BrianPowell’s Blog

I have had a pretty busy past week so please forgive me if I am a little late in reporting these.

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On Monday December 8th, 2008 I gave a Fedora presentation at ITT Technical Institute in Harrisburg PA to 2 different groups of students throughout the day (the overall total was around 55 or 60). The entire group consisted of Multi-Media, Programming, Criminal Justice and Networking students. ITT Technical Institute already is utilizing Fedora in their Networking curriculum (currently Fedora 8). My presentation was geared mainly towards how students could build experience and a work portfolio while going to school by contributing to Fedora as well as some of the new features of F10 and I also did a small presentation on the XO and OLPC program.

The presentation was well received in fact I was invited by the IT Chair to do another presentation in the upcoming Spring semester.

I collected quite a number of email addresses of interested students that I am currently following up with on becoming possible contributors.

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This past weekend I held a Fedora F10 Release Party and InstallFest with the WNYLug (http://wnylug.org). I presented to the group (around 23) about the Fedora Project and how they could join to become contributors. During the event I created quite a few F10 Live-USB keys and assisted with new installations of F10 on laptops and desktop that were brought in by the attendees and any other questions that they had with existing installations.

Special thanks to the WNYLug (who has only been in existence since Oct 2008) for making this event a huge success and helping out with burning install media and live-cd’s.

Pics from this event will be posted shortly on the WNYlug site (http://wnylug.org)

This coming weekend marks the start of the Fedora IRC Classroom. What the heck is that you say!? Think of it as an online training class utilizing IRC.

This weekend has topics such as :

• SELinux Basics
• Firewall Basics
• Intro to Bugzilla
• Creating a Fedora Remix
• Beginners guide to getting involved
• Packaging
• Configuration Management using Puppet.

If any of the above is of interest, I encourage you check out the details, class dates and times located here

If you are interested in a topic not listed above, please take a moment and add it to the growing “Suggest a Class” list at the bottom of the page https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/IRC/Classroom

If you spot a topic in the “Suggest a Class” list or have another not listed, that you know like the back of your hand, and wish to contribute and share that knowledge with to others, please sign yourself up for a future classroom time slot. There is still one time slot left for this coming weekend.

I want to thank all of the volunteers who already signed up to teach a class this coming weekend without you this initiative would not have gotten off the ground.

Attention all Ambassadors! It is that time again to get your Q4 (December, January, February) events added (if you have not already done so).

Max’s original message to the mailing list:

Please make sure you get your event added asap.

Fedora Event List : here

I had the pleasure of attending the CPOSC event this past Sunday with Jon Stanley and Yaakov Nemoy.

The Fedora booth was in a prime location (right at the entrance) and received a lot of exposure.

We had a very pleasant surprise during registration. One of the packets handed out at registration contained a USB Flash drive (2gb) provided by a local open source company Anteil. At first sight of the flash drive Jon and I both looked at each other and said we are going to be busy creating Fedora USB sticks. Just about that time Jim Capp, The CEO of Anteil, introduced himself and stated that one of his employees, whom is a big Fedora fan had already configured the usb flash keys he was handing out, with a Fedora 9 live image. This was a huge plus for us!

Major kudos goes to Anteil for helping us promote Fedora!

Throughout the event I had the chance to talk with many people, during one conversation I talked with Jason Hubler the IT Chair person from ITT Technical Institute where the event was being held. He was inquiring about having someone from Fedora come in and speak to his students (whom currently utilize Fedora as part of their course work) which I gladly accepted and have planned in Dec 2008. I anticipate getting quite a few contributors signed up during this speaking opportunity.

I was very impressed with this event, the only suggestion I would make for future events is to not cap the registration, as they were turning people away due to space limitations, other than that the event was very well run and organized (as I expected it would be, based on previous events I have attended run by this group) and I look forward to next years venue!

After attending my very first OLF I must admit I was really impressed. I am not going to comment on any of the presentations as I spent almost all of my time at the Fedora booth but I will focus on what I experienced and my thoughts.

OLF was well manned by various Fedora Ambassadors (13 to be exact) which made handling a crowd of roughly 1000 people very easy. I met and spoke with people across the board, everyone from families (including their young children) to Linux Var’s.

The booth was in a perfect position and we had a lot of traffic. The OLPC XO’s were quite a hit with everyone. I know the young children attending with their parents loved them and while they were entertained we got a chance to talk to mom and dad!

Overall I think event itself was very good and we should hopefully get a few more contributors to add to Fedora and it was great to finally put faces to everyone that I talk to on irc.

I look forward to attending / helping out with next years event!

FADNA 2008

Minus a few glitches with the SIP Phone this went very well. We covered everything on our agenda and are laying the groundwork for the future.

The topic that really stood out to me was the Mentoring role that Ambassadors play, we spent quite awhile talking about this as it is an important part of our duties, we will be drawing up a draft of this on the wiki over the next few weeks.

I really liked the ability of discussing things face to face, don’t get me wrong I am a huge fan of irc but you can really see and feel the passion that each person has when it is done first hand.

At the end of the weekend not only was OLF and FADNA worth the 12+ hour round trip drive time but the experiences I shared with everyone while there makes it even better.

Some other post’s by more attending Ambassadors:

http://vwbusguy.wordpress.com/2008/10/15/ohio-linuxfest/

http://jtadlock.wordpress.com/2008/10/14/fadna-report/

http://jbwillia.wordpress.com/2008/10/14/fadna/

http://jbwillia.wordpress.com/2008/10/14/hello-world/

http://www.nalley.sc/david/?p=112

http://jtadlock.wordpress.com/2008/10/13/ohio-linux-fest-2008-report/

http://sexysexypenguins.com/2008/10/12/fad-na-day-1/

http://sexysexypenguins.com/2008/10/12/olf-day-1-fadna-day-1/

http://sexysexypenguins.com/2008/10/11/ohio-linux-fest-day-0-fadna-day-2/