2012 Texas Linux Fest - ambassadors - Fedora mailing-lists

14 Aug 2012


      I flew into San Antonio on the afternoon of August 3rd. Due the late
scheduling of some of the activities on Friday I was too late to
organize a Fedora BoF which I would really have enjoyed doing. I also
unfortunately arrived in town just a little too late to attend the
speaker's dinner. So I got checked into the hotel, touched base with
Andrew Ward to make sure he made it to town and everything was in good
shape for the booth the next day, worked a bit on my talk, then headed
to the hotel lobby in the hope of bumping into someone I knew.
And in walks Adam Miller (maxamillion), a friend of several years. We
met in #rhel what seems a long time ago now, roomed together at the
Toronto FUDCon, and generally bump into each other online. After a
short dinner break we sat and talked about a variety of current issues
well past my bedtime. Time well spent. Headed back to my room for a
bit more preparation and then to bed.
Morning came early but mercifully the event did not begin at the crack
of dawn. The expo was supposed to open around 10:00 so I found my way
to the venue, got registered, and headed to the expo hall in time for
the opening. Or so I thought. When I arrived Andrew already had the
booth completely set up and it was humming with activity well before
10:00. Since my talk wasn't until mid-afternoon I spent most of the
morning hanging around the expo hall.
It was nice to run into old friends like Carl Thompson from Rackspace
(thanks Carl for the Rackspace swag), David Nalley from Citrix (thanks
David for the tasty Angus beef and cheddar sandwich), and Thomas
Cameron from Red Hat.
The Fedora booth was absolutely insane all morning. I believe the
official attendance at the event was a bit under 500 people but the
Fedora booth was hopping most of the day. There were lots of questions
about new features in Fedora 17, about what the heck is this Beefy
Miracle name, about how to get involved with Fedora (we have several
new contributors already doing things who got started at the event),
and a lot of positive feedback along with a little negative.
I wandered off to lunch with David Nalley where we chatted mostly
about Fedora related things, then a little more preparation for my
afternoon talk about demoggification. My talk was a slightly reworked
version of the talk I gave at the Southeast LinuxFest earlier this
summer in Charlotte, NC. The room was much larger and so was the
audience. Had the chance to briefly meet Nate Willis from LWN right
before the talk. The talk went really well and again I got a lot of
feedback from people who attended it throughout the rest of the event.
After handing the reins of the projector over to Thomas Cameron I
headed back to the booth. In the afternoon things slowed down a bit
during talks but that gave us a chance to speak more in depth to those
who stopped by. I want to give a quick shout out to Aaron Marshall,
Chris Caillouet, and Stuart Yarus. It was really great talking to each
of you and the others who I sadly can't remember by name since I'm an
old guy with questionable ability to recall names. The expo closed
down around 6:00 and Andrew did all the work cleaning up after the
event. Fedora is lucky to have had two superstars spending most of the
day at the Fedora booth. A big thank you to both Andrew and Adam for
all their help.
If you get the chance next year go to the Texas Linux Fest. It is a
growing young event with really great people. Tons of positive energy
and enthusiasm everywhere. I hope I am lucky enough to get invited
again because I had a great time this year and this appears to be a
very receptive crowd for Fedora to draw new contributors from in the
future.
John