the best things about presenting on technical KDE topics to people who are just now learning how to write KDE software are meeting new people and feeding off their enthusiasm. it reminds me of how i first felt those years ago when i discovered kde 1.9x: amazed, enthused, wanting to get going, like, yesterday and in awe of those who wrote this stuff.
if you want to recapture a bit of your own initial energy, try holding a little workshop somewhere sometime on kde devel. it's truly fun, and osdw.org has a growing number of presentations for them. i'll be uploading the presentations from lca at the end of the week.
last night after speaking for nearly 7 hours during the day i went out for dinner at a nice indian place that was all vegetarian and vegan that was beyond tasty. from there we went to this little pub where everyone was heading to listen to a d.j. show done on linux. the music was less than intriguing for me so i took off down the street with a fellow i met here. as we said "hello, good evening" to every person we passed to engage in a social study of the locals, we found a karaoke place on our way and we decided to send a rescue party back to the pub in the form of a cab.
10 or so people crammed into the cab and came back and we essentially owned the karaoke stage from there on forward. some of the attendees are truly great singers. we finished off the night with a choral rendition of "we all live in a yellow submarine". the entire evening was captured on video. fun.
on the way back to the university res, we passed a pair of young women walking the other way. given that they were dressed in bar clothes and were carrying highball tumblers with the dregs of their last coke-n-something-alcoholic drinks i figured they might know where the dance clubs are. they obliged and told me a very complex story about where the various places are. i'm directionally challenged so i asked if they could draw me a little map or something. one of them obliged and took my pen saying she'd write down how to get to the better places. as she's writing i asked which place it was she was jotting directions for and she says, "oh, this is my house. here's my name too. and my cell." i guess that's sort of like knowing how to get to the dance clubs.
there are also some cool pictures of the kde logo done in sugar i did over lunch yesterday (yes, i get bored easily) that i have to track down and upload.
new kde tag lines: "kde is sweet" and "kde: not bad ... for a beginner!" (the latter is apparently some sort of kiwi in-joke)
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3 comments:
Hi Aaron, I was in your talk yesterday and I have to say (btw in saying this I don't mean to take anything away from your actual presentation) that the Q&A at the end of the first afternoon session was easily the best bit. Entuisiasm is obviously important in the open source world and the perception of community open source development being hard to get into is very true. I hate to say it but in part, I believe that some OSS projects are actually to blame.
Personally my first community open source experience was a negative one with the people already involved in the project acting superior and generally unwelcoming. Its a real turn off, especially for a newbie.
Its great to hear that this is the exception rather than the rule. :)
The music at the Arc didn't suit you? Conrad did some pretty rad live mixing. :)
Either way, good to know that you guys had fun after we parted at that traffic lights. We ust went back and then to sleep.
Cheers.
Aaron-
Sounds like you're having fun. Miss having you here to help ebb the tide that is Sharon =)
Safe travelling,
Katie
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