Mon, 31 Oct 2005
Linux-Info-Tag 2005
We had two copies of Frank Ronneburg's Debian Anwenderhandbuch and I thought it would be a nice idea to give them away in a little contest. Alexander "Tolimar" Schmehl owns a little etch that I asked him to bring along. The idea was, that, in order to promote the name of the next release, people should draw us a picture on the little etch and the best one would win a copy of the book. I'd actually expected to see people fail miserably and in the end crown the funniest try. But I was confuted. Totally!! In fact we had two entries that were so good that we decided to split the first place and give both of them a copy of the book.
Here are (as promised) all contestants:
This entry was taken out of the rating. It was our first entry and was made by Carsten, who was one of the Debian booth people. Of course we know that he could have done much better and only produced this in order to not discourage other contestants.
The third place, personally I don't really agree with the motive but it won a lanyard anyway.
The second place, a rather obvious motive, but well done and a worthy second place. Another lanyard for this gentleman.
The two first place entries: We absolutely couldn't decide between the perfect curves of "Tux" and "A house with garden"'s 1000 little Details. So the first place was splitted and we gave a away both copies of the book.
Congratulations again to all contestants! Well done!
After deciding on the prices I had to hurry to give my talk on user friendly system administration. I had a nice number of people and I think the talk was well received. The (German) slides are now also available online. Please inform me of any usage.
One nice incident was, when after the talk a former system administrator of the Technical University of Dresden approached me and told me that he really liked the talk. He said that he was now retired and really missed talking to the users and helping them when they had trouble with the system. After hearing so many sysads talking about their users like complete idiots, that all seem on a personal quest to annoy their sysads as much as possible, this was a nice change. I sometimes think that the "BOFH-Syndrome" is also a generation problem. But that's a different story ...
After the talks there was a barbecue outside the building, I talked to a lot of people and had quite some fun. Afterwards there was a presentation and movies, a really nice ending for an almost perfect event. (The only problem was, that there had been no Internet access until around noon, but from what I heard it was one of the University's switches that had given up. Apart from that everything worked out perfectly.)
On Sunday we went on a guided tour through Dresden and afterwards to a museum. The museum actually is on Human Biology but there were two special exhibitions, one on evolution and one on games. As expected most of us went for the game exhibition that featured several rooms dedicated to the history of games as well as the different kinds of games that exist (imitation, strategy, gambling, ...). All rooms had games to try yourself and all of us had a lot of fun. (We're such a bunch of kids ;)) After leaving the museum we went for a Pizza (Very tasty! I think, I am developing a weakness for Pizza with Parma and rocket.), which concluded that day.
One last nice incident happened when I was riding home on the train with Tolimar. We asked the guy who'd checked our tickets for a later train connection. His answer: "Oh, did it get too late at the Linuxtag at the Technical University?". Unnecessary to mention that we were most thrilled! Often when talking to "normal people" I get the "what is this all for" feeling, since, how much ever you evangelise, there's such a mass of people who never even heard about the existence of FOSS/Linux. It's these little incidents that are really rewarding!!
Final conclusions:
- Great weekend
- Very good event (Thanks LIT people, you guys rock!! Also a big thank you to our host, Frank, who provided three of us with a place to sleep, really tasty breakfast and also drove us around.)
- Lots of fun
- Lots of interesting people to talk to
- An IXUS II does not work as a USB storage device
- You can do amazing things with an etch a sketch
- Knowing that my talk is being recorded gives me an awkward feeling (I tend to use a lot of "spicy language")
- The rebuilt Frauenkirche looks impressing
- Pizza with Parma and rocket is great!
Posted at: 19:08 in /english/debian/events
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Wed, 26 Oct 2005
Berlinux 2005
When we got to the Technical University on the next morning the first thing I noticed was a huge transparent hanging over the entrance. Upon closer inspection however it advertised some events for this semester's new students, not Berlinux. Shame. We quickly checked with the Information desk, where we were told to check back with them before giving our talks, since there had been some last minute room changes. Given the quite chaotic organisation in the run-up of this event I must say I wasn't too surprised. (There had been quite a mess regarding the preparation of the talks, many speakers only read on the site when - and that - they were giving their talks, deadlines suddenly popped up and then started wandering ... All in all preparations had been a bit confusing.) Also the planned Berlinux CD had somehow not worked out, so there were no CDs available.
With such good news we went on to the Debian booth to set up the usual stuff. The biggest attraction certainly was Frank Ronneburg's Debian-controlled model railway. Kids had to be forcibly moved on and grown-up men were seen regressing to small children again ;) Unfortunately attendance was rather low anyhow and a lot of the people walking by were regular students on their way to some other events.
At least the talks managed to attract a higher number of people. I can't estimate for shit so I have got no idea how many people attended my talk on user friendly system administration. But I was rather content with the number and so were the other speakers I talked to (The only one who was a bit unfortunate was Alexander 'Tolimar' Schmehl who had to compete with Klaus Knopper giving a talk at the same time.) After the talks were over we killed some more time at the booth, playing with Frank's model railway and Wolfgang Borgert's Nokia 770 (It has Mahjong! Yay!). It should be noted that when we were finally taking down the booth a very brave person walked around with a laptop collecting criticism and suggestions for improvement. There were so many of them that I had to help him out with my Thinkpad's power supply :)
I am not sure how much the Debian project benefited from the whole event since the attendance was so low and we got very few questions. Personally though I quite enjoyed the event. The talk went well (I got a few laughs and good questions afterwards), I met a bunch of new and very interesting people and had a really great Pizza. I hope Berlinux Organisation picks up a few of the suggestions they received. For the moment, my conclusion is that I'd probably give a talk there again, I am however not so sure if I'd go there only to man the Debian booth.
PS: Sadly they didn't have name tags either, so I don't even have something to put on my "trophy board" :(
Hint: Most speaker love souvenirs, give them a piece of paper with their name and your logo on it and they are happy people :)
Posted at: 11:23 in /english/debian/events
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Sat, 15 Oct 2005
More events coming up
The first one, next weekend (Fri 21st to Sat 22nd of October) will be the Berlinux which (obviously) is in Berlin. And then one week later, on the 29th of October, I'll be in Dresden at the Linux-Info-Tag.
I will be giving this (German link) talk on user motivation at both events (but I'll try to work up some new jokes for Dresden, so it doesn't get too repetitive ;)). I am really looking forward to these events, not only because they're probably going to be a lot of fun by themselves (There's all the usual stuff, key signing and install parties, a social event plus some funny extras. In Dresden e. g. you can have your picture taken with their giant Tux. If I can overcome my camera-shyness I'll let you see the results. No promises though ... ) but also because it will be an opportunity to finally meet some nice people again, who I only seldom meet in person. (Ah, the blessing that is irc!)
As usual reports will follow a few days after the respective event.
Talking about events: It seems LinuxTag will move to Wiesbaden. Well, I am curious what it'll be like there. I think Karlsruhe was a great location and the local LUG did a great job in hosting large parts of the community in and around the (in)famous AKK. I hope, there'll be something similar in Wiesbaden. After all (at least for me) it has always been this "community-stuff" that made LinuxTag more than just a regular linux congress/fair.
Posted at: 13:33 in /english/debian/events
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Mon, 10 Oct 2005
Settling in ...
So, my formerly dull workplace now features:
- Several tech/programming books. (I hardly ever look into them, but this sort of stuff somehow always gives me a feeling of home.)
- My own tea cup + my own tea (Tastes much better than what the resident coffee machine coughs up.
- A cute postcard I got from a cute guy after moving here.
- Several sheets of paper, taken out of an (I assume) broken printer with notes scribbled all over them. I also had to organise the pen myself, but when I am working and need to take a quick note it's just so much easier to quickly scribble it on a piece of paper than type it in a file. Also, it nicely clutters up my table, which again makes it very homey ;)
Screw the paperless office! - Some food. I decided, that it makes me a much happier person if I can eat an apple or a cookie from time to time, so I usually bring some food with me now.
So, by now I'd say it's still far from an ideal work environment, but it's gotten better.
PS: irc also helps! ;)
PPS: Thanks to Erinn, I know now that my current tenancy is called subletting.
PPPS: Oh, and 7am is still much too ******* early!!!
PPPPS: I like Marc's new meme. :) My results:
- Meike needs him . . . now who might that be? ;)
- Meike needs to help hold up my arm . . . Uhm. Whatever rocks your boat, man ...
- Meike needs some work . . . soo. not. true.
- Meike needs it too . . . [...]
Posted at: 13:32 in /english/personal
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