ROSE Blog: Rikki's Open Source Exchange

Free Pass to SharePoint Technology Conference: Feb. 7-9

Jan 13, 2011 GMT

The 2011 SharePoint Technology Conference (SPTechCon) will be held February 7-9 in San Francisco, California. We have 2 Three-Day Full Event Passports to give away (valued at US$ 1,595 each). The passes include all workshops, sessions, meals, receptions and materials (airfare and/or lodging not included; non-transferable; no cash value; yadda yadda).If you would like to use one of these free passes to attend the SPTechCon 2011 event, please email me with the subject line "Free Pass to SPTechCon" and tell me why you would like to go to this event. Also, please let me know whether you'd be willing to write up a brief event report for us to use online or in Admin magazine.

ROSE Blog Interviews: Alison Chaiken, MeeGo Technical Consultant at Nokia

Jan 07, 2011 GMT

  I met Alison Chaiken at LinuxCon 2010 in Boston, not long after she joined Nokia as a MeeGo Technical Consultant. If you want to learn How to induce your Fedora user process to drop core for debugging purposes, how to run PCBSD and MeeGo under qemu-kvm and qemu-gl, or learn about ubiquitous, pervasive computing; flexible displays and printed electronics; biomechanics and DNA melting; structural and electronic properties of indium selenide thin films; magnetism, giant magnetoresistance and exchange coupling and much more, then check out Alison's website: exerciseforthereader.org. Perhaps if you're lucky, she'll even tell you what your...

AndroidGals Seeks Contributors

Jan 07, 2011 GMT

In the latest issue of Linux Pro Magazine, I wrote about mobile app development startups and the new job opportunities around mobile technology. I also mentioned that we're accepting article proposals for our new magazine, Smart Developer. The AndroidGals website is also looking for contributors: WANTED: Females who have an opinion on Android! I certainly don't have time to contribute because I'm much too busy playing WordFeud with strangers on my HTC Incredible, but maybe you have more bandwidth than I do. (I also love my RunKeeper app and couldn't get anywhere without Google Maps on my phone.)Happy Androiding!

Debian Women IRC Training

Dec 15, 2010 GMT

In November, the Debian Women project started a series of online training sessions, which are held in IRC. The December 9, 2010 session covered how to use the bug tracking system and now the tutorial is available online. The next session will be held tomorrow (December 16th) and will cover Debian package information: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianWomen/TrainingSessions

How Big Can a Little Girl Dream?

Dec 10, 2010 GMT

  Normally I wouldn't write about children's books on this blog, but today I'm making an exception. My 14-year-old daughter and I listen to NPR each morning as I take her to school. This morning we listened to the Fresh Delivery: Indie Booksellers Pick 2010 Favorites piece. Several books on the list sounded intriguing, but one title stood out: My Name Is Not Isabella: Just How Big Can A Little Girl Dream? (Ok, two titles: The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating also sounds interesting, but that's a different post entirely.) According to her site, the book's author, Jennifer Fosberry "... is a science geek turned children’s book writer....

Anti-harassment Policy for Open Source Conferences

Dec 02, 2010 GMT

Valerie Aurora wrote an excellent article for lwn.net, The Dark Side of Open Source Conferences. Currently, the article is only available to lwn.net subscribers, but you can write to Valerie to get the link, or wait until the post is publicly available in a few days. In her article, Valerie talks about the bad experiences several women have had at open source events over the years, and she discusses the recently created generic anti-harassment policy for open source conferences. "Judging from the past ten years of my experience, harassment at open source conferences is not going to stop all by itself. We have to take action," she says.Valerie says that she decides which events...

A Professor's Perspective on Open Source in Academia

Dec 02, 2010 GMT

In the past, I've written about Mel Chua and Red Hat's POSSE (Professor's Open Source Summer Experience). Now Heidi Ellis, Associate Professor and Chair of the Computer Science and Information Technology department at Western New England College, shares her thoughts on the differences between the open source and academic communities. Ellis says, "The open source way is very opportunistic and flexible, while academia is very planned and structured." Ellis goes on to say, "Clearly, there are also large differences in culture. But I think that collaboration between open source and academic realms can work, as there are also some strong commonalities between the groups."...