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10 Years of The Apache Software Foundation

This year at both ApacheCons we are celebrating the 10th anniversary of the incorporation of the ASF.  In Amsterdam we had cake and singing, and a panel of "Apache Pioneers" talking about how the ASF was formed.

This panel was great fun, and we'll be doing an even better version of it in Oakland.  Nice to stop and take a minute to reflect on how serendipitous the whole thing was.

By the way, both of the above pictures were taken last week in Amsterdam by my good friend Noel Bergman.

Just now I'm in London, doing some errands before I head up to Oxford for the first BarCampApache that isn't tied to an ApacheCon.  If you're in Oxford this weekend, hope to see you there.

Friends on the Road

This post is about how comforting it is to have friends along with you on the road.  This is a picture I snapped last Sunday of my friends Jason and Chava playing at Café de Beligique.  Jason and I figured out that we've known each other 2/3 of his life (a little more than half of mine).  This past week he and Chava stayed with me for a few days to save hotel room costs while they were in Amsterdam.  I was a bit worried about what it would be like to share a room with two other folks, but it was *lovely* to have them along.  We visited some old friends one night in Utrecht.  Another night we just hung out and played music in the hotel bar downstairs.  Normally I don't have so much fun on the road, but this trip was a rare exception.  Thanks, kids!

Designing Better Conferences

Having just completed ApacheCon EU 2009, the conference planners immediately spend 2 days figuring out the next conference...

For some time I for one have thought that ApacheCon needs to morph away from "Big Conference, Lots of $$$" mode.  Its not that past ApacheCons haven't been great, but the world economy coupled with the diversity that has grown up at Apache make it very difficult to construct a compelling conference program.  If we pick talks with an eye to representing Apache, then we end up covering a great number of topics but none of them deeply.  If on the other hand we pick several talks on a few topics we flavor the conference by only focusing on the hottest topics...Either way its hard for attendees to justify paying big bucks.  What to do?

Speaking personally, I'm much more interested in content and formats that are fresh.  As we're reading these carefully worded abstracts, I keep thinking about how hard it is to even remember what my intention was when I get around to finally speaking 6 months after an abstract is accepted in traditional "Call For Papers" kinds of conferences...

So, I've been involved in helping ApacheCon think about BarCamps and other "unconference" models.  This past week we had several Meetups and a BarCamp actually at ApacheCon EU.  Next weekend I'll be attending another BarCampApache in Oxford, England.  We're learning a huge amount about what works for Apache and what doesn't.  If you're in Oxford next weekend...I'll be happy to see you there!

Ada was a Lady

Augusta Ada Lovelace was arguably the first tech writer, and almost certainly the first computer geek groupie. Some folks arranged an international Ada Lovelace Day Blogfest today to call attention to Women in Technology, and I agreed (some time ago) to participate.  Probably I would have spaced it, but a handy nag just came up in Facebook (...see? FB is good for something besides re-finding your 7th grade boyfriend afterall...).

Okay, here's a blurb about a woman in technology who I very much admire:

This is a picture of Allison Randal (taken by the wonderful James Duncan Davidson...the original is hosted here on Flickr). 

I think Allison is the bomb...seriously.  She's served as the President of the Perl Foundation.  She's long been one of the program chairs for OSCON.  She's a code contributor to CPAN, the Parrot project and I suspect some other projects as well...*and* she still manages to be quite beautiful and poised through all her geekiness.  She's fun to hang out with (although now that she lives in South Africa I'm not seeing her so much around the playground).  Have to say I admire that whole "I'm moving to South Africa" thing too...I remember being that brave at some point in my life.

So, there you have it.  My Ada-Day heroine is Allison.  Who is yours?

You Say You Want A Revolution?

Today we were finally able to announce my change in employment.  For the past month I've been working for a new company called REvolution Computing!  REvolution produces a very performant version of the language R, which is gaining a lot of attention with some of the alpha geeks I know and love.  They also produce packages using R that do some amazing things.  I'll be helping them to get the word out and helping them expand the community of folks using R.  I'm especially looking to highlight novel uses of Predictive Analytics

REvolution is based in New Haven, Connecticut, but I'm working out of San Francisco (except of course for when I'm on a plane somewhere or other).