This is just a quick heads-up. I’m testing a new method of updating Twitter AND Facebook whenever I post a new blog or podcast. I’m hoping that this will work without any major snags, but there is always the possibility that it may flood either Twitter or Facebook or both. If this does end up flooding the feed, please accept my sincere apologies. I’ll be monitoring things closely so if things do go wonky I’ll be able to pull the plug quickly. Thanks for your patience and understanding.
|
|||||
|
Well, SCALE 8x was only two weeks ago, and yet it feels like it’s but a distant memory now. What an amazing conference! The LAX Airport Westin was literally stuffed to the rafters with Linux and Open Source businesses, developers, users, and all-around geeks. The diversity and enthusiasm of the Linux and Open Source community continues to amaze me year after year. And – amazingly enough – there were more than a few companies openly hiring again. Definitely a sign of encouragement about our country’s economic recovery. This year I once again was working the audio and keynote streaming departments along with my friend Tom King and a really outstanding cast of really dedicated volunteers. We had only one or two audio mishaps this year – most of the talks made it onto the recorders in reasonably good quality. All the audio has been processed and is in the hands of the SCALE staff; it should be on the website and available for download soon, and the keynotes are available to stream off our Ustream channel page. The SCALE staff decided to try something new this year. On Saturday afternoon, Jason Riker, a member of the SCALE PR team and I headed out onto the show floor armed with a microphone (with perilously short cord – next year we’ll have a wireless rig) and a video camera, and we did some interviews with various SCALE attendees. I edited that together along with some background footage (“B-roll” as they say in “the biz”) I took the next day into this SCALE highlights video that, I think, puts the viewer “in the moment” and allows him/her to experience at least some of what attending SCALE is like. Hopefully those of you who watch this and either have never heard of SCALE, or haven’t made it to one yet, will decide to go next year.
SCALE 8x: The Video from Southern California Linux Expo on Vimeo. Can’t believe it’s that time again.. time for SCALE 8x! I’ve been on site since Thursday afternoon, working audio stuff; however tonight I’m taking a break from that and working on video, specifically the Keynote stream. Yup, once again we’ll be streaming the Keynotes. Keep your eye on this post to watch the stream. The keynotes are on Saturday 2/20 and Sunday 2/21, from 10 AM – 11 AM Pacific time. However right now I’m test-streaming the UpSCALE talks, which are pretty fun, so you might want to tune in to those. Saturday’s keynote is “Being a Catalyst in Communities” by Karsten Wade, and Sunday’s is “So, You Think You Want to Start an Open Source Business” by Tarus Balog. Anyway, stream can be found below. (If the stream isn’t live, you’ll get the opportunity to watch our previously recorded videos.) Something weird is going on with the SCALE videos I posted earlier on Ustream, so I’ve gone ahead and uploaded them to Google Video. (I also trimmed them somewhat, cutting out the “this is us setting up” bits at the beginning of the video, so they should start right into the actual keynote speech.) Here they are, for your viewing pleasure. Saturday Keynote: Sunday Keynote: “Reaching the masses: 10 ways to improve the reach of your FOSS Project” by Joe “Zonker” Brockmeier Something a friend of mine said to me sums it up best: “For an unemployed person, you’ve been awfully busy as of late.” Hence the lack of updates here. My apologies. Since returning from SCALE, my time has been occupied with all manner of things, some of them even money-generating. (So I’m really hopeful that my unemployed status will soon change.) Unfortunately, I ended up leaving SCALE with a little unexpected surprise. Like most of the conference-going public, I walked away from it with one of the nastiest, most horrible, virulent plagues on the face of this Earth. Had me out for almost 2 weeks. Considering the sheer number of people attending these types of events, it’s almost inevitable that, in spite of my best efforts to avoid it, I still manage to catch something or other whenever I attend a tech event. The good news is that I’ve been working up some reviews and other blog fodder that I hope to have posted shortly, including a review and my thoughts on my new all-time favorite gadget, the Amazon Kindle 2. I think this will turn out to be a real game-changer for both Amazon and the publishing industry, and may indeed herald the true coming of age of e-books. Anyway, my thoughts on that, as well as other topics, are soon to come. Watch this space! Watch on Ustream site (if the above embedded player doesn’t work for you) Abstract: Speaker Bio: Tomorrow is the second (and final) day of the SCALE 7x conference, and, come hell or high water, I’m actually gonna try and get out of the control booth long enough to actually attend some events! If I can actually do this, I’ll try and stream as much as I can using Qik. Bear in mind that I’ll be doing this from my BlackBerry (it’s very hard to carry around a full camera + laptop + EVDO card streaming setup) so: (a) the quality won’t be the greatest, (b) it probably won’t be the world’s steadiest footage, (c) it may cut off suddenly if I get a phone call or whatever, or (d) it may suddenly crash (the Qik BlackBerry client is still beta). Anyway, if you’re savvy to all that, then feel free to keep an eye on my Qik stream or use the handy embedded Qik player below. View the video directly on Ustream.tv (if the above embed code doesn’t work) So-called Application Service Providers, who provide “Software as a Service (SaaS)”, are now the rule rather than the exception in the software industry. The freedom implications of ubiquitous, high-bandwidth networking and AJAX-based application delivery are not yet fully understood nor adequately addressed by the Software Freedom Movement, such that even those of us who have been paying attention during SaaS’ rise remain befuddled by the freedom implications of the new environment. Our movement must develop a multi-front response to this proprietary threat that will make the 1980s and 1990s battle against proprietary operating system vendors look easy. The challenge is specifically centered around two complex issues: (a) traditional user-freedom-protecting licenses (i.e., the copyleft) fail to protect the freedoms of SaaS users, and (b) even if users have the source code to the application they are using, they cannot run it themselves and generate the same network-effect available in the canonical instance. In this talk, Kuhn will frame and introduce the key questions introduced by these new issues. He will discuss the Affero GPL, which is one of few FLOSS licenses that address this concern from the software licensing perspective, and explain how our traditional solutions cannot succeed as easily in this new context. Speaker Bio:
Now in its seventh year, SCALE is bringing back many of its hallmark features, while adding even more to the mix. A wide range of conference tracks will be presented, suitable for both novice and pro alike. This year they are boasting expanded coverage for those new to Linux and Open Source software. “Conferences-within-a-conference” for specialty fields, including Women in Open Source, DOHCS (Demonstrating Open-source HealthCare Solutions) and OSSIE (Open Source Software In Education), will be returning again this year. And SCALE University, sponsored by LOPSA, will provide four half-day classes for system administrators of all skill and experience levels. Finally, the exhibit hall will be even bigger this year, featuring companies both big and small showcasing their Linux and Open Source software-based products and services. New this year is the dotORG pavilion, an area showcasing smaller open source projects and groups. Finally, Birds of a Feather sessions provide an informal and relaxing venue for people sharing common interests to get together and shoot the breeze. I have had the privilege of attending all 6 prior SCALE conferences, and it has been a rare pleasure to watch this conference grow and mature. Even though it has grown tremendously over the years, SCALE still retains the small, friendly feeling it had from the beginning. I highly recommend you check out this fine show. More information, including schedules, speaker bios, and online registration can be found at the SCALE website. You can also check out their flyer (494 KB PDF), as well as listen to an audio greeting (956 KB MP3). Hope to see you there! If you are reading this, you probably followed a link from one of my tweets on Twitter. Welcome! |
|
||||
|
Copyright © 2010 Donald Burr's home on the Web - All Rights Reserved |
|||||
Are you a Linux geek? Are you even mildly curious about Linux and/or Open Source software in general? Do you live in the Southern California area? And are you free this weekend? (February 20-22) If so, then you might want to check out the 