Weekly tweet digest for 2010-10-31

  • New orgs! Check out the mentor manual: http://www.booki.cc/gsoc-mentoring/ #gsoc #
  • And the new Student manual is here: http://www.booki.cc/gsocstudentguide/ #gsoc #
  • Should #gsoc ship out mentor guides? Welcome package for mentors? #pleasevote #
  • btw, #gsoc will sponsor students to attend a conference if the mentoring organization would like them to attend one #themoreyouknow #
  • Wow. Firesheep may single-handedly force the SSL issue. Seeing tons of advisories advocating SSL use, full-stop. #
  • Omw to @ignitegov rehersal! #
  • Finished slides for "what is @ignitegov". Slightly nervous. #goscon #
  • Fighting urge to troll fellow @mysqlconf committee members about transactional DDL in postgres. #
  • Distributed OSFY and FSFY @stickurs last night. Hopefully they will find homes among #goscon attendees. Find an OSUOSL staffer to get one! #
  • Crap. drop.io acquired. #

Weekly tweet digest for 2010-10-24

  • Looking forward to dinner with @mildwail after a long day of auditing init scripts on two different platforms for 4 versions of postgres. ๐Ÿ™ #
  • Jimmy McMillan is my hero. #
  • "a tremendous lack of clarity surrounding whatโ€™s actually involved in submitting a talk to a conference." http://post.ly/15dqw -@rmurphey #
  • #jqcon post from @rmurphey reminds me of this: http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/hist_texts/structurelessness.html #
  • I laugh every time @mildwail greets me with "double rainbow, omg". #
  • Making way to sunnyvale from sfo… #
  • Lame. 45 min wait for caltrain. Ads urging me to txt FAST not helping. #
  • Experiencing http://booki.cc for the first time with Adam Hyde and book sprinters #gsoc #
  • OMG. DOUBLE HYPHENS /cc @po8 @jenred @jenred #
  • The road to the tshirt http://www.flickr.com/photos/selenamarie/5102973079/ #
  • Book headed to the printer today. We'll bind copies ourselves at the party! http://www.booki.cc/gsocstudentguide/_v/1.0/_full/ #
  • Reading this database management book feels like a good trip to church. Finding myself saying "AMEN, BROTHER!" after a drive cache sermon. #
  • OH: is haskell a good teaching lang? All I know is, the haskell guy isn't the guy you want to be stuck with at the party. #
  • Think about where your *users* are and that's where your project should become a non-profit, not necessarily your devs. #gsoc -@bkuhn #
  • The IRS is making it harder for software development collectives to become 501(c)3. Contact SFLC if you're being questioned. #gsoc #
  • Elevator pitch: 501(c)(3) central purpose is to educate the public, and producing free software educates the next generation #gsoc #
  • in the git migration talk, taking notes: https://gsoc-wiki.osuosl.org/index.php/GitMigration #gsoc #
  • Flip bits not burgers http://flic.kr/p/8MuiwE #
  • Lovely evening at #gsoc talking free software, chocolate, foss in africa and trolling. #

twittering on 2010-10-24

  • Think about where your *users* are and that's where your project should become a non-profit, not necessarily your devs. #gsoc -@bkuhn #
  • The IRS is making it harder for software development collectives to become 501(c)3. Contact SFLC if you're being questioned. #gsoc #
  • Elevator pitch: 501(c)(3) central purpose is to educate the public, and producing free software educates the next generation #gsoc #
  • in the git migration talk, taking notes: https://gsoc-wiki.osuosl.org/index.php/GitMigration #gsoc #
  • Flip bits not burgers http://flic.kr/p/8MuiwE #
  • Lovely evening at #gsoc talking free software, chocolate, foss in africa and trolling. #

GSoC Mentor Summit: Day 1

Today was the first day of the GSoC Mentor summit. I attended a few sessions and had several interesting hallway conversations with developers and leaders of projects from all over the world.

First, I attended a discussion about book sprinting, and did a recap of how our latest book sprint went (blog post to come!). We discussed the advantages of having the same group of people to two book sprints as a group, and how things seemed so much easier the second time around. We also had copies of the book that we’d hand-bound there to share. Lunch was spent chatting with Noirin and others about food, culture, travelling lots, and the hilariousness of having “Sotomayor” as a surname in Washington DC these days. Happy to have met a couple more Apache Foundation folks, and lovely to talk about names with an OpenNebula contributor. I also spent some time chatting with Greg Stark about the session on retaining students, and go over a few bits of inspiration he had for encouraging students to work on the more mundane aspects of PostgreSQL development.

Next I stopped upstairs to have a chat with Asheesh Laroia about new things he’s been up to around promoting free and open source community. He’d run a class recently to introduce new students to open source (at Penn State), and had some thoughts on what we should do next to make open source communities more welcoming. He also talked to me about Fedora Design Bounty, and how that model might be applied to other projects. Genius idea, and after reflecting on the idea a bit, maybe we could try it in pgsql-advocacy. Maybe. ๐Ÿ™‚

I then breezed through the Chocolate session. Yum!

And went off to see about Bradley Kuhn‘s session on options for joining or starting non-profits around free software. He’s now executive director of the Software Freedom Conservancy, and was giving out great advice around picking an umbrella organization, making the right choices early about where to put money (don’t use your personal paypal account!), and notes on where to go for help if you’ve got questions about what to do next. Not sure where the notes are for that session, but I’m sure contacting him for more information about Software Freedom Conservancy if you’re interested is an option.

Then we had the great Git Migration discussion. The notes were wonderful, and it seems like many people were either considering or were in the middle of a git conversion process. Two PostgreSQL developers were there, including Magnus Hagander, whose voice wasn’t working so well. I helped out a bit by giving a rough overview of how our process had worked, and pointing people at the many resources and tools Magnus and others who worked on the conversion made available.

Afterward, I sat down for a bit with Zooko to talk about Tahoe-LAFS, which appears to be an encrypted, distributed document store database with a http interface. Sounds really cool, and I’m interested in trying it out.

Now, I’m getting ready to head off to the party for the evening. Great day!