ROSE Blog: Rikki's Open Source Exchange

I woke up in Atlanta at 4:30AM and arrived in Portland, Oregon, 11 hours later. With my remaining two brain cells, I offer you this list:

1. Atlanta Linux Fest was wonderful! A big thanks to all the organizers and volunteers – they really kept their cool, which is extra impressive considering about 600 people made appearances at the event throughout the day. If you missed this year's event, be sure to check out the big Ubuntu announcement video now on Youtube. I caught Kirrily Robert's keynote, Amber Graner's leadership talk, and Ellen Ko's discussion of Google Summer of Code, and I enjoyed getting some one-on-one face time with each of these inspirational women. In addition to seeing a bunch of familiar faces at the event, I also enjoyed meeting some new folks (and twitter-friends). A room full of people turned out for my talk and I can't thank them enough for their encouragement and kind words. I'm already looking forward to Atlanta Linux Fest 2010.

2. Our columnist and blogger Bruce Byfield recently wrote an article about women in open source called Sexism: Open Source Software's Dirty Little Secret, so be sure to check that out.

3. LinuxToday's Carla Schroder started a new Sexism in FOSS series last week. She started the series with a nice overview of some not-so-nice incidents that stand out, and I'm looking forward to seeing how her series develops.

4. Con-Techie's Kendra "Admin" Schaefer posted an interview with me over on the Con-Techie site. And if you have no interest in reading that interview, at least check out the site for the handy event listings and updates.

5. Tomorrow LinuxCon kicks off and even if you can't make it to Portland you can still catch the keynotes via the Free Live Stream.

6. I'm traveling for the rest of this week so my web-surfing time will be limited. Let me know if there's some women in open source news, events, and other goodness I shouldn't miss.

7. At OSCON, a couple of amazing women in open source recommended a delicious, entertaining book series I should read. I started book #1 in the PDX airport after OSCON, and I read book #6 on my flight here for LinuxCon (I dug into books #2-4 in between, and accidentally skipped #5, which I just bought at PDX when I landed). If you want a fun, light book series recommendation that has absolutely nothing to do with open source (with the exception of that OSCON recommendation), email me. ;-)