FADNA Report

In conjunction with the Ohio Linux Fest this year we held the first Fedora Ambassadors Day for North America.  FAD took place on Sunday morning at a conference room at one of the local hotels.  Many thanks to Clint Savage and Dave Nalley for being the organizing forces behind this – making sure we had a conference room, getting some budget for it and making sure we had a solid agenda.  Also thanks to all of the ambassadors that paid their way to Ohio and stayed until Sunday for the event – I know several of them did not get back home until late Sunday and even early morning Monday.

I headed up around 7am – stopping off at the store to get some food and coffee for the group.  Dave was already there and it didn’t take long for the others to start drifting in.  There were lots of people in the FADNA shirts that Clint designed.  Power cords were run and extension strips setup so we could all get powered up and a few minutes spent getting everyone online via the hotel wireless and logged into the #fadna channel we had on IRC.

We also had streaming audio for the event which allowed other people to listen in if they wanted and to communicate with us via IRC.  This worked really well and allowed Jeroen van Meeuwen from the Netherlands to join us.  Having him listen in was very helpful as he was able to provide insight on how Fedora EMEA handled certain things.  Without the streaming audio it would have been much more difficult to receive the valuable comments and feedback from those that could not actually be in the room with us.

Clint opened the day with a ‘What is an Ambassador’ presentation.  That helped set the day off to a good start.  From there we discussed a wide variety of topics – should we form an NPO similar to the EMEA to help with funding, touched on media creation and tackling that task, the idea of increased mentoring from the Fedora Ambassador group to facilitate getting new contributes up to speed, marketing ideas – including the Ambassador Kit proposed by Clint that would help solve a lot of smaller ‘event’ issues and we even touched base on the Fedora Store.

I think this was a very successful Fedora Ambassador Day.  We had around 11 ambassadors in attendance and it afforded an excellent opportunity to meet people face to face and help build energy behind the North American Ambassadors.  Again, thanks to everyone who took time from their weekend to attend and contribute their ideas.  If you ever have the chance to attend one it is highly recommended.

For other North American ambassadors, this is a very exciting time for us.  People are working hard to make things easier to represent Fedora at events – whether that be a large conference or speaking to a few folks at a local lug.  There are plenty of people now to help answer your questions and get you started.  So if you’ve been lurking as a Fedora Ambassador not quite sure where to start, this is a great time to speak up on the Fedora Ambassadors mailing list or on #fedora-ambassadors and ask for help.  There are many folks that will be happy to help you with whatever you would like to accomplish as a Fedora Ambassador.

Ohio Linux Fest 2008 Report

This year was another great Ohio Linux Fest.  This is the third year that Fedora has been at this event which draws a little over 1000 attendees.  The Fedora presence has grown from three of us – Brian Pepple, Joe C and I – organizing our very first Fedora booth for an event, learning as we went to last year where we had several other helpers to this year where we had thirteen ambassadors around on Saturday to help staff the booth and mingle through the exhibition floor and conferences.

Ambassadors began arriving on Friday, with some of the locals helping people get to their hotels while waiting on the others to arrive.  Shortly after work on Friday I received a text from Paul Frields saying he was safely in town and ready to see what the Friday evening plan was.  A brief call to him and it seems folks would be getting together for dinner before heading to the OLF pre-party.  I quickly gathered some phone numbers from folks on IRC and headed up to the downtown Columbus area.  It didn’t take long and a call from Paul with the plan being to meet at Barley’s the same microbrew pub that the OLF pre-party was to be held at.  A couple of calls to let others know and soon I met the others there.

I believe we had around 8 Fedora folks for dinner that evening and some enjoyment of Barley’s microbrews.  Let’s see – we had John Rose, Clint Savage, Jon Stanley, Scott Williams, Paul Frields, Brian Powell, Brian Pepple and myself gathering and having a good time.  We had a very good meal and soon headed to the pre-party that was in what Barley’s apparently calls the “Underground” – the basement of the pub.  There were lots of people down there – gathering and socializing.  I didn’t stay too late as I knew I needed to be back up to the Columbus area early with everything we needed for the booth setup.  Paul was tired from the trip in and I dropped him off at his hotel before heading home and finishing some last minute stuff – like loading up the trunk of the car with the new Fedora North American Event Kit and a big old box of Fedora T-shirts!

5:30am came quite quickly.  Made sure I had everything I needed and headed back into downtown and swung by Paul’s hotel who had so generously volunteered to help me with the booth setup.  We found the booth, got the car unloaded and parked.  Paul had an XO laptop and volunteered his own machine running Fedora to help show off Fedora.  We got the banners hung – with more posters on the way that Jason Fenner was bringing to us.  We set some of the media we had to give away out, Fedora stickers and some of the T-shirts.  John Rose brought us some great looking Fedora buttons a little later, which were a big hit – quite popular.  Clint Savage brought Asus eee PC to act as our USB key creation station.  And just a bit later, Ben Williams showed up with some Fedora Unity Re-spins and a laptop to help burn more as the day went on.  The booth came together pretty well once we had all the pieces in place.

With plenty of people to staff the booth it afforded a great chance for us to both have enough people working the booth and answering questions as well as to send folks out into the crowd and out talking to others to help stir up interest.  Extra thanks to Clint and Dave Nalley who were *excellent* at really getting out there and talking to folks.

The booth was busy a good portion of the time – there seemed to be a lot of interest in Fedora.  The XO PCs also generated a lot of attention which is great.  We had a lot of T-shirts to give away and Clint decided if people were going to take a T-shirt they needed to wear it – as in put it on right at the booth!  So the rule quickly became, yep – you can have a t-shirt, but you have to put it on right now!  We’d send groups of six to eight people all off with new t-shirts they were wearing into the conference crowds!  We also had some of them pose under our Fedora banner so we could snap their picture before we sent them off.  It was a great time and it was fun seeing Fedora t-shirts later on in the day and at the keynote that evening.

Paul signed us up for Birds of a Feather session which has several people attend.  We helped answer question, Paul talked about what Fedora is all about and we talked about helping lower the hurdles for contributing to the Fedora Project.

The Fedora Unity re-spins were also a popular item – people really liked the idea of being able to install and not have to do 1GB+ of updates right after the install.  Thanks to Ben Williams and Scott Williams for bringing media and burning DVDs at the booth to keep us in supply.

By the time the exhibit hall was wrapping up we had given away 500+ pieces of Live and DVD media (a conservative estimate), all the fedora unity re-spins that could be made, 90+ T-shirts, around 100 buttons and lots of stickers.  In addition to the swag we gave away I think we helped answer lots of people’s questions, show off the XO laptop and help encourage people to contribute to that project as well as contribute to Fedora – whether they were a developer, docs type person, artistic type or someone that could just talk about Fedora.

We packed up the booth – another win for the Fedora Event box and headed upstairs to catch the keynote by Jono Bacon.  The talk was entertaining and enjoyed by many.  From there we stashed our things in the cars and headed up High Street into the Short North area of Columbus to eat at the Happy Greek.  It was great food and they did a great job ofaccommodating our group of 13 who went out to eat on a busy night for them.  Despite us not ordering 16 flaming appetizers, we did order at least one to the table!  Also, if you ever go out to eat with a large group like that and the establishment doesn’t want to split the check for you (and I can’t blame them) – make sure you have Paul with you – he has a great system that makes it relatively painless to split the bill up without being stuck at the table all night working it out to cents.

From there we headed back towards the convention center.  Some of us were attending the after party while I headed back home after dropping Paul off at the hotel.  Paul had a flight out the next morning and I needed to pick up some food on the way to the first FADNA on Sunday – look for another post coming covering FADNA later tonight or tomorrow.

Ohio Linux Fest was great this year.  It was a very fun time and offered a great chance to meet lots of people I have been working with for years in some cases, but only knew by IRC nicks.  In other cases it offered a chance to see people I had met previously again in person.  Given that a lot of these folks paid out of their own pocket to make it to the event and put themselves up at a hotel – it was great to see so many!

I forgot to take my camera on Saturday, but Jon Stanley and Clint Savage both have their pictures posted:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/herlo0/tags/ohio/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/21214391@N03/tags/olf/

Ohio Linux Fest is Near!

I just finished up packing the North American Event Box with swag and getting everything piled together in one corner of the room that needs taken to the Ohio Linux Fest in Columbus this Saturday.  Just a few more last minute things to take care of and we should be all set to have a great OLF again this year.  If you attending the Ohio Linux Fest be sure to drop by the Fedora booth and say hello!

Fedora Ambassadors are already showing up in town with more on the way.  In addition to working the Ohio Linux Fest on Saturday, we have taken this opportunity to hold a North American Fedora Ambassadors Day this weekend as well.   FADNA is taking place on Sunday morning in Grove City.  This will be a great chance to meet face to face with some folks I’ve been working with on IRC for many months now.

Look forward to seeing everyone this weekend!

Fedora Polos – North America

My Fedora Ambassador polo arrived last week on my doorstep just before our impromptu two day trip to Wisconsin last week. I have been meaning to show it off a bit on the Planet and am just now finding time to do so. The quality of the shirt looks great and I am really pleased with it.

First the shirt:

Fedora Ambassador Polo

And many thanks to Pascal Calarco for getting this done for those of us in North America that wanted Fedora polos. He took care of contacting a vendor we have worked with before, getting the designs to them, the quotes handled and then coordinating payment for those of us who added our name to the order list. Thanks Pascal for the hard work you put in on this. Mine looks great – can’t wait to wear it to my next event!

Fedora Voter Turnout

As I am sure all have seen by now the Fedora Board elections are over and the elected seats have been announced. Congratulations to Tom Callaway, Jesse Keating, Seth Vidal and Jef Spaleta on being elected! I know from following various IRC channels and mailing lists that they will do an excellent job on helping guide Fedora forward.

One of the disappointing things was voter turnout for this election. Of the 4069 people that have signed the CLA, 250 of them voted (information courtesy of Nigel Jone’s blog post). Why is that number so low? Fedora elections, especially board elections, are a great way to help get your say in how the future for Fedora should look.

There is some pretty active discussion happening on the fedora-advisory-board list about voting turn out and why some did vote and why others did not vote. That’s sort of like the choir talking amongst themselves since those of us belonging to the fedora-advisory-board list are probably interested in Fedora politics at that level.

Let’s open this up to a slightly wider forum – the Planet! Yes, the planet is still not the perfect medium as probably the more active Fedora contributors or Fedora interested folks are watching the Planet – but it is a place to start soliciting some additional feedback.

So… if you didn’t vote in the recent Fedora Board elections, why not? Did you forget they were happening? Didn’t like the candidate choice? Or were you satisfied with candidate choice and though any of them would do a fine job? Did you not like the voting method employed this time for the elections? Was there some other reason you didn’t vote? What could be done better to encourage higher voter participation?

Feel free to add to the thread on the fedora-advisory-board list. Or if you don’t want to subscribe to the mailing list to post – feel free to add comments to this blog post and I will collect the comments and forward them on the fedora-advisory-board list.

FUDCon Summaries and Board Elections

Thanks to everyone posting summaries from FUDCon and the Red Hat Summit. As someone that wanted to go but could not, it has been great to read about things on the Planet. Sort of a way to live vicariously through the folks that could go! So please keep it up!

I finally voted today in the Fedora Board elections. For those that have not done so – you still have until 11:59 PM UTC on June 22nd, 2008 to get your vote in. Lots of great people running and it was nice to see some of the new faces running as well. It made for a difficult choice.

Release Party Contest Winner

Following the release of Fedora 9 there were numerous release parties held worldwide – with parties taking place from Italy, to the US, to Romania to Bangladesh and more. During this time we saw a lot of excellent event reports posted to mailing lists and on blogs of organizers and attendees letting everyone know how the party went and allowing us to see for ourselves through many pictures taken at the events. All of the parties were a great success.

Before I announce the winner of the Fedora laptop bag being offered for the Release Party Contest, I want to take a moment to thank everyone who participated. It takes a lot of work to plan and prepare for a release party and then after the event, write the event reports and gather up the photos of the event and posting them for everyone else in the Fedora community to see. The Fedora Ambassador Steering Committee and the Fedora community as a whole greatly appreciate the hours the volunteers spent making sure Fedora had a presence in their community and spreading information about the Fedora Project worldwide. This work helps build the community – both in increasing the number of Fedora users and finding more contributors to join the project. Thank you for all of your work.

We could only choose one winner of the Release Party Contest and it was difficult to do so. In selecting a winner FAmSCo took a number of items into consideration, including what types of events happened at the party, number of attendees, creativity and quality of the event report.

Amongst all of the great entries we received, it is my pleasure to announce the Los Angeles, California Release Party organized by Grady Laksmono as the winner!

Grady put a lot of work into the release party, not even being deterred when the Fedora 9 release date slipped. The event was held at the California State University in the College of Engineering, Computer Science, and Technology and was attended by approximately 40 people.

Grady’s full event report and pictures are posted here:

http://laksmono.com/2008/05/23/los-angeles-fedora-9-release-party-success/

Thank you Grady for all of your work and we hope you enjoy the new laptop bag we will be arranging to have shipped to you.

Again – a huge thank you to everyone who helped organize a release party for Fedora 9!

Open Terminal Default

It appears the default for the starting directory when using nautilus-open-terminal from the right click menu has changed.  Previously when right clicking on the desktop and choosing ‘Open Terminal’ you were given a prompt in your home directory.  With Fedora 9 when right clicking on the desktop and choosing ‘Open Terminal’ it now defaults to your Desktop directory.  Now this does make sense as to why it does that – but it isn’t like it used to be!

It is easily changed back to the ‘old style’ though if you are so inclined.  Make sure you have gconf-editor installed – if you don’t you can run yum install gconf-editor to install it.  Then run gconf-editor and expand the ‘apps’ section and scroll down the list to ‘nautilus-open-terminal’.  On the right hand side, place a check mark in the box for ‘desktop_opens_home_dir’.  Close gconf-editor and now you are good to go!

Central Ohio Fedora 9 Release Party Report

The Central Ohio Fedora 9 Release Party was held on Thursday, May 15th at an area Cup O’ Joes in Bexley, Ohio.  We had several Ambassadors in attendance other than myself, including Brian Pepple and Joe Connelly, who also helped organize the event.

We had advertised the Release Party through some selectively placed flyers on the Capital University campus and Ohio State University campus and a couple of the local open source mailing lists.

We had iso images of nearly every Fedora 9 flavor available for burning to either CD/DVD media or for creating Live USB keys with.  We also had a good stack of Fedora stickers for handout as well.

The attendance total for the evening, not including the three of us helping organize and run the release party was six people.  Some could not stay for long, but the others hung out for most of the evening.  The event was relatively informal – the evening focused on enjoying coffee and bagels while answering questions regarding the new release and features it included.  Amongst the conversation we burned a few DVDs for folks to take home with them and handed out some of the Fedora stickers we had on hand.

A good time was had by all!

Central Ohio Fedora 9 Release Party

Are you in the Columbus, Ohio or Central Ohio area?  What are you doing for the Fedora 9 Release?  Come join us at the Bexley Cup O’ Joe community room on May 15th between 7pm and 9pm.

We will have installation media available for installs.  In addition we will have the ability to create Live USB keys, a GPG keysigning activity, a question and answer session and a mini-troubleshooting contest to test your break-fix skills.

Mark your calendar for May 15th and come on by the Bexley Cup O’ Joe for coffee and general socializing with other Fedora enthusiasts!  If you plan on attending please add your name to the Central Ohio wiki page.