The best part about my career is being able to work with the varied and interesting people in the broad Open Source and Free Software community. I was reminded how much I love this career earlier in May, when I attended the GNOME Marketing Hackfest in Zaragoza, Spain. I attended the Hackfest on behalf of my employer, Initmarketing, to help the GNOME Foundation come up with a stellar marketing plan for the GNOME 3 Launch, their most important release in 8 years.

First of all, let me just say that I had a blast. I got to catch up with an old friend, and I met several new ones. Spain is just as amazing as I thought it would be, and the entire week was an experience I will never forget.

Work-wise, it was by far more productive than I could have hoped. You can explore everything we worked on the GNOME Wiki, but I’m just going to touch on the things I helped work on. We managed to draft a basic launch plan, with a communications strategy, a messaging strategy, a design for a GNOME3-specific landing page, a list of multi-media assets that could be created, a thought leadership strategy involving both blogger development and speaker development, marketing collateral for booths and trade shows, and specific messaging for individual distro’s. We were literally scheduled from 8am until the middle of the night, between the hackfest and activities with the local sponsors, and I feel like we accomplished 90 days worth of work in just 4. It was exhilarating, but by the end we were all exhausted.

Now that the strategy work is done, the hard work of implementation starts. My colleagues and I at Initmarketing are very excited to be working with the GNOME Foundation, and are looking forward to GNOME3 being the most successful release in the history of the project.

I’d like to thank everyone who sponsored this Hackfest, including:

• Zaragoza Municipality

• Aragon Regional Government
• Technological Institute of Aragon (ITA)
• ASOLIF
• CESLA

• GNOME Foundation

Software Curators

I was in the Apple store today to ask about the iPad preorders. While I was there, the sales rep asked me why I ran Ubuntu on my laptop. I gave the answer that any iPhone owner will intuitively get: Ubuntu has an “app store”.

Ubuntu Software Center

He said: “Really?”, and nodded sagely as I showed him around the Ubuntu Software Center. Frankly, though, while it’s pithy, it’s not 100% of my reason for loving software on Ubuntu. The real reason is that I can choose Software Curators.

When I enjoy the news somebody collects and shares, I subscribe to their Blog or Twitter Feed. I also subscribe to TV shows in pretty much the same fashion.

On Ubuntu, people can create a Personal Packaging Archive, or PPA. When I subscribe to it, the PPA’s version of software replaces the standard for the operating system. I am effectively subscribing to their software service, for my laptop. Let me give a recent example.

I recently discovered The Elementary Project. Put simply, it’s an attempt to bring a mac-like design sensibility to Ubuntu. It includes an icon set for GNOME, also a windowing theme, a GDM theme, and branched versions of applications like Abiword and Docky. They are constantly improving, and all it takes to adapt your Ubuntu box to use their packages instead of the standard is subscribing to their PPA. I also subscribe to Chromium Betas, and Firefox daily builds.

Being able to subscribe to PPA’s brings an important level of control back to the user. App Stores like the Ubuntu Software Center are nice, because they are an easy way to discover popular software by developers that the Ubuntu Project trusts. PPA’s allow me to also confer my trust on developers, to get access to their apps using the same infrastructure.

From what I hear, the next version of the Ubuntu Software Center will make it easier to browse and subscribe to PPA’s. I get the impression that Ubuntu is the only OS that understands and supports the idea of outsourcing to a trusted software Curator. I’m proud to be an Ubuntu user.

Introducing the P2 theme

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http://ma.tt/2009/05/how-p2-changed-automattic/

I thought I should do another shout out about how awesome P2 is as a theme. Every team should use it to keep dialoge open. Beats mailing lists for coordinating team discussions.

Amazing how quickly filesharing tech innovates. Now you can just add the SHA1 hash (now called “magnet link”) for a file to any modern bittorrent client, without any torrent file or even tracker, and through the magic of DHT+Peer Exchange, it will get you peers which provide the torrent file.

It doesn’t matter now if they shut down torrent sites or even trackers, a short code that can be imbedded as a link on any web page is all people need to share whatever data they want.

Karsten Wade is an excellent speaker, and he just reminded me of the Empire Bias.

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/12/the-empire-bias.html

I’m going to buy a Nexus One next week. I’ve decided.

Thinking about Nexus One compared to iPhone… iPhone you pay about the same per month to AT&T whether you contract in for the subsidized phone or not, so you do, and you pocket the $500 subsidy for something else. For the Nexus One, however, the non-subsidized phone saves $20/month on T-Mobile. You spread out the $350 subsidy over 2 years, as if it was a loan, and it comes out to over 30% per annum interest.

That’s crazy. My worst credit card is better than that. Everyone who buys a Nexus One should just buy the full priced phone and save the $20/month. Basically, it saves you $130 over 2 years.

Other note, has anyone else noticed that phones are more expensive, and more useful, than laptops?

At the Orrick startup breakfast, this CFO lady is awesome. “Know where your chainsaw is.”

Whew. Months pass. It’s harder keeping a blog updated than it looks. More posts coming.

Working on Extension ecosystems for a client. Every Open Source project should have something like the excellent Developer’s Guide at https://developer.mozilla.org/En/Firefox_addons_developer_guide

It’s not yet complete, but already has helped train new developers by the hundreds.