By Rikki Kite
Welcome to the new Community Notebook column, Cache. Each month, I'll bring you a roundup of recent and upcoming events and other activities in our open source communities.
Ubuntu User provided live streaming from the Free State Social on April 29th. Held in Lawrence, Kansas, this first-time event offered a day of talks by social media experts, including Chris Brogan, Jeremiah Owyang, and Gowalla co-founder and CTO Scott Raymond [1].
While Ubuntu User was busily live streaming, Ubuntu users were busily downloading the latest Ubuntu release, 10.04 (a.k.a., Lucid Lynx). I had already downloaded the beta version, and I give it two thumbs up. Everyone knows what an active community Ubuntu has, but I'm not sure that everyone appreciates how accessible the kernel team is - I filed my first bug report with the beta release and heard back from members of the community and the kernel team soon after. (I'm happy to say my first bug was squashed right before the final release.)
Two of our authors, Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier and Marcel Gagné, were guests of honor at Penguicon 2010. I asked Marcel what he thought of this year's event and he said, "It was huge, actually. I think the first one had about 350 people. This one had about 1,300 people."
He added, "I had a superb time." Marcel says there's a huge overlap in people who are into science fiction and those who are into Linux and open source. "Penguicon really tapped into that," he says, adding, "It's kind of a strange affair. It's `Abandon all reality ye who enter here'."
In addition to participating in a panel on writing professionally for Linux and open source publications, Zonker and Marcel were in a "Linux distro cage match." Marcel says that no distro came out on top but that Linux Mint was probably the audience favorite.
If you have ideas for community topics you think I should cover, please send them to me at rkite@linuxpromagazine.com. Keep an eye on our linux-magazine.com site for more international community news and events, or follow us on Twitter (@linux_pro).
| Likeable Links |
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[1] See what you missed in the land of Oz. Check out the Free State Social video archives: http://www.linux-magazine.com/streaming
[2] The Prestige of Proprietary Software, by Bruce Byfield: http://www.linux-magazine.com/prestige [3] Project Cauă: Vertical Markets - Help needed, by Jon "maddog" Hall: http://www.linux-magazine.com/projectcauaverticalmarkets [4] Stay on top of upcoming events: http://www.linuxpromagazine.com/Resources/Event-Calendar |
| THE AUTHOR |
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Rikki Kite is Associate Publisher of Linux Pro Magazine, Linux Magazine, and Ubuntu User. When she's not representing the magazines at open source events, Rikki blogs about Women in Open Source at linuxpromagazine.com/roseblog. Email your community updates and announcements to her at: rkite@linuxpromagazine.com. |