News
Gareth gives his talk titled, “Leaving an Open Source Project” on Saturday afternoon.
Q: Could you please introduce yourself and tell us a little about your background?
A: My name is Gareth Greenaway, I’m currently the lead DevOps Engineer at a company called Croscon Engineer. We’re a New York based software engineering company. I’m also an occasional co-host of the podcast FLOSS Weekly, co-founder & former leader of the Southern California Linux Expo and an active contributor to the SaltStack project. I’ve been an avid user of free & open source software and active in the FOSS community for over 20 years.
Q: Without tipping your hand on the actual talk, can you give us an idea of what we might expect?
A: My talk is about Leaving An Open Source project. Earlier this year I decided to end a 14 year run of being one of the organizers for the Southern California Linux Expo, also known as SCALE. I had been involved in organizing the event longer than my last 4 jobs combined and it definitely was a big part of my life. After I decided to leave, there was a lot of confusion particularly for what it means for the event itself. I had always thought of the act & process of running SCALE as very similar to how most FOSS projects are run. My departure got me thinking about what it meant to leave a FOSS project, how it was similar to but completely different than leaving a job. My talk is based on my experiences and those of others that I talked to. It includes a few lessons learned as well as a few ideas on how the process can be improved & why it should be improved.
Q: Is this your first visit to SeaGL? If so, what are your expectations? If not, can you give us your impressions of the event?
A: This will be my third time attending SeaGL and I’m really looking forward to it. It’s a great community event and I always enjoy attending. When you attend an event that is run completely on a volunteer basis it definitely has a different feel to it. The people organizing it are doing it because it’s their passion and that definitely shines through each year at SeaGl. Plus Seattle is a great location, coming from Southern California it’s always a novelty for me to go somewhere that has a high chance of rain! :)
Q: Is it true that your hair has it’s own twitter account and it has more followers than you?
A: Unfortunately yes. A lesson learned, one should never joke about one’s hair having it’s own persona. The Internet will take something like that and run with it, doing crazy things, like creating a twitter account.
(Author’s note: We couldn’t find the hair account mentioned in this interview.)
José speaks on Saturday. His talk is titled, “Juju: No more staying awake overnight, your cloud in just a couple taps (or clicks!): Learn how to deploy your own cloud in minutes
More details on his talk are here!
Q: Could you please introduce yourself and tell us a little about your
background?
A: I’m José Antonio Rey, a student from Peru. I started contributing to Open Source around 5 and a half years ago, with Ubuntu. Currently studying audiovisual production at University of Lima. I learnt all I know about FOSS online and through friends.
Q: Without tipping your hand on the actual talk, can you give us an idea of what we might expect?
A: I know several of you, as sysadmins (or maybe just for fun!), have to deal with deploying software in servers. I’ve gone through the painful process of installing a piece of software I don’t know, and spent hours and even days trying to get something to work. And then you get to the config files… what a mess. So much time lost, and so much stress on your plate! Want to move from spending hours to spending just a couple minutes? Deploying, let’s say, big data software in the time it takes for you to brew a cup of coffee? Then you don’t want to miss out ;)
Q: Is this your first visit to SeaGL? If so, what are your expectations?
If not, can you give us your impressions of the event?
A: It is my first visit! I’ve always heard Seattle has a lot of rain, which I’m looking forward to. We don’t have a lot of rain in Lima and I love it when I go somewhere that does. I hope SeaGL will be a great place for learning about new stuff and meeting new people in the Open Source world. I love community-ran conferences since they have a greater outreach to different communities, not only in the area, but all around the world, and bring people from all over together to celebrate Open Source. I can’t wait to get there!
Q: Do you have a pet llama in my backyard?
A: No, I don’t even have a backyard!
SeaGL 2016 is just over a month away and we are looking for helpful people to volunteer!
This year’s list of volunteer roles:
- coffee/lunch team
- expo hall monitors
- floaters
- party monitors
- registration/check-in
- room monitors
- sign-wranglers
If you are interested, we are using a new tool which has more details on each role and available shifts.
Here’s how it works:
- Click this link to go to our invitation page on SignUp.com: https://signup.com/go/7S3K6M
- Enter your email address: (You will NOT need to register an account on SignUp.com, though be wary of small checkboxes.)
- Sign up! Choose your spots - SignUp.com will send you an automated confirmation and reminders.
We will be hosting two orientations. Both will be remotely accessible; one is also in-person. The first will be held Thursday, November 3 at 12pm via conference call. The second will be held Wednesday, November 9 at 7pm at SCC and via conference call.
Feel free to contact us if you have any questions, either by emailing participate@seagl.org or visiting us on IRC on Freenode in #seagl.
SeaGL 2016 will run on the 11th and 12th of November at Seattle Central College. It’s a great location very close to transportation links.
The address is: 1701 Broadway Seattle, WA 98122
Parking
Street parking is available on many streets near the college at 2.50 an hour with a two hour max limit.
There is a parking garage on Harvard and Pine, accessed via Harvard avenue.
You can check up to date availability and further information via their Parkme.com website.
Directions
From Seattle Westlake Center - In addition to driving, travel by walking, bus and tram are available.
From Everett, Washington - In addition to driving, travel by plane, train and bus are available.
From Portland, Oregon - In addition to driving, travel by plane, train and bus are available.
From Vancouver, BC - In addition to driving, travel by plane, train and bus are available.
Accommodation
There are several hotels within walking distance of the college such as Hilton and Silver Cloud Hotel as well as a multitude of Airbnb listings.
Weather
November is one of the wettest months of the year for Seattle, with a temperature generally between 41F/5C and 52F/11C. While wet, it doesn’t generally snow. A little light wind or a rain storm is pretty common for this time of year. Warm, weather proof clothing are reasonable items to pack, as is an umbrella.
Attractions
There is a lot to see and do in Seattle. The most visited sites include the Space Needle, Pike Place Market and the Experience Music Project Museum.
There’s a lot that goes into crafting a great conference experience, and an essential part of that is sponsorship. Sponsorship helps cover a lot of necessities, like venue and equipment costs - but it also allows the conference committee to do some truly extraordinary things for those who may not be able to attend without a helping hand. Without sponsorship, we would be unable to fund assistance like;
- Help with the travel costs for less privileged speakers and attendees
- Providing lunch to local student attendees
- Making SeaGL a free conference for all attendees
If you or your company are interested in sponsoring SeaGL, please contact us at sponsor@seagl.org to discuss the sponsorship packages available or check out our prospectus here.
DEADLINE is August 16th: Take a Minute to Nominate Someone Amazing!
The second Cascadia Community Builder Award will be given this fall to a local person who has made an outstanding contribution to the free software movement. We are looking for someone who contributes – either at work, as a volunteer or both – to the adoption or creation of free and open source software. We are especially interested in hearing about work that brings FOSS to new communities and/or under-represented groups.
To nominate someone, send an email to award@seagl.org – with the nominee’s name in the subject line. Great nominations will include some links to the person’s work and/or two or three sentences about why you find them inspiring. Thanks in advance for helping us honor a local community builder!
If you want to speak with us in real-time, come visit us on IRC on Freenode in #seagl.
Feel free to contact us if you have any questions, either by
emailing award@seagl.org or visiting us on IRC on
Freenode in
#seagl.
2016 Call for Participation closes on August 1st!
We are a local Seattle conference dedicated to supporting newer local speakers! SeaGL welcomes speakers of various backgrounds and levels of experience – Even
if you’ve never spoken at a technical conference. If you’re excited about GNU/Linux technologies, or free and open source software and communities, then we want to hear your
ideas.
Submit your
presentation
now.
The CFP deadline is midnight PDT, August 1, 2016.
Our talk format is generally 50 minutes of speaking followed by 10 minutes of
questions. Here are some topic ideas:
- How to get involved in free and open source software
- Dev/Ops
- Career tips and strategies
- Web development tools
- Policy and licensing affecting free and open source software development
- Hardware, Embedded Linux, or the Internet of Things
- Scaling and optimizing GNU/Linux
- The “cloud” and other distributed services
- Building free and open source communities
- Using free software at home, work, or school
- Security and privacy online
- Anything else that you think would be interesting to new or seasoned GNU/Linux enthusiasts!
Feel free to contact us if you have any questions, either by
emailing participate@seagl.org
or visiting us on IRC on
Freenode in
#seagl.
We are very pleased to announce our 2016 Seattle GNU/Linux conference keynotes: Allison Randal, President of the Open Source Initiative and board member at the Perl Foundation, and Corey Quinn, Director of DevOps at a fintech company and longtime open source contributor.
Allison is also a software developer and open source strategist and a co-founder of the FLOSS Foundations group for open source leaders. She previously served as president of the Perl Foundation, chief architect of the Parrot virtual machine and chairman of the Board at the Parrot Foundation, board member at the Python Software Foundation, Open Source Evangelist and OSCON Conference Chair at O’Reilly Media, and Technical Architect of Ubuntu and Open Source Advisor at Canonical. She collaborates in the Debian, Python, and OpenStack projects, and currently works on open source strategy at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. She’s also been doing a lot of thinking about the future of open source, so we are really excited to hear from her at SeaGL this year!
Corey has a long and storied history as a consultant – long, in that every year he did it felt like three years, and storied, in that he’s got a few. Prior to his current role, he spent most of the past few years at a Bay Area consulting firm, where he served as a systems architect, ad-hoc recruiter, advocate for driving transformational change throughout organizations, and (due to a misunderstanding around what a “standup meeting” really was) an improvisational comic. One of the early developers behind Saltstack, Corey also has a rich history of contributing to various open source projects. Corey is a seasoned speaker with opinions about nearly all things DevOps He isn’t afraid to express these opinions in public, and we expect nothing less from his inaugural keynote at SeaGL.
Both of our keynotes are previous, very much appreciated, regular session SeaGL speakers. If you were wondering, “How would I get to keynote SeaGL someday?” then a fantastic place to start is by submitting a talk to our call for presentations this year!
Nominations are open until August 16th for the second Cascadia Community Builder Award!
This is an award for a local person who has made an outstanding contribution to the free software movement. We will consider the following criteria:
- Someone whose free software work is based in Washington, Oregon, British Columbia or Idaho
- Someone who has applied deep commitment and creativity to growing and broadening the free software community.
- We recognize work in software projects, non-profit organizations, outreach and education, hacker-spaces and/or user groups
- We are also open to any other activity that promotes the adoption and appreciation of free software to more people
- The committee is very interested in individuals who have successfully reached out to traditionally under-represented groups
To nominate someone, please send us an email award@seagl.org with the nominee’s name in the subject line. Great nominations will include what project(s) the nominee is primarily associated with, how long they’ve been active, and links to any posts or stories about their impact on the growth and reach of the free software movement. The more information you can provide, the better. Thanks in advance for helping us honor a great community builder!
If you want to speak with us in real-time, come visit us on IRC on Freenode in #seagl.
Feel free to contact us if you have any questions, either by
emailing participate@seagl.org
or visiting us on IRC on
Freenode in
#seagl.
Office hours – they’re both fun and good for you!
SeaGL is committed to supporting new and local voices. This means we very much want to help you turn your draft or idea into a polished submission by giving you feedback and suggestions in realtime on IRC. Last year we hosted two online proposal help sessions and this year we’ve had five sessions over the last three weeks. The number of submissions has been increasing each week, often during the actual office hours. Go early birds!
But, we know that some of you are procrastinators. (Some of us are too, although we try to keep each other in check…) Anyway, we’ve scheduled one final, four-hour, marathon proposal help session on the day before our CFP closes. If that’s when you’ll be writing your proposal, then swing by #seagl on freenode and get help from our charismatic and knowledgeable volunteers.
If you aren’t already an IRC user, you can still join our office hours. Go to freenode via any web browser. You’ll choose a nickname, type #seagl into the channel box, confirm that you aren’t a robot and then connect.
Or submit your presentation now.
The CFP deadline is midnight PDT, August 1, 2016.
Our talk format is generally 50 minutes of speaking followed by 10 minutes of questions, so one hour total.
Right now, since we’re a relatively new community organized and non-profit event, we’re unable to provide travel funding for speakers.
Feel free to contact us if you have any questions, either by
emailing participate@seagl.org
or visiting us on IRC on
Freenode in
#seagl.