Open Source Day.
March 11th, 2005Today was a hard hitting day for open source, Oregon, and what I know about it. Woke up at 6:30am to head up to the Innotech (yes, like office space) conference. Brandon and I were supposed to be lackeys for Scott while he moderated a panel between IBM, Novell, OSDL, and Microsoft. The panelists ended up bickering a lot. This was the first panel (of this type) I had seen, so I am not sure if bickering is a normal thing. None the less it was good entertainment.
The real fun came when I went and found the OSL booth at the actual conference. The booth was split between College of Engineering, and the Open Source Lab. It was almost like it was Open Source and COE at last. Ironically, our (OSL) half of the 8ft tabled attracted waaaay more traffic then our (COE) other half. I know, I know, its not a competition, however I think we proved a point. One of the key factors to having Open Source in COE happen is to have people clammering at the doors of COE absolutely begging for it. This is happening. A person walked directly up to Chris Bell and said something to the effect of “Thank you so much for providing open source in education. You guys are on the right track.” I smirked.
So yeah, the conference is was fun. I found out about myself that I really enjoy telling people about open source, and generally advocating things I enjoy. At the core of all this I feel that I simply enjoy getting people excited about what I am excited about. Just so happens I am excited about a world revolutionizing movement in my discipline.
Once I got back from the conference I spent a few hours doing communications homework. Killed sometime doing that, then started reading the news online. I quickly searched “Open Source”, just to see what was up, and the first hit was about LaVonne Reimer in Beaverton. That reminded me, I was supposed to be meeting with her! I went and met up with LaVonne and Cheryl because they stayed at Weatherford tonight! This was _very_ interesting. If are you are unfamiliar with LaVonne, then you are a minority. She is the director of the brand spanking new Open Technology Business Center. They are all fired up about open source (as they should be). We discussed open source, running over children, cheating Harvard students, and some sort of skate board motorcycling. Very very enlightening. I am going to continue to meet up with them in the morning.
Such a conversation really makes me appreciate the value that Weatherford has brought. I was able to sit one on one with big players in my industry, and let my voice be heard. For most students (at least in my hall) the value seems to come from the drinking and screaming that is oh so fun at 1am. I am encouraged to see a program that is strong enough to create collaboration, even in such a hostile environment. The more I think about it, the more I hope to stay at Weatherford.
I suppose it will all work out in the end. Just be passionate about something in the mean time.
