In case you haven't seen my online grumblings or had the pleasure of hearing them in person, I'll repeat myself: Returning home from SCALE 8x in sunny L.A. to several inches of snow and well-below-freezing temperatures in Kansas is cruel and unusual punishment and I wonder what I did to deserve it. Now that I have that off my chest, I'd like to take a moment to thank the SCALE organizers, volunteers, sponsors, exhibitors, speakers, and attendees for what we all agreed was the Best SCALE Ever. (At least until next year.) And a big welcome to all our new readers and subscribers!

SCALE 8x

Over on LXer, Scott posted a nice report from some of the WIOS talks. Malakia and Saskia Wade (offspring of Karsten Wade) and Mirano Cafiero (offspring of Larry Cafiero) gave an entertaining talk about which open source applications they enjoy, and they concluded with a Barbie video they'd created (hilarious!).

Emma Jane Hogbin flew straight from New Zealand to L.A. for SCALE led a couple of talks on documentation and lightning talks. (I'm sure there is something she doesn't do well, but I don't know what that is yet.) I skipped out early from her lighning talks session to catch part of the Ubuntu Lightning talks – this is the good problem that SCALE has (too many attractive sessions and it's hard to pick a favorite, which causes some of us to behave like squirrels darting between rooms trying not to miss a thing and missing things anyway).

Amber Graner's talk looked back at her first year in Ubuntu – and what a wild ride it's been. Sarah Mei shared lessons learned from the San Francisco Ruby community for helping increase participation by women. And Linux Journal's Katherine Druckman gave her first talk, which was well-received and based on her experiences as a one woman web team.

Although I won't win any Emmys for my talk, I might win some kind of prize for shortest and to-the-pointest. In summary: Write an article – it's not as hard as you think.

I didn't get to attend talks the rest of the weekend because our Linux Pro Magazine/Ubuntu User booth was hopping, but I heard nothing but great things about all the other sessions. Over the SCALE weekend I had the chance to meet a lot of first-time attendees (attendance was up 10% this year!), and I saw a bunch of long-time subscribers, familiar faces, and old friends.

UPDATE: Check out Akkana Peck's SCALE 8x post on her Shallow Thoughts blog.

Heros

If you haven't had a chance to read maddog's Heros blog post yet, check it out. I think you'll like it. (This reminds me of a funny story – did I tell you about the children's magazine I created for a class in grad school? I had a typo in my final project and spelled "heroine" like "heroin". Hilarious now, but not so much back then...)

Fabulous Opportunities

As I mentioned, I talked about writing articles at SCALE, and I think you should consider submitting a proposal somewhere if you've ever fantasized about seeing your name and writing in print or online. Check out our writer's guidelines if you'd like to submit a proposal for Linux Pro or Ubuntu User. Leave a comment or shoot me an email if you have questions about the process. Also, Dru Lavigne is always looking for writers for OSBR (The Open Source Business Resource), so check out their upcoming themes.

Don't forget that public speaking isn't as hard or painful as you might think – the LinuxCon call for papers is open until late March and we'd all love to see more women on the list of speakers this year. Check out other upcoming events on our calendar.