bridging this gap will be the key to the long-term survival and success of free free/open source software.

I know I’ve used Linux & GNOME pretty consistently for the last 10+ years but only found out how to get involved in the last few months. Not because I didn’t want to, but simply because I didn’t know that I could. Up until this past fall I was under the impression, as I suspect many are that there wasn’t a lot to be done outside of coding, which I, and undoubtedly many other users simply don’t know how to do. However as I’ve discovered over the past few months, this simply isn’t true. GNOME (and, I suspect most if not all other free/open source projects) need people to do lots of things which don’t require coding – writing news articles, documentation, making art work, manning booths at conferences (of which there are dozens! There’s probably even one close to you!!), and much more.

So, if you use/love free/open source software, please get involved! Its not hard and every contribution really is appreciated no matter how small. Even hanging out on irc.gnome.org & answering questions in #gnome or #gnome-love when your available, is appreciated. Even if you think ‘oh, I don’t know enough to answer questions…’ you probably do. I know I never thought I’d be able to help people, but I have! Its not hard, and it’s incredibly fulfilling when you do. Alternatively, pick a specific project and see what they need help with. Theres sure to be something that you can do to help!

Overall, I’ve had a great, if slightly crazy week, and I hope to make it to many more conferences in the future. If you haven’t made it to one yet, I highly recommend it!!

Countdown to FOSDEM!!

The countdown has begun! Today, I am doing laundry, and cleaning out the fridge & the house just in general, in anticipation of our upcoming trip to Brussels & FOSDEM 2012! Kevin & I will be flying out of Columbus on thursday afternoon and thus arriving in Brussels, friday morning ~8am. Most of friday will be spent wandering around Brussels before attending the FOSDEM Beer Party that evening, FOSDEM on Saturday & Sunday, and then another day of exploring Belgium before flying back on Tuesday morning. It’ll be a quick, but hopefully fun & productive trip.

I keep going over the schedule at FOSDEM, going back and forth on what I want to attend, as there are so many fascinating sounding events! I’m pretty sure I want to attend  Transifex: Localizing your application (mostly since I’m currently taking a class on multilingual translation systems) , but otherwise, I really have no definitive plans. I’m sure I’ll figure it all out once I’m there though, and suspect that I’m better off having few definitive plans so that I can be flexible for when I hear about something especially cool. Anyhow, I am super excited – to be attending FOSDEM, to be traveling, and to be kid-free for the first time in nearly 5 yrs! (Kevin’s mom has agreed to watch our boys while we’re gone – to which I can only say Thank You Amy!! :))

So, any suggestions? What events are you planning to attend? What do you recommend? What should we make sure to see/do in Belgium? We’re up for pretty much anything! 🙂

Camp

Well, first of all, I did not realize it’d been SO long since I last posted. Crazyness has ensued since then, starting with the Tae Kwon Do Tournament in Spain, and the exhibition there that I participated in (on my birthday!!), which was quite cool… The following day, I flew home from Spain to Pittsburgh, where we (dad & I) stayed at a friends house for the night. Got to see my old friend Jessie, which was very cool.

Then on the 15th of May I drove down here to S. Carolina to start work.. The camp is beautiful. Way up ontop of a mountain in the Blue Ridge, it has some amazing views. And, of course, its simply awesome to be with/around Kevin again.

My horses finally got here this Monday (21st), and so, ever since I’ve been riding and taking care of them. Which is awesome. They’re all pretty good – both looking, and fairly well trained. I’m actually extremely impressed with their overall quality (especially for camp horses!!). Went on a trail ride today, did some crazy exploring and getting lost (which was, as always, fun). Tommorrow is the first time we’ll actually give rides, so I’m kind of nervous about that. But it should be OK. I hope…

The kid I’m working with (the “assistant director”), seems pretty clueless. Apparently, he didn’t realize that you need to clean the barn. Apparently, I have to tell him such things, or he just doesn’t know. He also gives me the impression that he’s scared of horses (takes 3-5 minutes to catch one in a box stall… and another couple to kick each one out after feeding. But, then again, I’m not really surprised about this, just highly disappointed. Was hoping to have somebody with a clue. The other kid is apparently a bit slow. Supposedly they also just hired a girl from Spain, though it sounds like she’ll only be here for the first half of the summer. Which sucks. But, you’ll have taht I spose.

Anyhow, thats about all thats new with me… We saw the DaVinci Code, which was pretty good, and then yesterday we saw Over the Hedge, which was hysterical. Hammy kicks ass… I think thats about it.

Spain!!

Wow. I really don´t know what to say. I´m going to be coming back to spain in the fall, sometime in September for another year. I´m soo incredibly excited, I can´t even begin to explain. Its amazing.

On other notes, I´m now going back to the states on the 8th of May, so that I can particpate in the World Tae Kwon Do Championships which are being held in Caceriz, just a couple hours away. I´m not going to be competing though – I´m going to be in an exhibition!!! How cool!! SO yeah, thats pretty amazing. I can´t wait.

Also, FC Barcelona (the soccer team of Barcelona), is in the finals, playing Arsenal in Paris, for the league cup. Which is awesome. Its like the World Series of soccer, more or less. So thats pretty amazing. I totally want to see it, but as they´re playing on the 17th, I don´t know if I´ll get to. But I really hope I get to see it, and that barça wins. It´d be amazing. Absolutely amazing.

Thats about it, really. Lots of crazy cool news. Lots and lots of awesomeness. Totally excited to get home for the summer – but absolutely thrilled that I´ll be coming back. It´ll make the summer just that much better. Now I just have to figure out how Kevin can come here to spain too (or at least, to europe!!)

Two more weeks…

Wow, I can´t believe that I only have two weeks left here in Spain. Spain, Salamanca more specificlly, has become home, something that I really wasn´t sure it would be. But it has… I now feel more at home here, wandering around Salamanca, then I ever did in the 2.5 odd years I lived down in Nelsonville/Athens. I know that I still haven´t fully realized that I´m leaving in two weeks, and not coming back for who knows how long. I´ll come back to Spain, to Salamanca someday I know… I just don´t know when.

There´s also a growing realization that of all the things that I want and do not want to do… I really just don´t want to go back to Ohio, go back to school in Athens… it just doesn´t sound like fun to me anymore, at all. So, I´m looking around at other schools, trying to find something that would/could be interesting, fun even. I still don´t really know what I want to study, though I´m leaning farther and farther away from the whole biolgy/natural resources thing, honestly. Am thinking more and more about International Studies or somesuch. It´d be a good bit more buisnessy (which sounds boring), but at the same time, could lead to a job in which I got to travel more. I don´t really know. I´ll just have to wait and see… see how this summer goes.

Prague

Well, I loved Prague. I absolutely 100% mean that. Prague is awesome. All of the important buildings have steeples of one sort or another, and it truely looks like the “fairytale” city that it claims to be.

The people are overall pretty nice, although I really wish I could have figured out a little bit more of the langauge {more than thanks (deek), thank you (dick-y), beer (pivo), no (neh), bridge (most) and castle (hrod, me thinks)}… Czech is apparently a very hard language to learn, which I can totally see. It took me a couple days to figure out the names of the tram/metro stops that I needed to know to get around correctly… (and even so, I still totally missed tram stop once, late at night…).

In anycase, my favorite building in Prague is definetly the Church of Our Lady of Tyn. Its on the Old Town Square, in the center of the oldist part of town. And the two towers totally, truely look like Gargamels Castle from The Smurfs (a picture of which I can not seem to find online…). But yeah. Anyhow, its very very cool. Well, at least it looks cool… I didn´t actually go inside as its “only open for services” – and I just really didn´t feel like attending my first church service, by choice, ever.

But yeah, the rest of Prague was also very very cool. I really liked Petrin Park/Hill where they have an observatory and a 1/5 scale “model” of the Eifel tower. Which is cool, and from where you can see ALL of prague. There´s also the “Mirror Maze”, which isn´t much of a maze, but is still quite a cool place… mostly just a mirrors-only funhouse, but still cool.

Anyhow, I´m going to try and get my pictures up here sometime in the next few days. About half my pictures from Granada are now up… but that still leaves roughly 550 to go…

London

Well, London is a pretty cool city. I’ve been having a blast the last couple nights, just hanging out here at my hostel – its a very very cool hostel. There’s a bar basicly inside of it where you get discounts… last night they had karaoke.

Yesterday I went and saw the Tower of London, and the Tower Bridge – both very very cool, and also just wandered around being lost. The Tower of London is very cool, and definetly my favorite place. The free guided tour by a Beefeater was, quite surpisingly very good. Quite a funny guy, really good at his job.

Today I went to St Paul’s Cathedral, Westminister Abbey, Buckingham Palace, Big Ben/House of Parlimant, Harrod’s… I think that was it. In anycase basicly all day was spent wandering around. I even managed to find a tourist info place and got a FREE guide-book/map!! Oh. And I found a bookstore. So I now have 3 new english books to read! Woot!!

In anycase, London’s been fun… though I definetly like spanish cities better. They’re just more interesting, somehow. London just seems a lot like any other big, oldish city in the US. It’s lacking the little twisty one-way, cobblestone streets that cities in most of Europe seem to have. But, its been fun. Also been very, very, very expensive.

In anycase I’m looking forward to getting to Prague tommorrow. Everyone keeps telling me that its very cool, so thats nice to hear…

Travelin’

Wow… what an incredible past few days.

I went down to Granada on Tuesday getting in there around 2am on Wednesday morning. Long train ride, but totally worth it. The next day (Wednesday), I went and saw La Alhambra, and ended up having an absolutely awesome day. Right away I met a couple who had just graduated from some college out in Portland, Oregan. They were/are traveling with his parents, little sister and two of her friends. I ended up hanging out with them all day long and having an absolute blast.

It was, really, the first time I’d spoken much english in a long time, and whats more about really geek/environmental stuff. It was just really cool. They totally reminded me of my old compu-high friends.

In anycase, we spent the better part of the entire day (from about 11:00am-7:30pm), wandering around and seeing all the palaces, gardens, mosques-converted-into-churches, actual churches, etc. Then in the evening we all went out for tapas for a couple hours together. Twas lots of fun.

Then the next day and a half I spent wandering around the city of Granada itself, checking out the other churches, parks etc which are not actually inside the Alhambra. On Thursday night I ended up going out with a some old English guy, and another guy from sweden… we met some other old Scotish guy who’s actually a poet (apparently he used to have a buisiness, but he sold it, and now just ‘write poetry and drink beer’).

On Friday I took my Uncle Elfego’s advice and went to see Ronda – what an awesome little city!! I totally wish I’d had a good 2 or so days to really explore it better. Definetly a place I wouldn’t mind going back to. That night I then took the bus up to Sevila…

In Sevilla yesterday I just wandered around for the most part, seeing the sites, etc. My favorite places in Sevilla are definetly the Real Alcazar and the Parque de Maria Luisa. The Real Alcazar is the old muslim palaces/gardins and is just really really pretty. The Parque de Maria Luisa (or something like that), is the botanical gardens which were donated to the city by (you guessed it), Maria Luisa. Or something like that. In anycase, its huge, and very very cool. They have all kinds of different trees and plants from ALL over the world, all labeld with both common and scientific names, what the name means/where its from, and other random, general info on the species. And theres a little island with ducks, peacocks and chickens in the middle of a pond which has lots and lots of fish – mostly goldfish, but I think there were some carp or something in there too.

In anycase, I’m now in London. I took the bus from Sevilla back to Salamanca last night, got into Salamanca at 4:30, woke up at 8:30, got a shower, and ran off to the bus station to fly here. Long day. But its been fun.

I’m going to goto Prague this Wednesday, so that should be good… Tommorrow I’m exploring london though =). When I finally get back to Salamanca for another quarter in a week or so I’ll start uploading pictures…