Simon + Fedora

foss.in Day 5

2009-12-06T10:58:00.007+01:00

this was the last Day at foss.in - and once again it was perfect organized, yes there were uncertainties during the cfp and schedule in front of the event but i learned that it was not easy to run the event anyway, because of the worldwide crisis. So all in all they did a very good job for taking care for all during the event and especially for us foreign speakers - a big thanks goes to the Organizers Atul, Gaurav, Sheela, Shilpa and Tejas and many many more ...

I expected more people on a saturday because there is no work and no school - most visitors attented the talks so we had less of them at the booth. It was also the last Day for me to work with Susmit and we had a heated discussion with Dimitriz about - how community/membership management should be done.

Susmit had to leave the conference a bit earlier - alone to meet him and interact with him as a new/old friend was worth the trip - it will improve the results of the work we have to do in the next months. It was funny that we share almost the same thoughts about how things in Membership Management should work.

I attented the last Keynote which was a talk about robotics - the speaker talked about his internship in the US and also about his work at the US University. One example he showed was a walking robot for offroad terrain. Because i was involved in military technology in my past, i clearly saw the military usecase and i asked myself how one can intervent such things through electronic counter-measures and if they take care for security measures while they develop and implement the code for the robots with a security stack or something like this. Maybe the OSSTMM is also worth a look for them.

Atul - the Organizer gave the closing note - i could not get all of it, because i had to leave earlier- but from what i could hear, it inspired the indian people and he gave them confidence in their work and their future!

After a big goodbye to all the Fedora-People i left the conference to take a shower, change my clothes and pack my bag. I lost my phone in the Cap which drove me to the hotel, but after 60 minutes the driver brought it back to the hotel - wow, the people here are great!

Right now i am sitting on the Airport in Bangalore and wait for my flight - it is sad but it is time to leave india. It was a wonderfull time here and i hope i can come back one day. I want to say thank you to all here at foss.in - and especially - alphapetical ;) - Hiemanshu for the friendship and taking care for me and helping me over the Streets, Kushal for his warm welcome and his support during the stay, Rahul for his openess, the clear words and his humor, Rangeen for taking care that i had a phone to reach everyone in the world and his help, Shrink for the young fresh spirit and for the luck i will have from now on ;) And of course Susmit for being a friend and a big help!

Update: Arrived Save at Frankfurt Airport ;)
Update: all my Pictures from the trip

2009-12-05T10:23:00.001+01:00

foss.in Day4

2009-12-05T05:21:00.011+01:00

Another great Day at foss.in 2009 - Bangalore.
I watched the vlsi/eda talk and found him very user centered i wished the speaker had also talked how to become a vlsi/eda foss contributor. Especially for FEL. All in all the Presentation had a lot of content and it was presented from a windows machine what is a bit unlucky on foss.in from my pov. Afterwards i had a nice conversation with the speaker Swapnil about his possible contributions to FEL.

I had a lot to struggle with the Internet-Connection, which was the reason that i broke the Verification Page yesterday - but it is solved ;)

During the Day i had a short trip to a Shiva Temple with Hiemanshu and Shrink, which was a very "different" but nice expirience ;) - including walking barefoot ;) - both made me a present - a "laughing budda" - and from now on i will put it on my Desk for luck

Driving with the Auto-Rikshaw in Bangalore is also a special thrill!

Back at the event there was a lot distraction and we did not get really something done - we made a lot jokes and had a lot of fun about some spelling mistakes.

Afterwards we went out for Dinner and Hiemanshu has always a lucky hand with very good local restaurants - Paneer Makhani, Dal Kolhapuri, Navratna Korma, Kashmiri Pulao - thanks for taking care Hiemanshu!

foss.in Day3

2009-12-03T18:03:00.006+01:00

The interaction with the Contributors - not only from the Fedora Project - is really great. From my outsider point of view the different projects here in india are more open and there is a real interest in things that other Projects have achieved.
I have done some booth duty work today and i noticed that there are only students. Obviosly their teachers have no classes at this day because the whole bunch of people is at the event - so they could go with them and learn something new. In other Countries i have seen - even the Professor is doing booth duties at a Project Booth. From my POV it is time for teaching the teachers in india how foss works. And if we can do that in the States or in China why not in India? The Students were mostly very formal and lacking a bit independence in finding own ways to solve things or get things done. So the teachers maybe forget to teach them how to evolve to become a independend thinking mind.

I also had some nice expiriences by explaining people the spin concept and that it is the perfect instrument to gather people around an idea to motivate them to contribute new things with all the benefits it brings to fedora.

I had also a short workout with Susmit on some stuff that we want to solve while i am here in india.

Related to the "unofficial" Security Spin Workout, Hiemanshu took action and moved the stuff from the fedorahosted spinspage to the new place where it belongs ;) and we will work on the improvement

The lunch was great it was Vanghi Bath and Aloo Parantha - the organizers still deserve a lot compliments of taking care for everything.

In the later afternoon we left the venue for a short shopping trip.

Hiemanshu had a small collision with a Motorbike in this street and i learned some new inter-social things about india ;)

And btw - if you need an PHP Lesson in Bangalore i know a place for that!

Tomorrow i plan to attend the "VLSI/EDA Ecosystem and impact of Free and Open Source Movement" talk to give Chitlesh a feedback about it, and of course joining the Fedora People with our Activities.

foss.in Day 2 is running

2009-12-02T15:01:00.002+01:00

today is our Fedora Project of the Day - i had the honour to start the talking track and i felt well with my talk - let's see if there is some feedback in the next hours, you can download the presentation from -
http://jsimon.fedorapeople.org/fedora_osstmm_secspinv2.pdf

just a minor correction - Hiemanshu - s/pushed me over the street/helped me over the street. It turnes we get some more things from the wishlist packaged soon. And i am quite confident that we can move to LXDE fast.

Btw. i like the taste of indian food and i enjoy the different tastes - today i had "wheat dosa" for lunch - great

Finally i met Susmit the first time - we have worked together for month's now and to meet him is a very good expirience.

Hiemanshu turned out to be one of the fastest troubleshooters i have ever seen - impressive - the infrastructure team can be happy to have him.

More later ;)

foss.in Day 1

2009-12-01T18:48:00.008+01:00

From the first day impressions it is an good and eager event, foss.in work's torwards the same approach as we do in the Fedora Project with our FAD's or FUDCon's - to show something or at least kicked it off, at the end of the event.

We have a Fedora Project Table/Booth and i have done some duties there which is always fun for me. Maybe i could win a new Contributor from the OWASP-Project who will help us to work on WebApp Testing Tools for the Security Spin.

The local Fedora People do a great job of taking care for me - you will not believe me, how dangerous it is to cross the streets here, - if bungee- or base-jumping did not thrill you anymore, you should give this a try.

Dimitriz gave his very first Keynote in his life at the end of the day and he did very well, eloquent and smart!

in the evening we (9 local Contributors) took a Auto Rickshaw - test it to know how it feels - torwards an indian restaurant, where i had chicken and some sort of bolognese sauce with thin dough cake's which was delicate.

there are so many impressions i can not write them down here - i will write a longer summary on my way home.

Fedora Gang

2009-12-01T08:49:00.002+01:00

the indian Fedora gang gave me a warm welcome - right now Kushal, Rahul and Hiemanshu are around and it feels good to be with them.

foss.in is started!

2009-12-01T07:35:00.002+01:00

First i have to say that the organizer did an awesome job in taking care for the speakers - big thanks for that!

The place where i stay is the Brigade Homestead - which is very nice and i feel very comfortable to stay there.

The Conference Place has a lot space and is an ideal place for such event. The organizers took care for breakfast - i love the coffee here ;) Right now i am sitting in the Opening Keynote and the vision they have for the conference is very strict but interessting and i think i like it ;)

Landed in Bangalore

2009-12-01T07:14:00.002+01:00

After a nice 09:00 hours flight i arrived safe in Bangalore - tired now - go to bed ;)

foss.in - travel

2009-11-30T09:16:00.002+01:00

My travel to foss.in, Bangalore started. Right now - sitting on the airport frankfurt and waiting ;)

Join us on Fedora Project of the Day on foss.in - Bangalore

2009-11-27T18:35:00.006+01:00

While a lot Fedora folks start with preparations for fudcon Toronto, i pack my bag for Bangalore, India to attend and speak on foss.in next week - big thanks Max for encouraging me and also to Sankarshan for the invitation.

Finally, the schedule for foss.in is out today. And Fedora will have the Project of the Day - Track on Wed, 2 Dec 2009 in the Room H3/120 - Nimhans Convention Center, Bangalore - we start at 11:00pm. I am happy and excited to meet a lot of the indian fedora contributors - also people who helped me a lot in the past like Susmit and Rahul - and to meet Kushal again. I also look forward to have a great time with Dimitriz Glezos.

I am pleased to give my talk about the "Fedora Security Spin and the OSSTMM" during that Track.

This talk introduces how the Fedora Security Spin implements and aids the "Open Source Security Testing Methodology Manual" and is for anyone who want to learn that there is a vendor independend Open Source Security Testing Methodology based on real scientific work, in order to ascertain and quantify security not only for Computer and Network Security. It demonstrates the development state of the Fedora Security Spin, how Security work can be done with it and how one can contribute to the Fedora Security Spin.

cu at foss.in

Ambassadors!!!

2009-11-15T14:17:00.000+01:00

do not forget to nominate yourself, right now your chance is pretty good to
become elected!!!

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors/SteeringCommittee/Election/2009Nominations

Larry Cafiero, Susmit, Robert Scheck, Francesco Ugolini - please take this as a
nomination from my side, you are all awesome mentors!!!!

Open Source Expo Karlsruhe

2009-11-15T11:14:00.002+01:00

we started Day 1 on OSE Karlsruhe - it is pretty early in the morning :(

Robert Scheck and Jens Maucher rock the show!

Run for FAmSCo Election!

2009-11-12T12:15:00.005+01:00

A lot more work has to be done!

I run for FAmSCo Election!

If you have a vision how we can improve - and if you are willing to continuously commit something of your time to FAmSCo work - you should run for the election!

We need more Candidates to have a healthy (s)election ;)

Get to know a Fedora Ambassador or User

2009-11-07T11:37:00.002+01:00

MooDoo nice idea! I can not resist ;)

Name: Joerg Simon
IRC-Nick: kital
IRC-Channels: #fedora-de, #fedora-india, #fedora-mktg, #fedora-ambassadors, #fedora-admin, #fedora-website on freenode
Location: Hemmingen/BW, Germany

Chemnitzer Linuxtage 2010

2009-11-06T19:59:00.005+01:00

Since years we are present at Chemnitzer Linuxtage - CLT and always had a great and successfull time - Max wrote a great report about the 2009 event!

You can see Max's talk "Innovations in the Fedora Project"

On FAD EMEA 2009 a decision was made, to make CLT one of the big events for EMEA in 2010.
Today, the CfP is out and i will take care for our "Call for Presentations" which means to have a booth, dev-room etc. ...
If you are interested to give a talk, you are invited to follow the "Call for Lectures"
We will try to get a separate Dev/Project Room - then we can give our own Talking Track independent from the official "Call for Lectures". Update on that soon!
More Details on Fedora CLT 2010 Event - expect more updates soon.

The German CfP from the CLT Team:

Neues Jahr – neues Outfit
=========================

Mit neuem Outfit stellt sich die Webseite der 12. Chemnitzer Linux-Tage
vor. 2010 wird es also wieder eine Menge interessanter Vorträge, Workshops
und Projekte im Hörsaalgebäude an der Reichenhainer Straße geben. Die
Themenschwerpunkte lauten dieses Mal:

* Dienste und Dämonen
* Neue Desktops
* Embedded
* Privatsphäre trotz Netz

Ab sofort ist es möglich, sich mit einem Vortrag, Stand oder Workshop
anzumelden, um im März 2010 das Programm mitzugestalten. Natürlich werden
wie immer auch Beiträge für das Einsteigerforum gesucht.

* Call for Lectures [0]
* Call for Presentations [1]

Neu in diesem Jahr ist die Möglichkeit, ein eingereichtes Paper im
CLT-Tagungsband veröffentlichen zu lassen.

Immer auf dem Laufenden
=======================

Damit Fans und Interessierte nicht nur am Veranstaltungswochenende die
Chemnitzer Linux-Tage live erleben, kann sich ab sofort jeder über den
aktuellen Stand der Vorbereitungen, Nachbereitungen und sonstigen
Aktivitäten per Identi.ca[2], Twitter[3] oder Facebook[4] informieren.

Vorfreude
=========

Schon jetzt kann sich jeder mit den Aufzeichnungen der CLT 2009 ein
bisschen Vortragsfeeling nach Hause holen. Die Videos aus den
Vortragsräumen V1 und V4 stehen ab sofort zum Download und zum direkten
Anschauen bereit.

[0] http://chemnitzer.linux-tage.de/2010/vortraege/call_form.html
[1] http://chemnitzer.linux-tage.de/2010/live/call_form.html
[2] http://identi.ca/clt/
[3] http://twitter.com/clt_news
[4] http://www.facebook.com/chemnitzer.linuxtage

Fedora on Stage

2009-11-03T13:11:00.004+01:00

Did you know that Olli who printed all the incredible Banners & Roll-ups for FUDCon in Berlin this year, is also a singer and songwriter - see him on stage with his song KingKong ;)

Review about Free Software Conference 2009 in Budapest, Hungary

2009-11-02T12:12:00.000+01:00

On behalf of Robert Scheck:

Good evening,

now that I'm safely back at home, I'll write a bit about the Free Software
Conference 2009 (Hungarian: Szabad Szoftver Konferencia 2009) in Budapest,
Hungary. The event itself was organized by the FSF Hungary and took place
in the building for scientific and economy of the university in Budapest.

Unfortunately, one week before the event, some health issues appeared at
Christoph Wickert, who initially wanted to attend the event. In the end,
Joerg Simon asked me to attend and that's how I made it in.

On Friday evening, I flew from Stuttgart via Frankfurt am Main to Budapest
- it was my first trip to Hungary at all and I noticed, that they are still
lacking English knowledge at signs/labels and people. Usually you can guess
the meaning of words in a foreign language - but not at Hungarian, they're
completely different. Nevertheless I managed it with a 30 minutes taxi trip
to get to my hotel (the airport is ~ 15 km away from the city center).

At early Saturday morning, I met Zoltán Hoppár in the hotel lobby. He's our
first and currently only Hungarian Fedora Ambassador the first time as far
as I know. Together we moved on to the university and prepared our booth.

At 9:00 am the event officially started, at 10:00 am our workshop "Building
RPMs made easy" started (thanks again to Christoph for providing me his
German presentation about the same topic as template for my English one),
but nobody was there! Fortunately after a few more minutes people showed up
and told us that the previous presentation was a bit too long. Zoltán was
so friendly to translate my whole workshop on-the-fly into Hungarian - that
was a lot of work, because 50 minutes are less time for something huge like
RPM packaging and I had to hurry up a bit to get all slides and a packaging
example done.

The rest of the day we mainly promoted Fedora, handed out media and swag,
answered questions around the OLPC XO and tried to encourage new Hungarian
Fedora Contributors and Ambassadors - I think we hopefully got a handful
people in total, some of them directly signed up in FAS at our booth. I've
to say "thank you" to Zoltán here as well, because most of the visitors did
not speak and understand English - so Zoltán was really a lot of the time
only translating both ways. Nevertheless, it was definately a great event!

And it was a real community event, even that some commercial sponsors have
been around. According to the FSF Hungary, it was a worse event measured by
the visitors, they've counted ~ 350 visitors for the whole day. Did I say,
that I like and appreciate how Zoltán is acting, even he's a relatively new
contributor and the past event was one of his first (or the first?) Fedora
event? :)

Of course we've made pictures, but I'm still looking for a good place to
host them, I personally dislike Flickr and similar portals. Maybe we can
setup a pictures.fedoraproject.org with a gallery and everybody in FAS can
upload pictures there? Of course we would need the events as a group or
category. Ideas? Suggestions?

In the evening, Zoltán and I went for lunch to the Soul Café & Restaurant
and I ordered some typical Hungarian food to get impressions there as well.
Of course we've twaddled about possible future events and some ideas - how
else could it be? :) Joerg and Christoph: Next time, Zoltán would like to
see us all three at an event - maybe we get it managed for FOSDEM?

On Sunday, I flew back from Budapest via Munich to Stuttgart (the last part
of the trip with a tiny prop airliner) - and unfortunately Lufthansa didn't
manage it to bring my baggage to Stuttgart. I started baggage tracking, but
right now and even hours after, they've absolutely no clue as the digital
tracking for my baggage is somehow just empty. If they are incompetent, we
have lost (beside of my clothes, shoes, washbag etc.) some Fedora plastic
banners, my Fedora Ambassador polos and the presents from Zoltán - and that
would be a real loss. Let's hope and cross fingers...

Finally, I've to say "thank you" to Zoltán, Joerg and Christoph for their
work, efforts and support around the event! Not to forget a "thank you" to
Fedora EMEA e.V. for the financial support to get me there.

Greetings, Robert

Fedora in Budapest, Hungary

2009-10-29T16:18:00.006+01:00

One of my personal goals for 2009 was to have Fedora on an foss event in Hungary.
After some mistakes through the language barrier in the beginning - finally we made it!

Thanks to Zoltan and Robert!

I am happy, we will have the first Fedora event participation ever in Hungary - on http://konf.fsf.hu/ 31.Oct 2009, with a booth and Robert will give a packaging workshop http://konf.fsf.hu/cgi-bin/ossc/speakers#spea22.

I look forward to Reports, Pictures and a lot new smart hungarian contributors ;)

Numbers

2009-10-29T15:20:00.015+01:00

I played a bit with our Scripts we use in Ambassadors to automate things from Fedora Account System. I know that pure numbers do not tell something about the quantity or quality that a contributor delivers, but it was fun to pull that information out.

Did you know that 15758 People signed the CLA – and 11040 of them have still active Accounts?

Top Ten active Accounts by Country for some Groups –

Packagers:
859 active groupmembers listed here against 934 total
313 with unknown country

Sysadmin – Infrastructure
100 active groupmembers listed here against 102 total
28 with unknown country

our „new“ Design Team
14 active groupmembers listed here against 14 total
4 with unknown country

Ambassadors
698 active groupmembers listed here against 699 total
128 with unknown country

Localization (Translation CVS Commit Group)
444 active groupmembers listed here against 651 total
182 with unknown country

Marketing
43 active groupmembers listed here against 83 total
12 with unknown country

Documentation
115 active groupmembers listed here against 116 total
37 with unknown country

Websites
49 active groupmembers listed here against 49 total
12 with unknown country

Tatica's Project 365

2009-10-13T19:57:00.004+02:00

11:48 kital: hi guys just a question - maybe i missed it - who was it, who banned tatica with her portrait project from the planet

11:48 kital: ?

11:51 MooDoo: didn't realise she had, if so it sucked

11:51 kital: i have read it in nicu's post yesterday

11:52 MooDoo: kital: yeah i think thats where i read it, i think she should put them back on

11:52 kital: i know from a lot who visited the planet just for that ;)

11:54 MooDoo: kital: yes indeed :) but it was still an insight into the lives of a fedora user and i thought that's what the planet was for

11:54 kital: i see it the same way

11:57 kital: MooDoo: it is also pretty stupid to scare contributors away - especialy from a group with less productiv headcount like the design team

11:58 MooDoo: kital: well hopefully she's not scared off and still comes in here

12:01 kital: lets see

12:01 MooDoo: yes i might mention it if she comes in later

12:02 MooDoo: kital: if only to say, put it back on :)

12:02 kital: true

Back from FAD 2009

2009-09-28T12:25:00.003+02:00

I am back from my trip to Switzerland, you can watch my snapshots from OpenExpo 2009 and FAD 2009.

I have got a few action items from FAD - emea inventory for swag tracking, enhance regional listing on the Ambassador Verification Page, make Chemnitzer Linuxtage 2010 a main event for 2010.

FAD EMEA 2009 Day2

2009-09-26T14:14:00.003+02:00

Schloss Beuggen is a great place to stay and with us as guests it is even more great ;)

We are in the middle of our FAD Agenda
and with the awesome work from Yaakov you can follow us on #fedora-fad in realtime!

FAD EMEA 2009

2009-09-25T22:16:00.003+02:00

Greetings from FAD 2009 Rheinfelden, hosted by Gerold in his fedora-blue house.

I left OpenExpo Winterthur yesterday after a relaxed Day - i found the Security Talking-Track was behind my expectations as the visitor count as well. I decided not to have blog post for Day 2.

Sure we get things done.

Open Expo Winterthur Day1

2009-09-24T12:38:00.009+02:00

Again, we have a presence at OpenExpo Winterthur
Our Booth is a bit hidden - but we have placed our huge banner in the middle of another booth so we are visible for sure ;P

I am happy to meet Fabian and Sandro again, Markus from the CentOS Project joined us as a Family Member ;)
The number of visitors is disappointing, hope it will be better tomorrow, i take it as a warm up for the Fedora Activity Day which will start on Friday in Rheinfelden.

In afternoon a Visitor showed up with a Acer Aspire One with the original Linpus installed - which is just Fedora 8 Werewolf - outdated for longer time. I ever prefered not to install from our live-media for certain reasons. With no CDRom/DVD available and after encouragement by my fellows i took a F11 live-usb provided by Sandro from the last Redhat Summit with the promise it is updated and bug free for the installation.
A scary moment later we had a broken system - then i tried xfce-live-usb, the original desktop-live-usb, partitioning and formating manually ... and always errors around a common F11 bug, i never faced this problems by using install media.

After the visitor stated "this is not a problem i will find a fix at the neighbor booth" - i decided to take a F10 live-usb which installed problemfree within 10 minutes - with all HW working. Lesson learned!

Brazil Samba Girls danced through the exhibition hall in the evening and i decided to leave before they could pick me up for a dance. I think the money for the Samba Girls could be better invested elsewhere - but this is maybe my german mind ;)

Let's see how it is going tomorrow ;)