I’ve started working on a session on the practice of online ombuds ? especially as it applies to Free Software and Open Source communities. The session is based on my work in the Free Software, PHP, Mozilla, MySQL and Open Source communities - in particular, recent work (which I need to get back to) on the Open Source Initiative mailing lists.

So far, the session has been pitched to the following events: CommunityOne 2008 (waiting), FOSDEM 2008 (accepted), JavaOne 2008 (declined), Open Web Vancouver 2008 (waiting) and OSCON 2008 (waiting).

I’ll start posting alpha versions of slides and so on as they are ready. …

… or, “Making Event Attendance Count”

Late last year, I gave a keynote at paired Finnish conferences MindTrek and OpenMind. While the events were well worth attending, afterwards I spent a few bleak hours thinking about the actual costs of my attendance. If I had left Canada just for these events (which, thankfully, I didn’t) then a naive estimation of costs would have been something like this:

• ~20 000 km of air travel (Vancouver to Frankfurt, Frankfurt to Helsinki. Return.)
• ~7 000+ CAD of costs (flights, hotels, taxis, meals, time) (borne by a combination of eZ Systems, the Mozilla Foundation and the …

My friend Monty (of MySQL fame) has started blogging at http://monty-says.blogspot.com/. After just a day, he already has two posts ? one on the Sun acquisition of MySQL and a longer one on the new Maria engine.

If you are interested in MySQL, you should definitely check the blog out.

The Linux Business Campus Nuremberg (LBCN) presents annual awards for innovative ideas, well-considered concepts and promising business plans in the field of Open Source and Free Software.

The European Open Source Business Award is presented for innovative business concepts after detailed examination by an expert jury comprising LBCN campus coaches and selected figures from the venture capital scene. The annual award seeks entrepreneurs with innovative open source software business ideas which can revolutionize the markets and set new

This award was presented for the first time in January 2007 as a highlight at the Heise congress on ?Open Source Meets Business? (http://www.heise.de/open/news/meldung/84306).

The next award presentation will take place in the old city hall in Nuremberg on Wednesday, 23 January 2008.

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I am a conference junkie. I love attending them, organizing them, speaking at them, planning to attend them, seeing my friends at conferences, making friends with the nice (but often stressed) people who run conferences and so on. I even like eating the (often bad) food - kvetching about it builds a sense of camaraderie with the other participants.

Given how much time and money I spend on conferences already, it might be hard for you to be able to get more money directly out of me. However, here is one small tip on a way that you might be able to do this.

When you send me email about upcoming events, send me links to useful feed as well. Many of you are technologists who run technology conferences for other technologists. For Zarquon’s sake, use the common pieces of technology that many of us use.

What would such feeds look like? Well, to answer my own rhetorical question …
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Unfortunately, I had to skip out on my presentation at this year’s MySQL Conference.

Thankfully, my friend Mike Hillyer was able to pinch hit for me. I had planned to do a podcast of the session, but - as he is totally awesome - Mike even recorded the session.

Summary

A good week - we made progress on the Internet as Public Good Symposium, which is the major task on my Mozilla plate right now. However, an unexpected event at another client meant that my Friday was a bit messed up. Will work on reviewing bugs and other missed responsibilities over the weekend.

Activities

• Worked with Berkman and Harvard Business School teams to help plan and present the Internet as Public Good Symposium.
  • Event wiki now online, but still private. - started putting in content. Will make public after panel participants have a chance to review.
  • Conf. call with available IPG team members to sort out logistics, invitations and distribute tasks.
  • Set up database to store info on who’s invited, who’s coming and so on.
• Minor bits of work helping Mozilla Corp. team plan their OSCON presence …

While chatting with a few SVN hackers at OSCON, it occured to me that MySQL is the Perl of RDBMS. Discuss among yourselves.

I wonder how many people will attend a session at a tech conference where the start of the description reads as follows:

Hey You! Yes, You! Manager, marketeer, sales professional: are you tired of 98lb weaklings kicking silicon in your face?

I am thinking this way because my friends at MySQL AB are putting on another MySQL User Conference - this time from April 23 - 26 in Santa Clara, California.

The Call for Participation went live a few days ago and, as always, I am proposing a session. I don’t really need to go, but I definitely have a soft spot for the event, as I chaired the first two MySQL UCs. Also, I had a good deal of fun working on the …

Ilan Rabinovitch let me know that the SCALE team is getting started on version 5x of the SoCal Linux Expo.

In past years, SCALE has been a great community event - the ratio of promoters to real Linux enthusiasts is low and the attendees are friendly. Also, like most other Linux conferences, attendees have a strong interest in many other FLOSS community issues and technologies, like BSD, Firefox, Apache, PHP, MySQL, Free Software licensing and so on. Hopefully I can attend this year (and can wear both my eZ hat and my Mozilla hat for the event).

The event will happen from February 10-11 and will be held at the Westin Los Angeles Airport hotel.

Get more details at: …