Post-Portland Probabilities

You might have found it odd that I did not blog leading up to Lindependence Portland.

Or not.

The fact is that I had to give two presentations at Oregon State University on the Thursday before the event, and that took a significant deal of preparation. No one recognizes more than I do the complete irony of yours truly — a first-year computer science student — giving a lecture on Open Source to graduate students in a software engineering class. Also, the presentations for Fedora in both the class and at the OSU Linux Users Group, compounded by a 19-hour train ride (sans Internet) up the coast, left me a tad beat up and not raring to blog.

However, the Portland Lindependence event arrived on Saturday, Oct. 25, at the new offices of TouchStone Technologies in Beaverton. Ken Starks, also known as the blogger known as Helios, wrote a pretty detailed blog about the event here. And, no, I didn’t really step on Ken’s foot. There’s not much I can add to this blog item, so I won’t.

But what I did want to talk about, here and in upcoming blogs, is the future of Lindependence and where we’re going from here.

First things first: As the likelihood that Portland is the last event for 2008, Lindependence’s future looks very bright as we head into 2009. We have a couple of towns already locked on the radar and it appears that we’re going to start the year in California and New Mexico, and hopefully we can balance the locations to somewhere cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter. Though ideal, that’s not really a parameter for having Lindependence events.

What’s most promising about this is that people are picking up the ball and taking responsibility for hosting their own events. Just as David Kaplan did in Portland, others are writing and saying, “So, how do I do this?” Unfortunately, David didn’t have the benefit of a manual, but those in the future will.

Someone earlier this year outlined how the Lindependence events spurs a sort of a LUG renaissance, and for the most part this person is right. I would give this person a name, except it was penned by an alias on a forum somewhere (if he or she wants to contact me, I’d be glad to give you full credit). Long gone are the secret handshakes and the special language (although the language still exists, but it’s not as mysterious as it once was), and now LUG meetings are less the geekfests they once were and more all-inclusive and more comfortable for a computer-using public that seeks digital alternatives but are not obsessed by their technology.

The bus is traveling now, picking up passengers at every stop. If you’re not on it already, get on at the next stop.

Not AWOL, not MIA, but WMAO

You may have noticed a telltale absence on this blog for the last several days, but I can assure you that I have been neither Away Without Leave (AWOL) nor Missing in Action (MIA).

I’ve been WMAO.

Yes, “Working My A** Off” would get those who guessed that acronym a proverbial stuffed animal at this carnival booth.

So I have to apologize for those regular visitors to this blog for my absence, as well as to apologize to everyone else for not haunting the IRC channel (I can’t get behind the firewall at the newspaper, for starters) as much as I should, nor being here to blog as often as I should.

Until Lindependence moves on to another community, lately I live my life in a series of lists; or, like T.S. Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock, “I have measured out my life in coffee spoons” (to say nothing of the amount of coffee I drink to keep going).  Blogging is always on the list and sometimes, like right now, it makes it to the top and it gets done. Other times, it doesn’t, and hence the unintentional silence.

I can assure you that on top of the list tomorrow — or even later tonight, if I finish my list of things to do and get a head start on July 1 — will be the downloadable release of the window posters and fliers that we’ll be giving out at the Felton Farmers Market tomorrow afternoon. Watch this space.

Hurry up and wait

Much of the project at this point seems to be in a “hurry-up-and-wait” mode, where I’m waiting on people to get back to me, or I’m missing people, or people are missing me, and connections aren’t being made. It’s enough to make one give out a more-than-audible “argh” to make others’ heads turn.

No matter: With everything essentially on schedule, it’s a minor inconvenience. Don’t worry — we’ll get ‘em next time, as they say in baseball.

[Speaking of which, both Ken and I are having some problems today with the fixedbylinux.com e-mail address, so if something bounces back from my address -- lcafiero-at-fixedbylinux-dot-com -- then you can send it to my Gmail account, which is larry-dot-cafiero-at-gmail-dot-com.]

One very promising sign today is that we’re starting to get local people to volunteer — and today a couple of guys from Hollister in San Benito County (the county southeast of Santa Cruz) have weighed in; one of them ready to plant the Mepis flag (Mepis, for those of you keeping score at home, has been somewhat cool to Lindependence; AntiX — the Mepis deriviative for older machines — has been on-board since the start). Add these to the group from Cabrillo and an additional volunteer and we’re ramping up for a well-staffed event with people willing to share what we already know.

The letters are ready to go. We’ll be sending those out on Friday. Signs are ready, too. They’ll go up over the weekend and some are already up in a couple of businesses in the area. I had to break the news to Hai at the Cornerstone Auto Center at the traffic light that I may have to put off the front end wheel bearing job I wanted to have done this Friday in order to make the postage for the mailer, but first things first.

The IRC channel is somewhere between application and reality. Keep an eye out for #lindependence on FreeNode.

A shout out to those who know the right thing to do: Thanks, Amenditman, for your presence on the various forums promoting the project. Volunteers like this are vital to the success of this project, and I’m grateful. By all means, keep it up.

One more thing: An apology to any and all of you who I may not have e-mailed or called back in the last few days. It has been a blur as the final touches are being put on this masterpiece. I can only beg your pardon and don’t hesitate to contact me on multiple occasions, if need be, to get my attention.