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Community Leadership Summit up on the westside

07-Jan-10

CLS West is happening this Saturday 9 January at DeVry University in Daly City.  I’ll be there all day, talking about catalyzing and community and stuff, then giving an Ignite talk at a closed-door event.

This is a follow-up to the successful CLS that occurred before the last OSCON in San Jose.  The idea was born at the first CLS to have additional, regional, and smaller CLS events in between an international, annual event.  Well, small was the idea originally, but it sounds as if CLS West has nearly as many people attending.  In addition, the Ignite session on Saturday night at Google HQ gives a handful of us a chance to bring a message to the assembled attendees and a few guests.  I’m planning to break out our new upstream project – an open content community book we’ve started and are ready to open for wider collaboration.

If you want to attend CLS West, there are still free tickets as of this writing.  If I know you and you want to come to just the Ignite event, I’ll gladly hook you up as my guest.  That, I believe, is first come, first served.

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Irony of ability – how less helps you do more

05-Jan-10

Just wanted to highlight this interesting article, talking about an English professor at Oklahoma City University who has Lou Gehrig’s disease.  She teaches her class via video conference, and of necessity has learned a new approach of listening and letting students lead the discussion:

Taught by a Terrible Disease

This interested me for several reasons.

  • We are all going to have phases in life where we are disabled, either in comparison to the rest of the world or by our own definition.   It’s cool seeing how people creatively use technology to not only re-enable but to improve their interactions and experiences.
  • As a remote team member for the last 10 years, I appreciate seeing how people are able to do their work from remote.  In this story, we read of how the professor’s teaching has improved by being remote from her class.
  • Open source methodologies provides a way for massive improvements in accessibility through various hackability efforts, such as the Open Prosthetics Project.

Sometimes the only way to show educators is by immersing them in collaborative experiences where they learn personally the value of open participation, such as POSSE.  It makes them better able to help their students become open participants when the students see the learning and modelling from the instructor.

Filed in Art of Living, Classroom, Education, Fedora, Irony, Telecommuting | | Comments Off

Nurses most trusted profession in the US

22-Dec-09

A recent Gallup poll found that nurses remain the most trusted profession in their annual U.S. poll at 83% (“High/Very high” trust).  Closest behind the nurses are pharmacists/druggists at 66%, just a point above medical doctors at 65%.

Why am I reporting this?  The Gallup headline for their own results is, “U.S. Clergy, Bankers See New Lows in Honesty/Ethics Ratings“.  Of course, their take on the story is that, surprise surprise, people trust bankers even less than before.  Now you’ll tell me car sales people are lower on the list now, too?  Oh, yep, there they are, 7% dropped to 6% this year.

I found the story about the nurses more interesting and wanted someone, somewhere to do a story on that tidbit.  Here it is.

Naturally, the story angle about the drop in trust of bankers is what other articles picked up, including one from the New York Times that was referenced from this story about Darth Vader ringing the NYSE bell.  The Times article did mention “(t)o be fair, the perceived integrity of most other professional groups that Gallup asked about — including clergy, lawyers and pharmacists — has also been falling in the last year. Police officers are the only group that seems to have enjoyed a significant increase in public esteem.”

But really, the part that jumped out at me was the fact that trust for nurses is 20% higher than for police officers, and a full 14 points higher than the nearest ranked profession.  I doubt the drop in trust from 84% to 83% is very important, comparatively.

Oh, I see one reason, there is a trend here.  In 2008 Gallup wrote, “Nurses Shine, Bankers Slump in Ethics Ratings,” which followed up the 2007 report, “Nurses Top for Ethics and Honesty.”  Nurses have been at the top of the list since they were added in 1999, with the exception of 2001 when firefighters took the top spot.  I’m wondering if the real story is, while Gallup is providing a good service in keeping track of this information, they really don’t have much to say about it otherwise.  A rise or fall in a few percentage points in a single year could indicate many different things.

I will give them one thing – the banking profession’s fall from 41% in 2005 to 19% now, that definitely shows something is afoot.

Nurses Shine, Bankers Slump in Ethics Ratings

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Tip – Expose your task list to get help the open source way

17-Dec-09

We take it as very important to expose your task list, undone and unassigned and everything.  That is, if your goal is to do things the open source way, which you can do regardless of what domain you are in.  Marketing?  Yep. Documentation?  Yep.

An example I saw today is in this bug report, where Adam had noticed that some of the content in the Fedora 12 Virtualization Guide (English) was actually for Red Hat Enterprise Linux v5.  This, it turns out, is an artifact of the development process.  The content was for Enterprise Linux 5 first, then was converted to Fedora 12 content.  In the process, the author didn’t have the time to update the screenshots.  (Which is fine, release early and release often should be the rule; the screenshots can be updated later, as this process is showing.)

By writing out and exposing all the tasks of a project, such as converting a guide from Enterprise Linux to Fedora, you make it possible for other contributors to catch the 20% that you may not have time for.  Even where that 20% is not essential for you to call it complete, there is definite value in that 20% for others to exercise legitimate peripheral participation.  In this case, the process of updating the screenshots is only going to take a handful of hours, and at the end, the other contributor is going to be more familiar with Docs process, tools, culture, and that one guide in particular.  That is part of growing capacity in the project, helping make others in to experts, too.

As it progresses, Adam is interested in helping finish this part of the guide, and Eric gave him some direct tips on getting the work done, all recorded in the bug ticket.  Now it can be reassigned to Adam, and he can use the usual resources to find answers and get the updated guide published.

The challenge is, no task ticket tracking system is going to expose all the details to the granular level.  The screenshots might have been one on a task list somewhere, but there is a social element to all this.  For example, this is why we blog about what we are stuck on as much as writing about what is going well.  It’s like the easyfix idea, not everything everywhere is going to get tagged with that, but enough are to make it easier for new people to move from participant to contributor.

Filed in Community, Fedora, Open Source | Tagged , , , | Comments (5) »

How can we share some love about Red Hat with Wikipedia?

14-Dec-09

Wow, I just saw the saddest thing.  It’s a section of the Wikipedia article about Red Hat, listing programs and projects that Red Hat does in the free software and open source communities.  This is ‘programs and projects’ in the sense of, “Build a road is a project, build a freeway system is a program.”  Here is the article section:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hat#Programs_and_projects

It lists a number of projects that are not really in existence, and are arguably not any more worth calling out than other projects.

Take a look at that content and the section on utilities and tools, then compare it with this canonical page on the Fedora Project wiki:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Red_Hat_contributions

In that comparison, realize something – both of those pages now share a content license.  The list of Red Hat contributions is licensed CC BY SA 3.0 Unported.  The same as the Wikipedia page.  (I’m asking about the GFDL question on fedora-legal-list.)

As a Red Hat employee I feel socially awkward rectifying this situation.  Is that incorrect?  I don’t know, I’m not a regular Wikipedia contributor and have lapsed my knowledge of what is right and proper in authoring an article.  Maybe it’s better or worse if the content is an aggregate from the Fedora Project wiki.

One idea would be to link to the canonical article from the Fedora Project.  That’s not bad.  But what about a new Wikipedia Red Hat contributions page?  (Or would that be [[Red Hat software contributions]]?)  I would envision the Wikipedia version to be a downstream usage, meaning someone would commit to maintaining it the way we maintain packages in Fedora.  For example, watch the page for changes, then carry those changes to the Wikipedia downstream page.

The value added on the Wikipedia side?  A properly categorized downstream page that re-sorts the content in to ways useful by the general Wikipedia audience.  There are probably other ways to enhance the content to be useful to Wikipedia, and still refer to the canonical upstream.

On the other hand, maybe one of you Wikipedians will tell me that it’s perfectly fine for me to write and maintain this page on Wikipedia myself.  In that case, maybe I’ll do it.  Otherwise, I’d be happy to help contribute, and I know of a few others who would likely do this already.

Or you’ll tell me it’s not appropriate for Wikipedia, in which case, I’d like to get the two sections I reference above to be removed from the [[Red Hat]] page.  They stand in stark contrast to the reality.

Filed in Fedora, Red Hat, Wiki | Tagged , , | Comments (5) »

Something old, something new – Fedora 12 video

10-Dec-09

Some old faces, some new faces talking about how the same-old, same-old building sustainable community in Fedora leads to new innovation and new fun stuff for people to play with in this video on Fedora 12.

Another new thing here, I think this is the first time our entire Community Architecture team was in one location together as our new team since Mel joined us.  It’s great to have some evidence that Max, Greg, Mel, and I were actually doing something that week in Raleigh.  Paul was there to witness:

Even though Paul has been with the Fedora Project for almost as long as I have, I keep forgetting he’s only been at Red Hat for the last few years.  Mel is brand-new to Red Hat this year.  Greg has been at Red Hat about six months longer than I have, and Max is a scant few years beyond that.

If I didn’t have video and audio evidence, I don’t think my friends and family would believe I really work.

Filed in Community, Fedora, Red Hat | | Comments (3) »

Looking for a soup-to-dessert hosting service

09-Dec-09

… the key being, I want to drink our own champagne, so it should run Fedora or RHEL as the hosted Linux.  And I want it to source, cook, serve, and clean-up the entire meal for me.

The project is going to run a MediaWiki instance and git+gitweb, maybe with a few plugins, and that’s it to start.  Mailing lists?  Possibly soon.  Other stuff?  Possible one day.  So, room to grow with a relatively simple site.  Not intending for a huge amount of traffic to start, ability to scale should be built in.  Modest data/database needs expected.

The thing is, I’m spoiled by Dreamhost, where I host all my personal projects.  I’m happy enough with them for that.  They use Debian and a (I think) a custom toolbox that us customers use to do a wide range of activities.  I can hit my registrar to register a new domain name, then host it,  load it up with a selection of LAMP software such as MediaWiki and WordPress, and have access via ssh to make web site building easier, all of this within about 30 minutes via the Dreamhost web app.

While I’m fully capable of taking a bare metal box, spinning up RHEL or Fedora, and configuring everything from DNS to LAMP, I don’t want to.  And Red Hat no longer pays me to be a sysadmin.

If you know of something that fits the bill, email me or drop a note in the comments on this post.

Filed in Business, Fedora, Linux, Online life | | Comments (8) »

My turn to miss the NA FUDCon

03-Dec-09

Perhaps I’ve missed one in the past, I don’t recall, but my t-shirt drawer says I’ve been to most of the FUDCons in North America since they started.  As it happens, I have to skip the one this coming weekend in Toronto.  I haven’t been to that fair city and I’d looked forward to meeting the crew at Seneca, but I’m needed more here right now.  You all will just have to muddle through without me.

If there are any meetings and hackfests I can attend from remote, I will.  Just let me know what is happening, and you can always reach out to me via SMS to my phone to yank me in to something.  Don’t hesitate.  Seriously.

Filed in Events, Fedora | Tagged , , , , | Comments (1) »

STS-129 Ascent Video – WOW!

03-Dec-09

This launch and ascent video is phenomenal.  The editing makes a lot of it, but it’s the sheer quality and multiple angles of footage in the first place that make it a real adrenalin rush.

Two words: “booster cam”.  ‘Nuff said.

STS-129 Ascent Video Highlights on Vimeo:

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Fedora Board townhall results – 20091202

02-Dec-09

V O T E

Today (02 Dec 2009) I moderated the townhall on IRC for the Fedora Board candidates.  Full details are available on the Fedora elections page.

The meeting log is available, and here is the list of questions we went over. A few follow-up questions were chimed in the stream of discussion, so you need to read the full log to find all the questions discussed.

  1. What is a Linux distribution to you and how important is it that the Fedora Project creates one?
    1. What the original question made me ponder is, how important are “ancillary to making a Linux” the various activities in the Fedora Project?  Is it fair to consider them ancillary or are they actually primary?
  2. Aside from a distribution, what other sorts of “deliverables” are important to the Fedora Project?  Are there any deliverables that the Project should be producing that it isn’t?
  3. What do you see as Fedora’s greatest failure in the recent years?
    1. What do you see as Fedora’s greatest triumphs in recent years?
  4. Is important to you to create an official fedora package box: with DVD and manual?
  5. Ok, an education program of some sort seems to fall when within the boundaries set in the project’s mission statement. What factors should go into deciding what activities get to ride in the front seat of the Fedora bus? Or does the primary distinction really not matter much?
  6. How do the candidates feel about the changes occured regarding PackageKit during the F12 launch and the ensuing bad publicity? How could it have been avoided?
  7. What do you think the Board could do in order to help efforts such as https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/Store that would allow for more brand recognition by allowing more people to obtain Fedora branded gear?

Did I say … V O T E ?

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