We’re very excited over here to be attending the twelfth annual Southern California Linux Expo, aka SCALE 12x, on 21 to 23 February in likely-to-be-sunny Los Angeles.
On Friday, I’m going to hang out near the stage and nod cleverly as Jim Perrin tells us about “Growing CentOS as a Platform for Infrastructure Development“. You can register for Infrastructure.Next (it’s no-cost!) here. It’s a full day devoted to learning about how real people are solving real problems with open source. I’ll have to visit my friends at the Fedora Activity Day. Then I’ll do the brisk-for-LA dinner so I can get back for Lawrence Lessig’s keynote, “Only You Can Get This, So Where Are You?” at 9 pm.
Saturday is dedicated to all the fun the expo has to offer, plus the evening activities. I’ll be hanging out at the Fedora, CentOS, and Red Hat booths. I’ll definitely carve time for m’man Jason Hibbets’ “Open Source ALL The Cities” – a topic near to my heart, one I’ve acted on, but barely to the extent Jason has, so I’m looking forward to learning more from him (and seeing a friend speak, natch.) Closing Saturday, two other friends-also-faves are Ruth Suehle (“Raspberry Pi Hacks“) and Rikki Endsley (“You know, for kids! 7 tips for improving tech education in our schools“), at 6 pm opposite each other (curse the schedule overlords!!!), I may have to favor Rikki as I had the fortune to catch Ruth in Scotland talking on the same topic a few months ago … which is another story. And look! I have another colleague, Rich Bowen (“Demystifying mod_rewrite“) at the same time (a skill I sorely need to demystify), and I note Dawn Foster is talking as well … So much goodness!
Sunday kicks off for me with Leslie Hawthorn at 10 am with “Why Checking Your Privilege is Good For *You*“. Leslie is another friend-and-great-speaker, but I’ll note that she’s particularly interesting to listen to and I think more so on this topic. I’m very much looking forward to this, especially as the newbie feminist that I am. Then Thomas Cameron is speaking on “Next Generation High Availability Linux Clustering” at 11:30, which I hope to be able to catch some of (and heckle.). I’ll be preparing for the “CentOS Project Q&A Forum” that I’m leading with Jim Perrin and Johnny Hughes at 1:30, where I’m looking forward to some reverse-heckling from Thomas. Perusing the schedule, I found the quite intriguing, “Hacking the Kernel, Hacking Myself” talk by Kelley Nielsen at 4:30. I’ve quite interested to hear her story around the domains of kernel development, personal development, the Outreach Program for Women, and her story overall.
I love how KB started CentOS Project online office hours right after our joint announcement about the new relationship between Red Hat and CentOS. I don’t think this sort of thing was happening before, but it’s now a regular part of exposing the inter-workings of the new CentOS Governing Board.
This Monday 10 February at 16:00 UTC (yes, that’s 8 am in California for me) we’ll be talking about CentOS and the Google Summer of Code. You can watch via the YouTube channel or http://www.centos.org/media, and participate in IRC on #centos-devel on Freenode, Here’s my quick agenda for the hour:
- Quick summary of what Google Summer of Code (GSoC) is.
- Overview of what is possible to do with GSoC for CentOS.
- What we have so far.
- What we need to work on now (this week), next (following few weeks), and for the summer (full program length.)
See you there!
This summer we have restarted the salon-style events here at Fairytale Farm – Fairytale Fridays. We’re also offering an array of classes every Saturday morning.
Every Friday we’re holding a community-space event, free to attend. We’re drawing in musicians to play for us, giving garden tours peppered with urban farm wisdom, something artsy/craftsy and fun for the kids, and featuring the treats of our own Pumpkin Peddlers.
This Friday 19 July we begin offering a dinner as well. It will be vegetarian (usually vegan) with a dish from the day’s garden harvest, and usually a pot of beans and/or a delicious grain. Once you are done, you can follow it up with fresh-fruit pie or one of the non-gluten brownies-to-die-for and cookies-to-live for of our new mobile bakers. If you plan to attend, please let us know so I know how much to prepare. 
On Saturday 20 July from 10 to Noon I’ll be teaching how to make sauerkraut and kim chee. We’ve done this class before a few years ago with great success, and we’ve watched how much more interest there is in the fermentation arts wherever we look! For $39 you get instruction on making sauerkraut and kim chee via hands on and lecture. We’ll supply the vegetables, utensils, and send you home with a jar of your freshly made ferment. More details and sign-up on the class page.
