August 2, 2011
speaking, stuffdone
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I had two sessions at OSCON. One was an introductory legal talk that I co-presented with Aaron Williamson (that we proposed back when I was working at SFLC), and the second was on the keynote track on Friday. For the keynote, I was given a lot of leeway in choosing my topic. I won the award for my legal work, especially for the work on medical devices, so I felt that there was an expectation that I talk about that topic. But I also wanted to talk about GNOME, since that’s where I’m now focusing my attention.
After much thought and agonizing, I realized that the point of my medical devices talk — that we depend on software and will only be safe over time if it’s free and open — in fact logically leads back to the desktop. As the software that we rely on becomes more widespread and more fully integrated in our lives, as *everyone* expects to be able to use their computers smoothly, easily and for *everything*, it’s essential that we choose free and open platforms. I think it fit nicely into a 15 minute talk to just introduce the concepts. Plus, it gave me the chance to tell everybody what it was like to become a cyborg!
O’Reilly has posted the video of the talk on YouTube. If you don’t like YouTube, we included the audio from the speech in the latest episode of Free as in Freedom, an oggcast/audcast/podcast I co-host with Bradley Kuhn. We also discussed the talk and OSCON generally.
I got great feedback on the keynote session. The medical devices issue is such an emotional one, and so basic that it allows everyone to understand the importance of free and open source software. I’m happy I was able to give a talk that motivates people towards freedom and shamelessly promotes GNOME 3. I’ve already been invited to give it at other conferences that aren’t about free and open source sofware! I’m going to work on a full length presentation that doesn’t spend as much time on my own experience with medical devices but explores the various ways in which we are coming to rely on ordinary and integrated software.
The conference organizers didn’t record the session with Aaron, but we did and we will make it available on a future ‘cast episode. It’s a laid back presentation of some basic legal concepts. We had a fun discussion, and though we didn’t get as far as we would have liked to into the material, the audience was very engaged and had a lot of questions. I’m always excited to have these kinds of basic conversations in public so that more people can benefit from them.
Work kept me from getting to all of the talks that I wanted to get to, but that’s always the issue with conferences.
At any rate I’m very much looking forward to the Desktop Summit next week! I leave for Berlin the day after tomorrow…
July 31, 2011
award, speaking
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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!!
July 25, 2011
speaking
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I’m so excited that OSCON has asked me to keynote next week. My talk will be entitled Freedom: From My Heart to the Desktop. This is my sneaky way to talk about *both* medical devices and GNOME!
If you’re involved in GNOME (or just love it) and planning to be in Portland for OSCON, come and say hi! I guess I’d better go work on those slides…
July 24, 2011
stuffdone
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So we’re just over 3 weeks into my full time stint at GNOME. I feel a little bad about the fact that it’s taken me so long to get a blog going, but it took some time to settle on a name and make a hackergotchi that looked at least ok! (I won’t list these as accomplishments…)
I think for the next couple of weeks I may just post a few things now and again as I remember them so you can get an idea of what I’m working on as I get oriented. I’m still very new, and even though I’ve been involved with GNOME as a lawyer for a couple of years, I’m really still learning about the Foundation, the community and the software (though I should note that I have been a user and fan for over five years).
So, in no particular order, a few of the things I’ve done:
* I set up quite a lot of calls with people in the GNOME community – some contributors and some advisory board member representatives. There will be many more of these to come I think. (I hope! So far it’s very helpful to hear from people what they’re thinking about GNOME)
* I contacted someone using the GNOME name in a domain name and reminded them of our trademark guidelines. After some initial fuss, they agreed to transfer the domain name. I’ve got a few more of these to do. They take some research to be confident that you’ve got your facts right before writing. And hopefully these people will channel those efforts to contributing to GNOME.
* I got the foundation unsuspended in the state of California (this is where being a lawyer helps!) Due to I think a very old situation of missed filings, this needed to be corrected. Thanks to James Vasile and Marc Miller at SFLC and Rosanna Yuen at GNOME
* I read up on git. Yes, I’ve been an svn user primarily in the past, so it was time. That and I need to update GNOME’s website.
* I did some prep work for the panel I’m moderating at the Desktop Summit on Copyright Assignment, a very hot topic these days.
* I talked to Marina about the great work she and Stormy and a lot of others have done with the GNOME Women’s Outreach Program. I was totally inspired by the program and its success so far. We talked about what we can do at the Desktop Summit, and we contacted Claudia, Lydia and Celeste at KDE, about setting up a joint Women’s Networking BoF. I’m really looking forward to it.
* Attended my first board meeting and my first advisory board meeting (the advisory board meeting was on my first day). I also got to my new role just in time to welcome the new board to *their* new positions. The old board deserves a lot of thanks for their hard work, and I hope to learn from both the outgoing and incoming board members.
* I set up some interviews and other speaking engagements. I’ll post about those here as they happen! for now you can read the interview I did with Joe ‘Zonker’ Brockmeier.
I’ve of course been up to more than that in these three and a half weeks — these are just a few of the things that come to mind. Now that I’ve got a space to talk about them, I’ll try to write about things more as they happen.
July 22, 2011
Uncategorized
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Here’s my obligatory first blog post! I’ll be customizing this a bit but I’m excited to have a place where I can talk about the work I’m doing for the GNOME Foundation!
More to come soon…