OSCON report, part 1!

award, speaking No Comments

I’m completely overwhelmed by this week. OSCON was the usual good times – seeing good friends, hearing interesting talks, meeting new people and getting to experience a little of Portland. This year was particularly exciting for me, as I was given an O’Reilly Open Source Award and also asked to speak in the keynote track.

I still can’t believe that I won the award. There are a number of people who I have learned from and who do great work that I just want to give my award to! I’m incredibly honored and also astounded to be grouped in such amazing company. I remember sitting in the audience during the awards ceremony at my first couple of OSCONs and being so impressed with the recipients and wondering if I would ever make any significant contributions to free and open source software. And in many ways I feel like I am just getting started. After all, I’ve just begun as executive director of GNOME and really there is just so much to be done. I take the award as a vote for freedom. And I hope I can keep working towards that goal.

I was glad that the ceremony didn’t include acceptance speeches but I would be remiss if I didn’t at least thank Eben Moglen who recruited me into the free software world to begin with (and created the SFLC as an exceptional place to work), Bradley Kuhn who spent many hours bringing me up to speed, my other SFLC coworkers, not to mention my various clients over the years, who taught me so much. And my wonderful parents and husband who are always so supportive and understanding when I just want to send one more email or do a little more research before spending time with them.

I’ll write about my keynote talk in another post. There’s only so much gushing I can do at one time!!