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InnerSource Summit EU Spring 2020 - Cake in a Cup Challenge

Hi InnerSourcerers!

For the second day of InnerSource Summit EU Spring 2020, we have the CAKE IN A CUP CHALLENGE!! The main thing is we suggest that you gather these ingredients BEFORE the challenge begins. If you do this, it will take less than 5 minutes to complete and you'll get to share your creations with us at tea break (and eat them while they're still warm)...

Here's everything you need to know:

A) Choose a recipe. Here are two basic ones, but you can freestyle as well. We advise you to stick with these basic proportions. Be sure to gather your ingredients BEFORE we get to the break...maybe even the night before? Don't mix them until just before you pop your cup in the microwave, however...

Recipe One:

Chocolate Cake in a Cup (from Irish Countrywoman’s Association cookbook)

Ingredients (please locate them all before the activity):

4 tsp of self-rising flour (or regular flour with an 1/8 of a tsp baking soda added)

4 tsp of granulated sugar (use superfine or caster sugar for best results)

2 tsp of cocoa powder (NOT chocolate milk powder)

1 egg beaten

3 tsp milk

3 tsp light oil (like canola)

2-3 drops vanilla extract

1 handful chocolate chips

1 large (1 pint) mug or 2 c. (480ml) pyrex jug (measuring cup)

Microwave oven

1. Combine flour, sugar and cocoa in your mug. Stir in the beaten egg, milk and oil, then add vanilla drops and chocolate chips
2. Cook uncovered in the microwave on high (1,000 watts) for three minutes
3. Allow to cool, tip out on a plate and bring back to share with us on Zoom. You might want to bring a cup of tea or milk along as well.!

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Recipe Two: 

Vanilla Sponge Cake in a Cup

Ingredients (please locate them all before the activity)

• 2 tablespoons (1oz/30g) butter
• 1 large egg*
• 2 tablespoons milk
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon almond extract , optional
• ¼ cup (50g) granulated sugar
• 6 tablespoons flour
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• Tiny pinch of salt
• Fruit for garnish (I used three blueberries, two raspberries and a sprig of fresh mint)
• 1 large (1 pint) mug or 2 c. (480ml) pyrex jug (measuring cup)
• Microwave oven

 

1. Place the butter in a large mug and microwave it for 20 to 30 seconds until melted.

2. Add the egg* and whisk it in with a fork or small whisk.

3. Stir in the milk, vanilla, almond and sugar.

4. Add the flour, baking powder and salt. Mix the batter with a fork or whisk until smooth (no lumps).

5. At this point you can cover and place in the fridge for up to 25 hours. When ready to serve microwave for 1 minute and 20 seconds on high. Top with whipped cream and fresh berries and enjoy

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B) Bring your cake in a cup back with you to the Zoom channel so we can all feast together! We're very interested in how this turns out for you. Extra points for using the cup or mug you entered in the Cup Challenge the first day.

Dear Readers, can I ask a favor (well, two favors really)?

Favor Number One:

...and this is the really more important one, but also takes a little effort.  I just did it (and timed myself)...it took 7 minutes.  Can you beat that time?  I O U a beverage if you can (let me know on comments below).  Deadline is end of day TOMORROW, August 31st, 2012.

Can you please cast a vote for Literacy Bridge to present at TED 2013?  Your vote could mean the difference in whether dozens of the poorest villages get access to our Talking Book program.

My friend Cliff Schmidt was invited to audition for one of the world’s most prestigious and influential conferences: TED. In four minutes, he summarized Literacy Bridge’s work, and now TED is looking to online voters to determine whether he will be invited to speak at TED 2013.  This opportunity would give Literacy Bridge far more exposure than they've ever had, which will enable them to expand their impact dramatically.

If you are willing to help, here is what I’m asking you to do:

Brief Version (see detailed instructions below if you have trouble):

1. Sign up for a TED.com account here: https://auth.ted.com/users/new?referer=http://www.ted.com/profiles/edit(you can skip the profile page after submitting name/email/password)

2. Watch the 4-minute audition here: http://talentsearch.ted.com/video/Cliff-Schmidt-On-demand-access

3. Vote ("Rate This Talk" on the same page)

4. Comment (on the same page) --- this is as important as the vote; please leave a quick note.

5. Recommend on Facebook (on the same page).

6. Please tell all your friends to do the same!

That's it!  Thank you so much!

=====

Here are the detailed instructions if the ones above don't work for you:

1. Sign Up for an account on TED.com: https://auth.ted.com/users/new?referer=http://www.ted.com/profiles/edit

You will need to:
a)    Fill in first name, last name
b)    Email address
c)    Provide a password
d)    Agree to the terms of service
e)    Fill in and pass the "Capcha" test

After you fill in the info and click on "Submit" button, you may be presented with a screen to enter Profile info.  You can skip this page if you like and go right to the video link below.

2. Watch, Comment and Rate the Video:
a)  Watch the video at http://talentsearch.ted.com/video/Cliff-Schmidt-On-demand-access
b) Add a comment –what you write will help TED decide who to invite
c) Rate the video:
 - On the right side of the screen, there is section titled "Rate the Talk".
 - Click on the stars under "Rate on Content" and "Rate on Presentation Style"
 - Make sure that the stars that you click on become bigger, that is the sign that your rating has registered.

3. Click the Facebook "Recommend" Button Under the Video (Optional)

This is not the official rating. It just helps a bit to spread the word via Facebook.

4. Ask Your Friends to Watch/Vote Also!

Thank you for helping Literacy Bridge get in front of a global audience.

and now for the more self-interested Favor Number Two:

 Yup, its that time again....vote for one or more of the SXSWi proposals my name is on.  You'll find them here and here.  I'm undecided which I'd rather do, they would both be really fun.  Last day to vote is, of course, tomorrow, August 31st, 2012... and if either gets accepted and you're there, I'll also be happy to comp you a beverage :).  Not bribing, just saying thank you.

 

Carding Harrassment

The Code of Conduct debate around Open Source conferences has been much on my mind again lately. Just today somebody called my attention to this blog post about yet another attempt to fix what some see as a real problem.  I have to admit that my take is a little different, and some will find it disloyal to my gender (as I was accused back when I gave a keynote at OSCON a few years ago).  I actually like the cards the blog is talking about.  Its a clever hack and one that promises to at least create more timely communication when people feel uncomfortable, which IMHO is preferable to some of the passive-aggressive behaviors we have witnessed recently.

I've not written until now about my take on all this appropriateness chatter over the past couple of years. When it all started I happened to be the only female CTO in the top 10 most popular websites in the world and I felt my opinion on it would be artificially amplified by my position. I was troubled by what I saw as strong-arm tactics employed to force conference organizers to police attendees, and I did have a number of conversations privately with women who agreed with me and were also troubled, and also with women who completely and vehemently disagreed with me.

A little background: I have worked in the Tech industry for more than 20 years and in some pretty visible positions. It is not unusual for me to be the only woman a room full of men in meetings or at conferences, and I've seen my share of inappropriate behavior.I've also worked for several of the larger Tech companies, which means I've seen a variety of approaches to training people about these issues (most Tech companies present between 15 to 45 minutes of training on this issue during new employee orientation, and many require additional training for managers).

The watershed moment for me was when I experienced Intel's orientation. People tend to work at Intel forever, and dating amongst co-workers is really common there. They also have a melting pot of cultural expectations because they hire from all over the world. Their policy says (my paraphrase) that its every person's responsibility to set clear boundaries. Their orientation on the subject (which was the longest I've attended) included skits showing how to ask a co-worker out on a date, how to decline an unwanted advance and how to act after you've been told "No, thank you". The orientation went on to explain that if you set a clear boundary and the other person continues to harass you, then Intel's management would support you in a grievance against that person.

My eureka was to hear them explicitly say "It is up to you to clearly say "No" initially". I know at least one woman prominent in the Code of Conduct movement who felt that this was too much of a burden, that it created a hostile work environment, but I thought it was clear and brilliant.

So here's my general take: some of the women who want to see strict Codes of Conduct are really seeking to be absolved of their fundamental obligation as human beings to set clear individual boundaries. They want the organization (or the conference) to do this for them so they'll never be made to feel uncomfortable. The problem with this is that living in the world involves dealing with all kinds of people and just as fairness isn't an inalienable right, neither is interpersonal comfort. Its a messy business figuring out what other people's intentions are in the best of cases, and we owe it to our fellow humans to be as clear as we can on our end in just our normal interactions.

That said, there are certainly creeps out there, of all genders and both intentional and unintentional ones. I think its positive for people to be given tools that help them give effective feedback (such as the clever cards used at DefCon). I just hope they come with instructions for the card-bearer to hand them out AFTER exhausting more normal feedback with an offender. Otherwise I fear handing out these cards will become a proxy for normal human boundary setting and will further contribute to the death of authentic interactions between people wherever they are used.

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.

Adam and his Mom

Just had to take a minute to post this pic of two folks I met in line who are so excited to be here in the Reality Distortion Field for a little while. Adam and his Mom got Platinum passes to MacWorld from the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Seldom have I met a fan so excited...and suddenly I remember what it was like to bleed 6 colors.

iPhoneDevCamp

Have a lot to say about iPhoneDevCamp, but I'm gonna start with a friendly poke at fantastic Adobe employee Dominic Sagolla who had the forsight to convince his company to allow iPhoneDevCamp to happen at their San Francisco facility.

I love this story. For those of you just joining in to iPhone frenzy, Adobe Flash isn't supported on the iPhone, but its not Adobe's fault. Abode's position is that their relationship with Apple continues to be strong AND that they would like to see Flash running on every mobile device. In the meantime, Adobe supports all the native file formats shipping on iPhone.

Raven Zachary, Whurley and some of their friends decided it would be cool to have a BarCamp for the iPhone...but they needed a place to have it. Enter Dom. He managed to convince Abode to donate the satellite facility (that used to be Macromedia world headquarters before the acquisition). But, above and beyond the call of duty, Adobe legal actually thought through the situation, and offered to waive their standard site NDA for the duration of the conference. And everyone associated with Adobe has been absolutely swell, from the janitorial folks to the security folks...Adobe even donated a few Timbuktu bags as giveaways. 300 people showed up today to iPhoneDevCamp, and they all came away with a great impression of Adobe.

So Dom helped Adobe do a great thing, just by asking if they would allow it. Way to go, Dom!

Tools of Change Conference 2007 - Day One Morning

I really wanted to check out this newest O'Reilly Conference, Tools of Change.  Its themed around the move away from traditional printing on paper (as well as a move away from all traditional printing entails including friction in the form of cost of production, distribution costs, obsolesence).   Of course people like the aspects of books that make them easy to carry around and actually read. I used to say I'd never read a novel online (before Cory Doctorow's Down and Out In the Magic Kingdom of which I was a huge fan).   These days I mostly "read" books in the form of audiobooks and I've been working off and on for the last year on a wiki-based book for O'Reilly called Art of Community, so I'm a prime candidate for Tools of Change.

Through O'Reilly I've met online publishing pioneers like comic book author Scott McCloud, and Philip Greenspun.  Wikipedia guided by Jimmy Wales has been a O'Reilly favorite project for a long time as much for its vision as for working out the first practical method for moderating publicly contributed content.  This conference is a first stab at discussing these trends and generally starting conversations in the traditional publishing world.

So, sitting in the morning keynotes.  First keynote (after intro remarks by TimO and conference co-chair Sarah Milstein, including this funny video Introducing The Book)...is Brian Murray, a muck-muck from Harper Collins Publishers who told the story about their path to digitizing content (very marketeerish but full of information if you were willing to parse it).  Most interesting was that they had to look hard for a vendor to support their transition to "Digital Warehousing", and their plan to build what they needed, including rolling in some of their existing digital assets in the form of their pre-existing workflow and electronic text management systems.  And of course they are reaping benefits in the form of less dupilcation of effort and wider distribution...however they are still holding a lot of the cards to try to drive all traffic to their own site.  Their content browser for instance is distributed as a widget that drives eyeballs back to their site rather than running native on the site you were originally browsing.  I'm wondering if and whether that kind of proprietary hold on things will hurt them in the long run?

Next up was Wired Magazine Editor In Chief, Chris Anderson (also Long Tail author, who apparently has a new book in the works called "Free" about the economics of giving things away).  He says that in the 20th Century radio and TV changed the game via the economics of broadcast, which was the first widespread example of frictionless distribution and made advertsing a viable financial support model.  Today this broadcast model is so pervasive that physical magazines such as Wired essentially sell eyeballs, and charge only because it converts free readers into advertising assets.  Anyway...this man is writing a book, which will come out in 2 years time as a physical book (because he thinks physical books will not be obsolete any time soon because, well heck, they are comforting to have, hold and read).  He thinks Free is the business model of the 21st Century, and so his book about the topic will explore as many aspects of free as he can arrange...so for instance, the audio book version will be free (because he is buying the rights).  The unlocked e-book may be supported by ads (which he defends from his position as a glossy ad-driven magazine editor, but I'm not sure I relish).  The physical book he's thinking of making a "sponsored book", or possibly a "loss leader" book for advertising purposes as he did with Long Tail (of which he gave 800 copies away to anyone who would blog a review).  He may also offer a rebate on purchase if he can work one out.

Chris Anderson's reasons to give a book away:
1) Free Advertising
2) Digital books are still considered inferior, and some fraction of those people will convert to a physical book
3) Maximizes access to the "new influentials"

Why more books aren't given away:
1) Charter conflict....authors want to increase their personal fame and influence, but publishers want to make money (and don't yet understand that free can be an asset)
2) Channel conflict...bookstores don't want their product undercut
3) Fear

Have to take a moment to applaud Chris' willingness to work without Powerpoint Slides.  His talk was wonderful and IMHO more interesting to listen to without visuals.

Last before the break,  Tim O'Reilly talked about Web2.0, (again...but this time with a special publishing bent).  He pointed out that while user generated content is really an important sea change, at the same time its not that new (since nearly all authors start as readers, witness J.K. Rowling).  Like the Harper Collins guy, he talked about O'Reilly Media's entries into online publishing, Safari.  Search changes the reading experience.  Online readers only read 20% of a given title, but older content demand is satisfied.  Search drives readership of out of print content.  40% of the content read on Safari accounts for only 9% of physical book sales.  O'Reilly is still working out what implications this trend implies for the future of their business, and they are engaging in various experiments.  On the subject of piracy, Tim thinks its progressive taxation...you get more out of additional exposure than it costs in lost sales.  Tim ended with a call to be fearless and look to the future to re-discover publishing.

There was a Q&A, but as I asked a question, I didn't capture it.  It was short (3 questions).  Mine was about why the Harper Collins widget doesn't show up on Amazon, although I also commented in support of the notion that digital format books may actually be MORE compelling than print over time, since novels can include a soundtrack or rich image files.

My conceptual artist friend Catt Avery, who is sitting here with me at the keynotes, wonders how many folks in the audience today have YouTube accounts?   There are lots of trad publishers here, so I'm guessing not many.

FOSS.in Looks Great This Year

Those of you who read my blog know by now that I love India and go there whenever I can.  The FOSS scene in India is fascinating...more than in any market, India is the front lines of battle between software self-determinism and software vendor lock-in.  Microsoft spends a huge amount of money there which is no surprise since it is one of the two largest potential software markets left in the world.  India has the second largest professional class in the world (second only to that of the aggregate European Union), and turns out a reported 300,000 new developers every year.  Most of those developers get a huge dose of proprietary thought and dogma in school, furnished by any one of several proprietary companies who fund equipment and internships (Microsoft isn't the only one).  As a result they come out of school spouting misconceptions such as "Why should I give away for Free what I can charge for?" and the ever-popular "Won't Open Source undermine the whole technology industry"?

I and others have for years been supporting the many FOSS conferences in India to try to broaden the range of options Indian developers consider when charting their technology careers, with some successes.  The annual FOSS.in conference is the largest and oldest of the grassroots (developer focused) conferences held in India.  They've just published their schedule for 2006, and it looks fantastic.  If you are in India or even just near enough to get to Bangalore next week, you should go!

And another list...this time Metros I've ridden

I actually love to ride Metros...I try to ride them whenever I travel to a new place. My husband and his LiveJournal friends found a new site that lets you rack up a list of icons for the metro systems you've traveled. Must say I found a few missing, notably the Mumbai metro.

Anyway...here goes:

Got at b3co.com!

GNUnify 2006

Today I'm in Pune, my favorite city in India. I'm speaking at GNUnify 2006, which is a very sweet small conference held at Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research.

What a great experience! This was the 4th year of this 2-day conference organized entirely by a student committee. Students dressed in very smart formal suits and saris were our hosts and facilitators. Last night there was a lovely reception where we were treated to a cultural program of dancing and then a dinner, and I was privileged to chat with Dr. S. B. Mujumdar, Cancellor and Founder of Symbiosis. His idea 30 years ago was to create an international university embracing a wholistic curriculum with lots of practical experience as well as personal discipline through mandatory yoga and phys ed classes together with the usual theoretical and technical training that comprises traditional education. Today Symbiosis is 31 academic institutions spread around Pune and a small new campus in Dubai, UAE. The student community is 35,000 Indian and International students (from 42 countries) on eight campuses, and another 80,000 students participating in Distance Learning. Last year Dr. Mujumder was awarded the Padmashri designation, which is sort of the Indian equivalent of being knighted.

This academic year Symbiosis has implemented WiFi pervasively in all classrooms and common areas (just like MIT ! Many of the Symbiosis students have purchased low-cost laptops (thanks to the local HP office) to take advantage of this new reality...which is potentially GREAT for their FOSS participation. The biggest barrier to FOSS participation I encounter in most developing countries is lack of access to the Internet and computers during leisure hours. I really have to applaud Symbiosis and HP for taking a lead on this...

What I'm wondering now is when and whether other companies are going to offer support and encouragement to this brave experiment in education that is Symbiosis.