lundi 3 juillet 2006

Recap of Oxford Open Source conference In April, Kit Blake from Infrae and I each gave a talk at a symposium at Oxford Business School. (Sidenote: Kit's talk was excellent and deserved more time. If you want a good speaker on open source, invite Kit.) Randy Metcalfe, one of the conference organizers, emailed a link to an account of the proceedings by Paul Anderson of IntelligentContext. As Randy summarizes: Is open source software ready to cross the chasm from early adopters to mainstream use in UK colleges and universities? In "Crossing the Chasm: open source comes of age", Paul Anderson of IntelligentContent explores the themes that came out of OSS Watch's "Open Source and Sustainability" conference held in Oxford, 10-12 April 2006. As Paul notes, "The fact that [this conference] was even taking place shows that OSS is growing up; trying to find its way across the innovation chasm into the mainstream, and to seek some models of permanency." 10:00:30 AM   comment []

EuroPython starts and I'm awash in boxes According to my calendar and clock, EuroPython 2006 just started.  Kevin Dangoor is probably wrapping up his jokes and ad-libs and getting started with his keynote on Working Together on the Web about Python's web frameworks landscape and what we can learn from each other.  Godefroid and I worked pretty hard on the track planning this year.  I hope people enjoy the change, especially the web frameworks shootout session. It feels weird not to be at EuroPython.  I've been to all four of the previous conferences and chaired (or co-chaired with Heimo) the Zope track at each. Last year I did the CMS sprint, the pre-conference BBQ, the Zope track, and the lightning talks.  But this year, I'm only co-chair and I'm not even showing up.  Whattup widdat? The answer is pretty simple.  The moving company arrives next Monday to pack up all our stuff for the move to the US.  Getting 4 years of a family life into boxes takes a bit of work.  Push came to shove on the schedule and EuroPython got dropped, albeit with nostalgic sadness. We closed the transaction for our house on Friday.  We're now homeowners in Fredericksburg, meaning, we're in massive debt for the next twelve decades.  We booked our tickets yesterday, to arrive in town the first week of August. Now the nice part.  From July 11 throught the rest of the month, I won't be doing squat.  We're spending the time in between at my mother-in-law's house on the beaches of the northern French coast.  It's a sublime, peaceful, fabulous existence there.  Moreover, I won't have much net access (Internet cafe) and I won't have much work scheduled.  Ahh, the life. 9:55:43 AM   comment []

Quick recap of OSBC London Last week I was in London for 3 things: a talk at OSBC London, a meeting between some of the Zea Partner companies and a (ahem) large outfit, and a working session with Doug Winter and Duncan Booth to discuss client-side forms. On the former, here's a quick recap.  First, I knew going in that I wasn't at all in the target audience, which was very much an expensive, high-class affair for business decision-makers.  Still, I greatly enjoyed a number of the talks.  In particular, though I have seen Simon Phipps speak a number of times, I still enjoyed and admired some of the points he was making. I had a chance to chat again with Yoko Sueoka, a Japanese industry journalist living in France.  (Here is her writeup, in Japanese.)  She suggested that Plone host an event in Yokohama.  I will contact some Plone friends in Japan about it.  (Takeshi previously submitted a proposal to host the Plone Conference 2005.) I spoke a bit with Eben Moglen about, of all things, French politics and the younger generation. Of all the thousands of things he is better than me at, he's also better than me about France.  Oh, the inadequacy of it all. Microsoft was a platinum sponsor which provided them with a platform to get their point across.  I was initially impressed, though, at how earnestly they were making the effort to listen, in the face of hostility.  Later, another delegate explained to me the tactic, which I won't go into here.  Later, though, I was recharging my laptop next to the Microsoft delegation when a manager came over saying "let's skip the dinner, I'm sick of this" and "these people are completely irrational".  I think, perhaps, someone on the open source or free software side might have pushed a bit aggressively. [wink] During the dinner that night I sat with Brian Fitzgerald and Pär Ågerfalk from CALIBRE, Larry Rosen from OSI, Rishab Ghosh from Merit, and Maria Carlile from CollabNet.  We had a wonderful, wonderful discussion about all kinds of topics.  Very good company. The next day I was on two panels in Rishab's track.  One panel was led by Brian Behlendorf, who I only had a brief moment to catch up with on old times at lunch the previous day.  According to his conference bio, Brian spoke at Davos this year.  Yet he seems just as down-to-earth, geniune, and earnest as years past.  He told the story about how the ASF came into existance and how it works.  He was also involved with the Mozilla Foundation/Corporation launch and gave some explanation of that. I gave a 7 min discussion about how the Plone Foundation came into being and its status.  I also gave some remarks about how the Mozilla Foundation/Corporation might be, to use an expression from the Microsoft keynoter earlier that day, "a new kind of lizard."  Meaning, a new kind of thing commonly labeled as a business model.  After that, I was on a panel about business models, explaining Zea Partners and the idea of a partner network to achieve mass without losing what's good about open source. 9:38:38 AM   comment []

World Cup celebration in Rennes Last Friday I returned from 2 weeks on the road (a week with Enfold in New York, then a week in London).  On Saturday night, France played Brazil in a quarterfinal match.  We went over to the house of another American/French couple for a BBQ and to watch the match. Being a warm July evening, we had the doors to the house open, like everyone else.  Also, less than a kilometer from our friends' house, the city we live in (outside Rennes) had a previously-schedule summer festival which was turned into an outdoor football watching spectacle. When the match ended with a French victory, the entire city went nuts.  It just exploded.  People yelling out their doors, cars honking, a huge roar from the crowd at the festival.  We then were treated to a 15 minute, very expensive, fireworks show.  It was a real thrill to see.  (And a heck of a match to watch.) 9:17:29 AM   comment []