LinuxTag/FUDCon Berlin 2009 – Saturday

Saturday started with a delicious german breakfast with ChristophWickert, SebastianDziallas and a LXDE developer. LXDE was on the table. I was trying to reboot my brain while my body was seeking for a bed. At about 09h15, I followed the Fedora wave to the Berlin Messe.

There everyone was showing me the FEL Flyers , while Mo put a Fedora tattoo on her cheek. I went straight to a neighbouring booth about FPGA, to learn more about the EDA tools they use. To my astonishment, they haven’t heard of FEL. So I gave them a basic introduction of our objectives behind FEL, from my point of view, they were not very enthusiast with it. It was the same feeling when you are asking an Altera fanboy to use Xilinx ISE to timing analysis.

I went to the KDE booth to tell them that FEL is KDE-based and that I want to learn more future power optimizations and boot time optimizations for the upcoming releases. However, I got the confirmation about a theory on KDE developers, “You will never have productive discussion with KDE developers, if you said there is something wrong about KDE.” I have this theory since I was a KDE booth member at CeBit 2007 in Hannover. I was firm on the fact that I was not only a user, but a KDE distributor as well. But the only respond I got was to ask my users to upgrade their hardware. Well, if KDE is juicing to much about Fedora (gnome) desktop, then there is a problem with KDE. I pointed the fact that RexDieter and FedoraKDE had worked a lot to improve KDE’s boot time. The discussion was not going anywhere, so I ended it and head to the Fedora booth. I was a booth staff from 12:00 to 14:00 as per ThomasWoerner’s sheet. There, I showed Mo how I used their early work on Fedora Community website for Fedora Electronic Lab’s website. She instantly pointed out some improvements and suggested a sublogo for FEL.

Then I want to fetch my FUDCon M-size t-shirt from MaxSpevack. Someone stole my M-size t-shirt and finally got a XL I caught JoergSimon and we went to have lunch with AndreasRau. It is always a pleasure to sit down with Joerg and chat with him. While we were heading to Mo’s “Fedora Community” presentation, GregDeKoniegsberg caught us on the hallway asking assistance with the beamer for his presentation. Ultimately, I gave Greg’s my laptop for his presentation and I stayed with him, while Joerg went to Mo’s presentation.

During the last 2 hours of Linuxtag, I went every electronic hardware related booth to learn more about their projects and the set of EDA tools they use. Among those were, Beagleboard of TexasInstrument, OpenEmbedded and a robotics booth. I am amazed that none knew of FEL’s existence. It is a real issue that openhardware community are unaware of the opensource solutions Fedora Electronic Lab provides. Another item on the my todo list.

I went to one of the last sessions (2nd day FUDCon) about the spins with JeroenVanMeeuven. You can read the meeting minutes here. I shared my intention of a possible migration of FEL Livedvd from KDE-based to Gnome based. After that, we headed to the hotel and then with the germans we went to eat real meat. After dinner, some of us went to the Ubuntu BBQ for which we received an invitation at the booth. There, it was very silent. I spent some quality time with Lennart, who introduced himself as the one who breaks my pulseaudio.

Filed under: fedora, FUDCon, linuxtag

LinuxTag/FUDCon Berlin 2009 – Friday evening

I was not supposed to visit LinuxTag this year and but finally I managed to come on Friday evening, 27 June 2009 (special thanks to those who encouraged me). It was also the first day for Fedora’s FUDCon Berlin 2009 session (the most exciting part of LinuxTag09).

I was supposed to give a presentation (about Fedora Electronic Lab) Friday morning, however due to some personal reasons, I could only manage to come on Saturday. My apologies to those who came to my presentation on Friday. However during the week, MaxSpevack and I exchanged some phone calls so that he could takeover my presentation and show how Fedora is the ideal platform to excel in promoting innovative ideas (FEL, in this case) based on free and opensource software. Special thanks to MaxSpevack.

On the way to check-in at the hotel, I met YaakovNemoy, BertDesmet and a few other Fedora contributors. To my surprise, I got the chance to meet JohnMcDonough and his son, JP. Thanks, to JohnMcDonough who reminded me before the freeze of F-11 release notes to write the release notes for FEL. After check-in, I went straight to my room and met my room mate. I was only able to manage a 2 minutes of chit-chat with him when GeroldKassube knocked at the door to fetch me for the Fedora’s social event, FUDPub.

We arrived around 19h30 at the FUDPub. I was shocked by the number of new faces I could not recognized (149 Fedorans subscribed). I barely shared a hug with Max. Most of the usual Fedora EMEA(aside the French) were having chit-chats with their beers. The germans as usual started pointing to me that I was missing something, beer . Out of the blue pizza came to the table, so I took a piece and talked with Kanarip, JP, JohnMcDonough and a few others I didn’t even knew their names. I made a small trip to all the tables saying “hi” to everyone I knew. The waiter came with a vegetarian pizza and no-one was eager to eat it. So I took the pizza to MairinDuffy, knowing the fact that Ray and she have a blog about vegetarian food. Hence I managed to talk to her and JesseKeating for a few seconds, when Kanarip and I engaged into a deep conversation (specially about FEL’s Statistics) and lost completely track of what others were doing. At about 01h00, everyone was gone except the Fedora Italians and AlasdairKergon. In accordance to AndreasThienemann, they went to better places.

Filed under: fedora, FUDCon, linuxtag

LinuxTag2008 report and Fedora EMEA

Well, it’s already being a week since I’ve returned from Berlin and yet didn’t get time to write my Linuxtag2008 report. I guess I’m the last one

Left Brussels, Belgium at 23:41 on 30/04 and travelled 9 hours by train to reach Berlin,Germany, I was glad and overjoyed to meet the Blue Men Group. It was also the first time I was about to meet our new Fedora Leader Paul W. Frields.

I’ve finally met ThibaultNorth, who summarized the big picture that I’ve missed with respect to the Fedora Electronic Lab during the first 3 days. We had exchanged several phone calls to prepare his speech and I’m admired his commitment. A real Swiss.

ThibaultNorth accomplished another of my dreams of Fedora Electronic Lab:
Introduce an OpenSource Electronic Simulation to the General Public.

Since the very first day Fedora Electronic Lab was approved as a Feature by FESCo, I exchanged a few emails with StuartBrorson, sharing my thoughts to provide an infrastructure which can provide a means to “market” open source electronic tools. This infrastructure consisted of using the well established Fedora Ambassadors facility to talk about Electronic tools during various events, something that many upstream can’t organize.

This year, the year

• Fedora EMEA was officially (after 2 years of hard work and collaboration) registered as a non-profit association.
• Fedora 9 Sulphur was released
• More universities are adopting FEL applications.
• YOU magazine’s January issue bundles Fedora Electronic Lab Live CD.
• Fedora community has strengthen and excelling in all areas,

GeroldKassube and JörgSimon (our Super EMEA Ambassadors) organized and reserved a slot for a FEL Demo Presentation during the LinuxTag2008.

I’m very happy that ThibaultNorth stepped in and did a demo of FEL applications and introduced the Fedora Electronic Lab. The presentation can be found here.The team work between Fedora Ambassadors, Fedora Board and Fedora Packagers have made this possible. A big thank you. We are now reaching another FEL objective: Upstream’s work has been properly deployed and advertised by Fedora.

It is this type of team work that’s promoting various areas in the Fedora community. During this LinuxTag2008, it can be easily noticed that every Fedora contributor, present, wanted to push his particular field of contribution forward, but for that he needs the help of other Fedora contributor. Despite they are speaking a foreign language (English) to communicate, Fedora contributors were actually talking and discussing among themselves on how they could collaborate to do better. I was talking about FEL. Jeroen, Fedora Spins. Paul and Max, LiveUSBs. Glezos, translations. Jörg, OLPC……There is a great bond between Fedora EMEA contributors. This bond is not only about social interaction, but to bring Fedora to a higher level. E.g: I want a FEL LiveDVD spin and Jeroen wants to push the spins SIG.

We had a chance to talk to Shakthi Kannan from Qvantel. We explored some embedded tools that might be interesting for FEL.

FranscescoCrippa shared, he talked to 3 Texas Instruments guys who were eager to learn more about FEL on Thursday. ThibaultNorth and I headed straight to their booth. We discussed about some eventual inclusion of Texas Instruments electronic libraries into FEL, once the licensing issues are cleared. They were mainly interested in the Embedded side. Thomas.L described his beagleboard.org to us and how it’s easy to use OSS on it.

At the Fedora booth, booth members were helping new contributors subscribed to the Fedora Account System. We have a bunch of new contributors subscribed but without a mentoring program. Their names _for the moment_ have only increased the number of contributors on FAS. Paul W. Frields and I discussed some eventual possibilities to turn those numbers into real contributors. I had the chance to help a new FEL contributor Thomas.R subscribed to the FAS2. Believe me, the subcription process is now every easy.

I missed my Fedora EMEA bathrobe breakout during the Linuxtag2008 social event. So JörgSimon offered me my chance

One rare photo, I’m in.

At the end of the day, we all gathered to dine together. GeroldKassube noticed one particular _feature_ about ME: “I eat very slowly” After dinner, I was too exhausted to speak. I followed MaxSpevack,Jeroen and Stephen back to the Hotel at about 3hr in the morning.

Filed under: events, linuxtag

Linuxtag 2008: Fedora Electronic Lab

I’m proud to announce that today (yet again many thanks to Fedora Ambassadors ) 30 May 2008 at 10h00 to 11h00 (Berlin), one of our new Fedora Electronic Lab members ThibaultNorth (from Switzerland) will hold a presentation (english) at the Fedora FUDCon (Saal Europa 2 (OG))

He will introduce Fedora Electronic Lab and how interoperability is met with this electronic/microelectronic platform. Along with our FEL objectives at the Fedora project, he will show some demos as well.

I’m arriving at Berlin tomorrow to join the amazing Fedora LinuxTag crew

Filed under: Free Electronic Lab, linuxtag