This is the 1st post in my MoFo Futures 2009 blog series. | Post 2 »

Christmas is nearly upon the Christian and Consumerist parts of the globe. Along much of my latitude, snow is piling up in record quantities and weather warnings abound. Even in oft-green Vancouver, there is a foot or so of the white stuff accumulated in my yard and the parking lot outside my window often echos with the sounds of snow-beached cars helplessly spinning their wheels.

Usually all these things taken together would mean a series of harrowing drives to visit family, followed by lovely hours staying warm indoors, eating comfort food, retelling old stories and enjoying the company of loved ones as the year draws to its close.

However, this year our family time is coming after the holidays and I'm left with the unexpected gift of a week or so of free time.

…

• Two days in Frankfurt, two days in Munderkingen and two days in Heidelberg between December 5th and 17th. Mostly just ordinary working and travel days.
• Visited Sandro Groganz of Init Marketing in Munderkingen. Worked from Sandro's house after a nice dinner on Sunday.
• Caught up with (and was interviewed by) Rory MacDonald of Init Marketing while he was vacationing near Ulm. The interview was focused on Mozilla and should go online in the new year on http://www.initmarketing.tv
• Visited Georg Richter of …

I’ve started working on a session on the practice of online ombuds ? especially as it applies to Free Software and Open Source communities. The session is based on my work in the Free Software, PHP, Mozilla, MySQL and Open Source communities - in particular, recent work (which I need to get back to) on the Open Source Initiative mailing lists.

So far, the session has been pitched to the following events: CommunityOne 2008 (waiting), FOSDEM 2008 (accepted), JavaOne 2008 (declined), Open Web Vancouver 2008 (waiting) and OSCON 2008 (waiting).

I’ll start posting alpha versions of slides and so on as they are ready. …

In 2002, a short while after I started at MySQL, I saw Lawrence Lessig present at OSCON. The presentation was extraordinarily good and Lessig is a tremendously passionate, genuine and compelling orator.

I immediately revised my presentation style. I stole what ideas and style I could. While I was mostly presenting about MySQL and PHP at the time, the ideas served me well (though the style has at times fit me about as well as a young child fits their parent’s clothes.)

Five years have passed since then, and I have given a hundred or more presentations. Never have I presented as well as Lessig that night, but I still keep trying. In a few days, I am going to have to try a lot harder.
…

This weekend, Monty and I got together for a different kind of hacking session.

Instead of developing software, we were working on developing a set of rough principles and rules for running a Free Software/Open Source business. We both have a good amount of experience working with various FLOSS projects (like Mozilla, MySQL, PHP, etc.) and FLOSS companies (like eZ Systems, Mozilla, MySQL, Zend, etc.) and hope that we can put this experience to good use.

For me, this was a tremendous help - I’ve been putting off working on this for Foo Associates for some months now. It is much easier to work on meeting the needs of customers than it is to work on planning for the future.

The notes are still extremely rough, but both Monty and I want to post them so that people can discuss. Also, …

Summary

A good week - we made progress on the Internet as Public Good Symposium, which is the major task on my Mozilla plate right now. However, an unexpected event at another client meant that my Friday was a bit messed up. Will work on reviewing bugs and other missed responsibilities over the weekend.

Activities

• Worked with Berkman and Harvard Business School teams to help plan and present the Internet as Public Good Symposium.
  • Event wiki now online, but still private. - started putting in content. Will make public after panel participants have a chance to review.
  • Conf. call with available IPG team members to sort out logistics, invitations and distribute tasks.
  • Set up database to store info on who’s invited, who’s coming and so on.
• Minor bits of work helping Mozilla Corp. team plan their OSCON presence …

Ilan Rabinovitch let me know that the SCALE team is getting started on version 5x of the SoCal Linux Expo.

In past years, SCALE has been a great community event - the ratio of promoters to real Linux enthusiasts is low and the attendees are friendly. Also, like most other Linux conferences, attendees have a strong interest in many other FLOSS community issues and technologies, like BSD, Firefox, Apache, PHP, MySQL, Free Software licensing and so on. Hopefully I can attend this year (and can wear both my eZ hat and my Mozilla hat for the event).

The event will happen from February 10-11 and will be held at the Westin Los Angeles Airport hotel.

Get more details at: …