March 6, 2008
gnome
2 Comments
The GNOME LinkedIn group has finally calmed down – over the last 2 days I have had 12 requests to join (just approved) to bring the total number of members to 277 members, just a week after announcing it! I expect to top out around 300 members next week.
And we’re an international bunch! A quick sample showed: 53 from the USA, 24 from the UK, 17 people from India, 13 from France, 13 from Spain, 10 from Italy, 9 from Brazil, 4 from Chile, 4 from China, but only 3 from Germany! And half the members come from outside those countries (for those whose countries aren’t mentioned, if you *really* want to know, say so in comments, I’ll tell you).
It would be interesting to cross reference this group of GNOME fans with others we have – the GNOME map, the Facebook group, and even GNOME Foundation members
Not to mention the SVN committers list…
February 28, 2008
General, gnome
No Comments
I’m always amazed at the network effect of free software communities – the LinkedIn GNOME group which I talked about 9 hours ago now has 107 members and growing as the time zones move westward. Update: A few hours later, roughly 12 hours after mentioning the group, we’re now at 143 members.
Colour me impressed!
February 28, 2008
gnome, guadec
No Comments
To the surprise of everyone involved in the GNOME project, GUADEC 2008 has been announced, and will be held in AnkaraIstanbul (just kidding).
OK – so this isn’t a surprise to anyone. GUADEC this year will be great, I’m sure, and we’ll all have our fill of Turkish Delight this summer. I for one am looking forward to it.
Some of the things I’m most looking forward to are the keynotes which I have been organising this year. For the moment, we have decided to limit the number of keynotes to 3 invitees – we will add one or two community keynotes, based on what happens in the project between now and the end of March, these will likely be papers submitted through the Call for Papers which will be “promoted” to keynotes by the program committee.
This years keynotes are a varied bunch, and I’m very happy with them.
Leisa Reichelt is a renowned user interface designer whose name is pronounced as “Lisa”, and who comes highly recommended. Some of her past presentations are available online, including this presentation which she gave at the IA Summit 2007, or this one from BarCamp London, or this one from te Future of Web Apps talking about “ambient intimacy, the idea that what we really get from social networks is the impression that we’re close to friends & family whenever we want to be, regardless of distance & time constraints.
Eric Sink is the author of a blog I’ve been reading for a long time – particularly for his articles on “business for geeks”, which talks about stuff as varied as accounting, marketing, sales, fixing prices, … It’s a lot like Joel Spolsky’s blog without the overwhelming sense of self-importance. He also happens to be a founder of AbiSource, the company which funded and wrote the initial versions of AbiWord, before going out of business. He’s going to give a presentation on the business of software, with particular emphasis on free software, and the challenges of finding a business model that will allow people to make money on free software.
Matt Webb, co-author of “Mind Hacks” and consultant in product design and R&D with Schultze & Webb has been described to me as “inspiring and devastatingly smart and just wonderful” – that’s a lot to live up to. He’s promised to speak on interaction design, the future of technology and software, and generally to be entertaining.
So here’s looking forward to seeing you all on the banks of the Bosphorus from the 7th to the 12th of July!
February 28, 2008
gnome, marketing
No Comments
A while back I created a GNOME group in LinkedIn (still one of the few social networking sites I find useful).
LinkedIn Groups let you see the profiles of other people in more detail, even if you don’t know them personally, because of the shared affiliation. For that reason, they are moderated, but I will be quick approving group requests.
Those who would like to join the group can join here.
February 26, 2008
freesoftware, gnome, maemo, marketing
No Comments
Last week I was in China for the first Linux Foundation/COPU China Developers Symposium. I met a bunch of people for the first time, including Jonathan Corbet, Matt Keenan and Andrew Morton from the kernel, Fred Muller, Ollo, Pokey, Anthony and all the others from the Beijing LUG (thanks for the welcome guys!), and Angela Brown from the Linux Foundation.
I also got a chance to catch up with some people I had met before including Jim Zemlin and Bill Weinberg, both of whom had very encouraging things to say about GNOME in mobile platforms. In fact, I will be organising a meeting of GNOME Mobile at the upcoming Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit in Austin, Texas in April.
After the conference, Angela organised a tourist trip for a gang of us to climb the Great Wall at Badaling and visit the Forbidden City and Tianemen Square on Thursday, which was great fun. Although after the field trip which we had with the BLUG gang after dinner on Wednesday evening I don’t think either myself or herself were in the greatest of form.
I gave a presentation entitled “2008, year of…” where I poked fun at the annual articles we get at the beginning of the year claiming that “this year will be the year of Linux on the desktop”, and yet…
Every year, we have seen significant gaps being filled – in the early ’90s, it was application gaps, like Evolution, Mozilla, OpenOffice, Eclipse. There was the advent of successful funding runs for free software-based companies like Ximian.
Then it was corporate support. RedHat, Sun and Novell threw their weigh behind free software and bet on GNOME. Ubuntu making a distribution designed and tailored for a mass market), and increasingly momentum from ISVs who now target the free software desktop. Most recently, IBM releasing a beautifully integrated Lotus Notes comes to mind, previous examples of major ISVs targeting Linux include VMWare and Adobe.
We have seen the importance of standards and data take center stage with the standardisation of ODF, and the move by a number of governments to insist that all public data be stored in open formats – resulting in the (flawed) standardisation process of OOXML being launched by Microsoft.
In addition, we have seen new paths to market open up for Linux based PCs – WalMart selling Everex PCs, OEMs finally offering Linux based desktops, and Dell, Lenovo, HP shipping laptops with a free software OS pre-installed.
We have also seen considerable momentum in GNOME-based UIs outside of desktop computing – hand-helds from Nokia, phones from OpenMoko, lab measurement devices from Vernier, set-top-box applications, and of course OLPC and the Eee PC.
And through it all, a healthy peppering of massive institutional deployments – Extremadura and Andalucia, the Korean government, the French gendarmerie, Sao Paolo’s telecentros project, PSA in France, and on and on.
And so, as I look back over the decade which saw Linux have its first Superbowl ad, I wonder at how far we’ve come, and I believe I can say without being ridiculous that the ’00s has in some sense been the decade of Linux on the desktop.
We have not yet made a breakthrough in market share, but we have momentum in every sector – the quality of our platform, the number of ISDs developing applications for GNOME, the number of organisations investing cold hard cash in using, developing and deploying our work, the size of our user-base. I am enormously hopeful that we will continue to make progress in the coming years.
February 4, 2008
freesoftware, gnome, guadec, marketing
No Comments
I can confirm two more keynotes for GUADEC! Yay!
Eric Sink is a co-founder of AbiSource, and author of an informative and influential blog. In particular, Eric has written some series’ of articles which might be considered essential reading for those interested in the business of software development: Marketing for Geeks and the Business of Software. Eric has eschewed the software megapoles of San Francisco and Boston to start his latest company SourceGear in Champaign, Illinois.
Leisa Reichelt is a User Experience Consultant, based in London UK, but recently of Sydney, Australia. Most of the work she does is in interactive media (web, iTV, mobile and the like) and she uses a mixture of User Research Techniques, Information Architecture, Interaction Design, and Usability skills mixed up with a background of Project Management, Producing, and Account Management to help define the requirements for a project, understand (and often define) the content and functionality involved, and design a structure (or architecture) and interface.
Leisa has been doing this kind of work for about ten years, under various guises, including project management, account management, web producing, information architecting, user experience designing, interaction designing, digital strategising and generally evangelising all the things she thinks are good about the internet and networked technology in general. She’s recently gone completely mad^Wfreelance.
These come after the confirmation of Matt Webb, co-author of Mind Hacks, as well as being a design consultant, who has already confirmed his attendance.
There is a fourth keynote which is currently very likely, but not yet confirmed, so I’ll keep mum on that person for the moment, except to say that of the 4, it’s the one I’m the most excited about.
July 12, 2007
freesoftware, gnome
2 Comments
If anyone wants to run a book on the FreeFA rematch, I figure that the odds on the various teams are (updated after news about Dodji):
- 2/1: Red team (from 6/4)
- 2/1: Black team (from 5/2)
- 4/1: Marine Blue team
- 5/1: White team
The Red team from last year ran the blue team very close, and should probably have won their semi-final – they’ve kept most of their players from last year, and should be a force to reckon with. Zaheer Merali, Glynn Foster and Dodji Seketeli in particular played their socks off, and they’ll be up for it again this year.
Update: Dodji went to get a visa for GUADEC, and was given an appointment at the embassy on the 5th of September – so he won’t be in GUADEC. This sucks in so many ways – and it’s incredibly frustrating to see bureaucracy keep one of our community away from the conference.
The Black team made the final last year, and have some good talent on there (footie mad Bastien Nocera, in spite of being a bad loser ;-), stands out, as does Daniel Glassey, a rock in defense).
The Blue team have lost a few players from last year, including their inspirational defender (no, not me) Alvaro Del Castillo. They still have the extraordinary Fernando San Martin Woerner in goal, and with the likes of Alberto Ruiz, Rodrigo Moya and Juanjo Sanchez Penas, they will play well. They may make the final, but don’t expect them to win this year.
And finally the white team – completely renovated from last year – will be the dark horse, but as the unknown quantity, must figure as the underdog.
So – who’ll put me down for a tenner on the Red team?
June 25, 2007
gnome, marketing
3 Comments
…Have a “Give a school a foot up” day on Software Freedom Day.
The idea: you go to your local university, and ask permission to have a stand during the day. You print out some posters, wear some team t-shirts, and go along with a few hundred LiveCDs.
During the day, you organise 2 hours of presentations in a lecture hall (one in the morning & one in the afternoon) where you just show off the software. Nothing whizz-bangy, just showing people that there’s an alternative to Windows (“Look! There is a clock & calendar at the top! And I can browse the web while writing a text document in two different fonts!”).
The hard part is getting back in touch with that Comp.Sci. professor that only gave you a C in AI 10 years ago. Go on, pick up the phone!
(post inspired by discussions with Fabrice Alphonso and Frank Alcantara, and the recent posts from BarCamp Chicago by Ken vanDine)
Update: In comments, Andy Price gave some priceless advice (sorry, I couldn’t resist): Computer clubs have access to university facilities,can typically rustle up volunteers and do pre-event advertising for an event, and are usually delighted to have someone do some of the organisation for them. Help out the young ‘uns – they’re the community’s bone marrow.
June 22, 2007
gnome
No Comments
For those who haven’t been paying attention, the GNOME Foundation is hiring. For the past few months (seems like years) we have been actively hunting for a director of business development – someone who will help us to open doors, do fundraising, and investigate partnerships that could generate revenues for the foundation.
It’s been a long road so far, and we’re still hunting. We don’t have the resources or the experience of the Mozilla Foundation (who are also hiring), and a big part of the job so far has been spreading the word and getting in contact with appropriate candidates for the role. As with any process, our requirements have varied over time.
One controversial element of the job is that since the Foundation is an American corporation, our director of bizdev should be able to work in the US. For posterity, here’s the current draft of the job description (which needs to be added to the foundation website somewhere, without doubt):
The GNOME Foundation is an organisation created to further the goal of the GNOME project: to create a computing platform for use by the general public that is completely free software.
In that role, we are looking for an individual to join us and define, implement and manage our business activities and partnerships, and fundraising activities, with the aim of generating revenue which will allow us to invest in the GNOME project and its needs. These business activities should remain consistent with the core principles of the GNOME community.
The ideal candidate will have experience with the IT industry in a business development role, will have experience defining their own agenda and working in a decentralised environment, and will understand the underlying principles and needs of a free software development community.
Interested candidates should send a résumé to board@gnome.org
If anyone reading this can think of a great candidate that we might be interested in, then I’d love to hear about it. drop us a line.
« Previous Entries Next Entries »
