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View Full Version : Ubocon Morning After!....will someone who went please fill us in?



RAV TUX
February 18th, 2007, 05:33 AM
so how did it go?....what happened?...what transpired?....did Google treat you well?

GameManK
February 18th, 2007, 09:36 AM
So after the easiest 7:30 in the morning wake-up ever (I was on a 15th story with big window with open shades) and much less adventures on the subway than the night before, I got to Google offices before 9am, though after the scheduled 8:30. There were about 40 people there, all awaiting food. Turned out breakfast was late because the truck broke down.

I sat down, opened up my laptop and hopped on google's wireless. They have 4 guest ssid's! I saw an awful lot of macs around (> 0) so I mentioned it on IRC. Riddell said they were all weak minded :D. John Mark Walker (the orgranizer) started talking while we were waiting for food. Somewhat disorganized intro, but all turned out well.

Food got there. For some reason I always thought continental breakfast meant a continental amount of food. Now I know it means little pastries, but they were good! And good tea.

During and after the intro, some people introduced themselves, including our LoCo team members. At some point later one of the speakers poked fun of the large region we had made a LoCo team for, and there better be a NY team after the conference! I guess it's time to chapterify.

mako (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BenjaminMakoHill) did a presentation on contributing to ubuntu. He basically went over what's on the wiki page (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ContributeToUbuntu), but it was interesting talk nonetheless. He explained that coding is the last thing on the page because they really need more help with all the non-coding stuff. In other words (well, in his words too) LoCo teams can do a lot!
He also talked about some great thing about ubuntu, like the philosphy. He talked about how he posted a bug on mozilla and was pretty much shut down by people looking at the bug, told to RTFM, etc, even though it was a "good bug." In contrast, he's seen bugs on Launchpad that say something like "My video card is broken" and have a core dev responding "What video card do you have?" (While that's awesome, it would be great to have more people triaging so the devs can spend their time developing!)

Then I went over to the install fest and met macogw and some other people. Somebody fixed my beryl :). I gave out Jenda's powered by Ubuntu stickers (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=344600). People sure like stickers! There were ubuntu CD's abound, but for some reason all the kubuntu cd's were dapper 64-bit.
Somebody had the OLPC XO. That was really cool. Of course designed for tiny hands though. We were a bit confused how to use it. I know it's designed for kids who haven't been tarnished by any other computing environment, but I question the intuitiveness of it. We'll see.

Lunch! mini sandwiches. Then an abundance of cookies.

<somebody please tell me his name!> did a presentation on graphics with free software. He talked about Inkscape, the GIMP, and Blender. This talk was particularly interesting to me because I've been wanting to give one of these to the Digital Artists club at my school. Unfortunatelyl, we don't have enough members to be giving a talk to anybody. The talk leaned toward how to convert people to using these programs instead of proprietary alternatives. "Your friend asks you to help upgrade his computer. 'Why?' 'For photoshop.' 'But it was working fine before?' 'There's a new version and I need to upgrade' 'Why?' 'Cuz I gotta!' Give him the GIMP"
He didn't mention krita and karbon, and I've been wanting to know how those really compare to the more well known and widely used GIMP and Inkscape. I brought up krita and he didn't know what it was, someone said "The KOffice thing?" The response was basically "It might be good, but it crashes when I try." So I hope the KDE devs really improve stability as well as features so that the KDE applications are solid alternatives.
I talked to him about some issues I was having with Blender. I guess I need to recompile ffmpeg :(

Next mako did a tutorial on .deb packaging. I attended a ubuntu classroom tutorial on irc this summer but for some reason didn't get much out of it. mako's tutorial seemed more straightforward, though learning something a second time helps. mako: "I better see packages from all of you next week!"

Fabian Rodriguez (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FabiánRodríguez), an employee of Canonical, did an informative presentation on Canonical support. Jay Sulzberger did an anectotal talk on Free Software history.

I met LH, the coordinator of Summer of Code. I hope all of Google is as excited about SoC as she is! Summer of Code is on for 2007 (http://google-code-updates.blogspot.com/2007/02/speaking-of-summer.html) so it's time to think of ideas.

A funny moment near the beginning was when we were asking a Google intern questions. Apparently only the engineers all get Ubuntu on their machines, and other staff have windows because it's "easier." Somebody asked how they deal with interoperability between OO.o and MS Office, and he said "Well, you know we have this product called Google Docs..."

A few closing remarks, and back down into the caverns err i mean streets of NYC.
Overall, I really enjoyed the conference and would certainly go to another one.

sal
February 18th, 2007, 10:51 AM
yes , the ubucon rocked. although i had to leave early, i had a grate time. the OLPC demo has grate. the whole event was good. I had a grate time helping people at the installfest.

RAV TUX
February 18th, 2007, 02:45 PM
During and after the intro, some people introduced themselves, including our LoCo team members. At some point later one of the speakers poked fun of the large region we had made a LoCo team for, and there better be a NY team after the conference! I guess it's time to chapterify.



Thanks for sharing overall...I really hope that you reminded everyone that the primary purpose of The NU Ubuntu Team, (Northeastern US Ubuntu LoCo Team) is to help start LoCo state and City teams within our region and that eventually when we have well developed Teams within our region on the state, city and even in NYC case, perhaps Boroughs....that the NU Ubuntu Team will serve a greater purpose for LoCo teams within our region to coordinate and facilatate LoCo team cooperation....so that within our region we have a much more effective network of LoCo teams working together in our region....I hope that the NU Ubuntu Team becomes a working model for all LoCo team that can benefit from a regional directive....

Again thanks overall for your detailed input, it really captured for me the feeling and vibe of your experience,....I wish I didn't have to work and could have attended....

One very important question was Jono there? the LoCo Team leader this would have been a great time for him to network and help farm LoCo teams within our region...

I sent him a Memo on the IRC but have yet to hear from him...

I trust that in the US our regional team will prove to be very helpful to Ubuntu and would hope that he contacts us soon...

I also look forward to reading about our Admins experience that attended...I spoke with Mackenzie briefly on Jabber lastnight and she tells me she was mostly involved with the install fest...Mackenzie please tell us more...(you always have the greatest stories)

RAV TUX
February 18th, 2007, 02:52 PM
btw there are more post on Ubocon at the NU Ubuntu Team forum here:
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=350590

macogw
February 18th, 2007, 08:16 PM
The OLPC laptop froze as soon as I touched it. That wasn't cool. The little orange open source phone was neat though! But will Verizon accept it? duhduhdunnnnnn

And we never got to do our Edubuntu thing, but we did get Sal's computer to run as a "dumb terminal" ^_^

And the bruschietta sandwiches were yummy...I now have a new excuse to buy more fresh mozzerella ^_^

I don't have fun stories, except the discovery that 915resolution on Feisty >>>> Edgy/Dapper. It just works. It goes, you restart, it's all good. Did 800x600 ever actually start working on that guy's lappy?

oh, rav, i got you a sticker

RAV TUX
February 18th, 2007, 11:45 PM
oh, rav, i got you a sticker

Wow!...Awesome I Love stickers!!!!

WinterWeaver
February 18th, 2007, 11:57 PM
I want a sticker :(

GameManK
February 19th, 2007, 07:26 AM
Saw this on planet ubuntu:
http://joey.ubuntu-rocks.org/blog/2007/02/18/ubucon-nyc-very-short-write-up/

RAV TUX
February 19th, 2007, 07:59 AM
Saw this on planet ubuntu:
http://joey.ubuntu-rocks.org/blog/2007/02/18/ubucon-nyc-very-short-write-up/

cool but for Google being as big as they are, I would have expected more then a High School Gym look with those cheap signs...I guess most of their fortune is on paper.


for those who don't like clicking out to other sites here is a nice RAV TUX copy and paste post:



{ 2007 02 18 }
Ubucon NYC - very short write-up

I was fortunate enought to attend Ubucon (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TheUbucon) in NYC. Google was great, as always. The food was fantastic, the people nice and polite. We had a one main speaking area, a smaller room for more specialized topics, and then a full conference room dedicated to the installfest. I met a lot of great folks there. Unfortunately, I forgot that you couldn’t take pictures except in the foyer. So, I got two shots off with my big camera before I was duly chastized.
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/188/394260056_336310c77e.jpg?v=0
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/70/394260152_5ef9b158e1.jpg?v=0
You can see this a bit better on my flickr page (http://www.flickr.com/photos/josxko/). Like me, MagicFab also missed the “no camera” rule anouncement and it turns out he was able to get some great shots. I hope he posts them to his flickr page (http://www.flickr.com/photos/magicfab/).
Mako (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BenjaminMakoHill) called Sean Moss-Pultz (http://www.moss-pultz.com/threads/) from OpenMoko (http://openmoko.org/) project and Sean was able to stop by and show us the new OpenMoko phone. It’s big in size but amazingly light weight. Watching the init process scroll on the screen just gives me goose-bumps. http://joey.ubuntu-rocks.org/blog/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif Mako also brought in the latest hardware revision of the OLTP (http://laptop.org/). This latest revision sure did fix a few things from the last release. The laptop opening mechanism is not what I would call intuitive. It was with great amusement that we watched folks struggle to get it open. Once you figure it out it’s super easy to effect.
Jay Sulzberger (http://www.mccullagh.org/image/d30-23/commerce-drm-roundtable-1.html) was on hand to give a vivacious talk. Unfortunately he was late in the afternoon and didn’t have a full house. Nevertheless, it was good.

Hey wait is that Mackenzie in the baby blue shirt in the back of the room?

GameManK
February 19th, 2007, 09:06 PM
cool but for Google being as big as they are, I would have expected more then a High School Gym look with those cheap signs...I guess most of their fortune is on paper.

I'm not sure what signs you are talking about, but you might mean the 4 projector screens in the conference room.

macogw
February 19th, 2007, 09:52 PM
cool but for Google being as big as they are, I would have expected more then a High School Gym look with those cheap signs...I guess most of their fortune is on paper.


for those who don't like clicking out to other sites here is a nice RAV TUX copy and paste post:

Hey wait is that Mackenzie in the baby blue shirt in the back of the room?
Yes, that's me in the blue shirt in the back. On my left is Sal. To his left is a guy using Windows that we met in Starbucks. The guy in red at the 16 (at the bottom) is Spec (Nick). He drove me up.

Those are projector screens. When Inkscape and GIMP and everything tutorials were going on, they were projected on the big screens up there.

RAV TUX
February 20th, 2007, 01:15 AM
I'm not sure what signs you are talking about, but you might mean the 4 projector screens in the conference room.

No, I meant the ones attached to the tables.


Yes, that's me in the blue shirt in the back. On my left is Sal. To his left is a guy using Windows that we met in Starbucks. The guy in red at the 16 (at the bottom) is Spec (Nick). He drove me up.

Those are projector screens. When Inkscape and GIMP and everything tutorials were going on, they were projected on the big screens up there.

Did the Starbucks-Windows-user guy end up installing Ubuntu?
(funny most Starbucks people I see use a Mac)

sal
February 20th, 2007, 01:41 AM
No, I meant the ones attached to the tables.



Did the Starbucks-Windows-user guy end up installing Ubuntu?
(funny most Starbucks people I see use a Mac)

he installed kubuntu into a virtual machine. :)

RAV TUX
February 20th, 2007, 01:47 AM
he installed kubuntu into a virtual machine. :)
awesome.

macogw
February 20th, 2007, 04:05 AM
No, I meant the ones attached to the tables.



Did the Starbucks-Windows-user guy end up installing Ubuntu?
(funny most Starbucks people I see use a Mac)

Those were the table cloths.

RAV TUX
February 20th, 2007, 04:09 AM
Those were the table cloths.ahh so I see....but ugly table cloths

cowlip
February 20th, 2007, 06:13 AM
snipped...

Thanks for posting this, very interesting read!