I’m writing this post on “Dev-Room”, in Berlin, during LinuxTag
The event is great (as every year), and Fedora is a bright light! As you can see in attached photos, Fedora Ambassadors are really recognizable everywhere (not only at the conferences center, but also on underground, at the restaurant, …and also on the shower!!!!) by the blue polo and the tons of gadgets
….and, of course, we’re (maybe) the biggest community present at LinuxTag… so it’s quite impossible to visit LinxTag and don’t remember Fedora group!
I’ve spent a lot of time to fix the Matteo script (called “Kobold“) to avoid some troubles due to some strange USB keys (yep, we’ve got an “USB Filling Station” in out booth. A lot of people come with their 1Gb usb pen and ask us to fill it with a fresh fedora 9 live image)
Great occasion to meet new and old friends and to spend a very good (and a bit hard) time
Yesterday night I spent about 6 hours (between 9.00 pm to 3.00 am!!!) on Fedora 9 Release Party in Lodi, the first official party in Italy (next will be in Florence and Rome by the end of the month).
It was great!
There were about 30/40 people, interested in new features but also interested in “how to join” Fedora Project, and -of course- interested in beer! I, Luca and Gianluca (North Italy Fedora Ambassadors have being present) helped these guys to make their usb live key bootable, solve their questions about Fedora 9 and open their bottles!
Thanks to FAMSCO budget we could buy a lot of yummy food! And also thanks to moms and grandmothers that cooked cakes and pies with “volunteer” contributions
Last but not least, thanks to Luca Foppiano. He organized all aspects of event: “spamming” by email, do the shopping, make the slides and so on, and all of these stuffs went really really well!
I’m proud to read my name on your list, and I hope to contribute over and over again in the future.
But I think you’ve forgotten (at least) a couple of names: Samuele Storari (the “art director” of Fedora 9 Release Party Poster and USB Filling Station, Fedora Art Team member), and Matteo Castellini (the author of Kobold, the software that makes possible to auto-fill usb keys automatically when you put your pen into usb port…).
I’ll try to persuade Matteo to join Fedora Ambassadors tonight, during our party… We need so talented people in our (Italian) team
…and another thing! During last PyCon it, 4 (yes, you’ve got it: four!) Italian Ambassadors meet each other in Florance to define organization abut Release Parties (and also to have a good appetizer …). Right now Italian Fedora Ambassadors Community is very tight-knit! Last six months were very useful to build a strong Italian Community around Fedora
What about LiberaMente? Yet another Linux conference
Fedora booth was staged with lot of cool stuff: a OLPC, an Asus EeePC, some live cd-roms, t-shirts, hats, posters, thin clients (thanks to Luca) and (awesome) the “Fedora USB pen self-service kiosk”!
The tool to build usb live pen on demand was a great success! Lot of people wanted to put their usb pens into the kiosk and see what happens!
But this time there were also some important news! First of all: Fedora Italian Community meeting.
For the first time, five Fedora Ambassadors meet each other into the real world. We discussed about next Italian events (release parties, for instance), budgets management and Fedora EMEA interactions. Italian Fedora Ambassadors are now more cohesive and integrated. Wonderful start to make good work for the future!
Other important thing: we’ve got to keep our eye on Fedora Account System to discover if some people we’ve met are joined Fedora Project. I think at least one guy from Florance is very interested to be Fedora contributor!
So, see you at Fedora 9 release party!
Luca, Andrea, Francesco, Gianluca and me. Fedora Ambassadors
Now the view out of my office window is pretty good. Only leaf green and hay-filed. The sad, unhappy (and never finished) reinforced concrete skyscraper monster was pulled down yesterday at 10.30 AM.
It was a bad remember of public investments spent for the latest Soccer World Championship in Italy (Italy ‘90). Now, in this area, will be re-factored with some parking and a new useful underground station to get Milan ready for next Worldwide Expo 2015.
Italian people spent to build a monster, spent to pull it down, and now, we’ll spend to rebuild this area again. I really hope to see finished this works by the end of 2015, and don’t see much more money spent for another “under construction (for ages)” building…
By the way, for the moment I’m enjoying my new wonderful view out of my office in Milan
To be in Malaga requires you a little trip in Granada, a beautiful city in the south of the Spain, where occidental and oriental architecture join all together to create something special: Alhambra.
Lot of sun and lot of funny after three days of really hard working
Two years after Canness RedHat event, a new summit reserved to RedHat Partners strikes back in Europe (Malaga). This time the format is a bit changed, and now it seems really similar to the offical RedHat Summit (USA).
I’ve spent three long days (for “long” I mean get up at 7.00 AM and never go to sleep untill 2.00 AM…) speching with other european partners about new solutions in Linux and JBoss markets and new opportunities for OpenSource software over the European countries. For me it was also my first occasion to meet Jim Whitehurst (new RedHat CEO) and to hear him saying things that are already MUST in Byte-Code, such as share custom customers software as OpenSource, to avoid writing and re-writing same things every time, not only to build “OpenSource products”, but also to build “OpenSource customers”.
It was also a great occasion to meet some old friends I didn’t see from a long long time, and to know new exciting friends.
It was also first big event for Carmen, RedHat employee since last month, now involved into RedHat Marketing team. I hope to see her also in Fedora marketing as soon as possibile
In my hopinion the only big missing stuff in the event was Fedora. Of course, it was a “business” event, but I can’t belive RedHat wants to manage event where community is too far, also because bussiness could (IMHO should) need to know the “voice of community”.
Due to the party on the beach I couldn’t attendee last Fedora Ambassadors meeting, last Wednesday, but I’d like to put this event in agenda for next year also for Fedora community.
Davide Presentation about JBoss migration is ready
My work often requires me to select (or develop) different kind of technologies. Every time I’ve got to make a choice between “traditional approach” and “OpenSource approach”, the questions I ask to myself are (more or less) always the same:
Is this new technology able to stay alive for a long long time?
Is it able to keep itself on the top of most used technologies?
Is it able to move people from old style approach into new OpenSource world?
…
…but since a couple of months ago, I’ve started asking to myself another important question:
Is this technology able to keep close to itself key people (basically the “community”)? Or it is only able to keep the “maintainers”, but not the innovators?
I think the ask for this question is very important to know the future of a product. Some time ago, I’ve blogged a post about “80% and 20% of developers“, where the real innovators are (IMHO) only a few people, and lose these people could be the end of a project.
I think OpenSource community needs to move over new and exciting technologies day by day. And innovators ARE OpenSource community. No way to keep a good innovator stopped to a technology for long time. Technology has to change and grow up fast if it wants to benefit by these extraordinary geeks.
So, here’s why you have to run out of town from static “huge” technologies (usually defined “enterprise”): best guys, best developers, best architects need to “go west”, to find new lands, looking for new opportunities to innovate world and make it better.
RedHat and Fedora (and, of course, Byte-Code! ) are the best example I know (and they rock! Great innovations in Fedora make RedHat a REAL enterprise technology)
OpenSource community should be considered a “quality guarantee” by everyone, also when it try to head straight for new and unknown ways.
Luca, a friend of mine and also the latest “apprentice” of Byte-Code has done his “Master Degree” in Information Technology last week. I’m really happy for his “Summa cum Laude” (for all Italian guys: “110 e lode“)
Congratulations for all your work!
Now it’s time to think about your future into the labor market! And I hope we can still colleagues for a long long time in Byte-Code.
Enjoy your new Job Luca, and good luck (you need it!)
Last weekend I was in Brussels, during FOSDEM 2008. For me it was the first time at this event, but surely not the last!
It attire geeks from all countries over the world, and not only form the Europe: I’ve met a lot of people coming from USA and Canada (just to say that it really is a international event).
All the FOSDEM days were very busy. The event was very crowded. Location (Brussels University) was good, but the booth (actually it was a couple of simple desktops) were placed into a very small hall, and you know how many people Fedora attract!
Result is what you can see on this flickr photos set: a really crowded room …and without a free buffet!!!
Great occasion also to meet different developers from all kind of projects (especially thanks to Lillian and Thomas from RedHat IcedTea Java team: all information they presented is very useful for my job on JBoss and other Java related stuff. Really happy to join their session).
I’m so sorry to not having the time yet to fix “Fedora Ambassadors Stats Script” with Fabian. I hope to have enough time this week to publish a skeleton for new improvements and (maybe) start a project to make statistics abut Fedora Project easily.
But for me (and not only for me) this event represents something more important: with other European Fedora Ambassadors, we’ve founded “Fedora EMEA”, a NPO (non-profit organization) with the goal to improve support for fedora community in all EMEA countries.
After the event, Fedora Ambassadors had a dinner on Saturday evening (thanks to Kanarip to show me what is a “Steak Tartre” in the real world, and also thanks to the restaurant to have a lot of other things in the menu!), where we have signed the statutes of new Fedora EMEA NPO.
Really good trip where I’ve met new friends that I hope to meet again as soon as possible.
