If you have never been to a UTOS Project Day, you just might want to attend. There have been 3 previously successful Project Day events and this one looks to be as awesome! In fact, just for attending and working on your project, there will be a raffle for a Motorola XOOM!

But really, that’s not why you should attend.

I will be there! :)

Oh, that’s not enough? Here are 5 excellent reasons to attend!

1. It’s Software Freedom Day and what better way to come down and work on a Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) project
2. There will be a bunch of other folks there too, working on interesting projects
3. Many will be willing to collaborate with you and discuss your project
4. Free food and snacks throughout the day
5. Helping out the Utah Open Source Foundation with its efforts for UTOSC 2012 next spring

Add your project

If you would like help with your project, it’s a good idea to add it to the list. If you are looking for a project, check out the entries and see if there is something there that interests you. Either way, there will likely be more projects than what is currently listed.

So come on down!

I know quite a few folks who will be interested in staying later as well at a local coffee shop or similar and hacking well into the evening. Don’t let the draw of a football game get you distracted, there will be plenty of time to watch it on DVR on Sunday afternoon!

Cheers,

Herlo

You know, I’ve always enjoyed that statement.  I love hearing it over the PA at the circus, at a restaurant when someone is about to make an announcement, or at a the start of a presentation at a conference.  Not sure why, but it just gets me all excited about the world, the future and I perk up wide-eyed with anticipation of what’s going to happen next…

I’m as excited as ever to say these words myself.  I’m so happy, in fact, that I wanted to share it with you, my dear audience.  My friends, colleagues, fellow UTOS compatriots, I would like to share with you some wonderful news!  The future is bright for free and open source software right here in our fine state.

Just look around you and you will see companies coming into Utah right and left.  While some do not appear open source friendly, don’t be fooled, they want you with your amazing Linux skills, or incredible Python Fu.  It’s you they want, Miss PHP master, scripting fiend, fanciful master of kickstart!  The real question though, will be, where will these companies look for their talent?

In my opinion, they will look to the great technical community already here in Utah.  They will strive to find and hire the best and brightest from our ranks.  They will want to hire those from our communities of experts, skilled craftsman, coders, system administrators and much, much more.  It is my belief that they will want to hire from those of you who participate in our Local User Groups and directly with Utah Open Source.

I say these things with great fervor and joy.  I’d like to announce the 2011 theme of Utah Open Source, ‘Community’.

My departure from the Executive Director position leaves me to work more closely with the UTOS board of directors.  In my stead, Victor Villa will take the responsibilities and leadership of the Executive Director.

Victor comes to UTOS with a great deal of community leadership.  As the former president of the Utah PHP User Group for the past several years, Victor grew the local PHP community every year.  He’s been a great supporter of UTOS since its inception in 2006.  With his foresight and leadership, I know that UTOS will continue to grow and flourish.  I am excited to pass the baton of leadership of UTOS to a man I have grown to admire and appreciate. Thank you Victor for taking on the role of leading Utah Open Source into this bright future!

During our conversations, I’ve asked Victor to spend some extra time during 2011 focusing on community growth and development.  With this in mind, Victor and I agree that 2011 will be a year of community building.  In 2012, the Utah Open Source Conference will return.  I will let Victor respond to my comments, with a post of his own, addressing the rest of his vision for UTOS.  I’m truly excited to be a part of UTOS, and with all of the goals Victor has set forth, I am very excited for the future!

Thank you for letting me be part of this community.  I will never forget you.  I will miss you all so very much when our family moves to Southern California in the fall.

Much Joy and Excitement,

Your friend,

Clint

Well, as you probably know, I am the originator and current manager of the Utah Open Source Conference.  As it turns out, this year, I am also presenting on a topic I’ve been working on for quite some time.  If you haven’t already, register for the conference and come see my presentation.

I’m presenting FreeSeeR: Capturing audio and video on the cheap, a talk about recording audio and video using completely free software and the best hardware at the lowest prices.

Also, all of our conference presentations this year are going to be recorded using FreeSeer.  This will be a fun and exciting experiment as FreeSeeR has been proven to work well in a conference environment.

I’m really excited to be sharing this information and meeting friends old and new.  I sure hope you can make it to the conference and possibly my presentation as well.

Cheers,

Herlo

I mean it, It really has changed…just over two months ago, my son Alexander James was born.  He was 6 weeks early.  Wow, it’s been a ride.  I had to take some time off from my extracurricular duties and focus on family, myself and work only.  It was an interesting opportunity to introspect and think about my future.

I also have more change in my life in the next year than I believe I have ever had in any one year period in my life.  This change is good change.  This change is good for more than just me; it’s good for my two sons, and my future wife.  This change is going to make our lives different than they’ve ever been.  At least from my perspective, it’s a HUGE change.

So what is this change, you ask.  Well, maybe you didn’t ask, but I’m going to pretend you asked, because well, I’m going to tell you anyway.  Some of you might even care what the change is and how my life is going to change.

Back in April or May, I was approached about returning to teaching Linux classes.  The classes I would teach would be from the Red Hat Curriculum.  As I’ve always had a passion for teaching, I really liked the prospect, but I had a few hurdles to manage before I could really go forth with this idea.

Essentially, I had agreed to a non-compete with one of my former employers, which prevented me teaching Linux classes for any of their competitors until June this year.  The job I will be taking teaching for Red Hat would definitely be considered one of their competitors.  The other was expected delivery of our son AJ in August required me to have insurance and boy am I glad I did.  Because he came early, the insurance I had with my former company essentially saved us from bankruptcy.

With these two considerations in mind, I decided to stay until the end of August, then leave for this new position.

I’ve been employed for the last year and half at Backcountry.com.  They are a great company and their Site Operations (read Infrastructure) staff is amazing.  I was blessed with the opportunity to work with some of the smartest people I’ve ever worked.  I was also very blessed to work at a job that challenged me to no end.  But in the end, my passions got me, of which there have always been a few…

The first passion I have, is my family.  I actually never thought I’d be in a situation where I would have two children from different mothers.  I had sworn off dating, marriage, family (beyond my son, Shaun) for good.  But then along came this amazing woman who turned my life back around, and made me want to share my life with her and what will become our amazing family.  We’ve already started, with AJ coming six weeks early on July 2, we’re proud new parents with some very unique challenges.

Another passion I have, teaching and training.  I accidentally fell into a training role back in 2003, when I was forced to get a job to pay for child support right after my divorce.  Luckily for me, it was the best accident professionally that I could have had.  It allowed me to show my talents and skillset to those who really could benefit from my passion and enjoyment of sharing how technology works.  With the exception of the 21 month sabbatical from training that is about to end, I hope to be in some sort of educational role for my remaining professional years.

Lastly, while there are many other passions, I’ll discuss my love for free and open source software.  To me, it’s almost like my religion.  I believe in it so strongly, and think that there are so many things that FOSS communities can and do provide to help others, I want it to always be a part of me.  I especially want to instill in my children the importance of openness and sharing, and FOSS really allows me to give a very credible and altruistic vision of these ideals.  For me, it’s been a passion of mine for more than 6 years and I’ve spent a good portion of that helping with two big organizations, the Utah Open Source Foundation and the Fedora Project.

These passions keep me going, which brings me to the whole point of all that I’ve said.  My days are numbered here in Utah.  Yes, I’ve said it, I’ve loved living here in Utah all my life, but it’s time to move to pursue the first of my passions, my family.  Because I’ve been here in Utah so long, it’s been a very difficult decision to make and one that I’ve not come to lightly.  In fact, I’ve been debating when would be the right time, and I know that now is the time.

My son, Shaun, lives in Los Alamitos, California, and has lived there with his mother for more than 5 years.  I’ve done my best to be a good father at more than 700 miles away, but I don’t think I can ignore a few very important years coming up.  Shaun is now 10 years old, and will be coming into manhood in the coming years.  Because of this, I believe that I need to be nearer to him to help him deal with many of the tough challenges he will face as he becomes a teenager and starts to pursue more adult activities.  I want to be there for him, and I think it’s very valuable for him to be a big part of our now growing family.

So, where does this leave my other passions.  Specifically some big loves I’ll have to leave behind here in Utah.  My family has always been here and I’ll miss them sorely.  The Utah Open Source Foundation and Conference as well as the Local User Groups.  I love the mountains here, the beauty and especially, the people.  I’ll miss you dearly, I surely will.

Lest you think that I’ll be in a hurry to leave, it’s not the case.  I’m starting a new job next week, September 12, as a contract instructor.  Again I will be teaching Red Hat classes.  My plans to move to California require that I am able to sell my house and that means it will require some fix ups first.  All in all, I believe our family will be moved to Southern California sometime in late summer or early fall of 2011.

In the coming weeks, the Utah Open Source Conference will be happening.  It’s been a passion of mine for now 4-1/2 years.  My leadership as the Chief Executive of the Foundation and manager of the conference will end at the end of 2010.  I believe now is the time for UTOS to have a new leadership and new life. One of the big tenets of the free and open source community is that leadership should change regularly.  In this way, I look forward to many more UTOS events and especially the great tradition of UTOSC.

Hopefully at the Utah Open Source Conference, we’ll be able to nominate and elect new leadership for both the Utah Open Source Foundation Core Team and Board of Directors.  Their roles will start at the beginning of 2011 and transitions will likely happen in late 2010. I plan to run for the Board of Directors.  In this way, I will maintain a less day-to-day role in UTOS and more an administrative and support role to the new Chief Executive as well as providing support to the new and continuing members of both the Core Team and Board.

Now that this post has become somewhat of a novel, I’ll just say one more thing.  I’ve really enjoyed being a part of the the community here in Utah.  I’m excited for my future and the future of my family and look forward to many more great years of watching Utah’s tech and free software communities grow!  It’s always been the goal of UTOS to ‘Help Open Source Grow in Utah and the Mountain West’ and I see great things now and in the future!

Cheers,

Clint

Just a quick reminder to all of you out there who might be considering submitting a paper for the Utah Open Source Conference coming up this October 7-9.  The call for papers is coming to a close on August 1 so hurry up and get it submitted :)  I’m planning on submitting a paper for FreeSeer and will likely also present on the State of UTOS at the conference.

Cheers,

Herlo

This project was dreamed up by Mr. Ian Weller and he graciously let me tag along to get the thing going.  At the Utah Open Source Conference tomorrow, we’re going to be digging into a workflow and concept around the items needed to make FES work.  We’ll be hanging out from 12:30-5pm in room 209 while we work on the project, feel free to drop by and ask questions as well.

So if you are interested in FES, come join us at UTOSC or remotely in #fedora-fad on irc.freenode.net

Cheers,

Herlo

And if you know anyone else who might be interested, that would be useful as well.

If you are, or know of someone, who is interested in helping print and pass out flyers for UTOSC 2009, please send an email to volunteer@utos.org with the subject line ‘UTOSC 2009 Flyers’.  Include the college you attend so we can keep track of the schools we have distributed flyers.  This is a first-come-first-served kind of opportunity, so act fast!!

Cheers,

Clint

21:37 <herlo> did you say you were willing to cook breakfast for us during UTOSC ??
21:37 <herlo> :-P
21:37 <herlo> I couldn’t remember if you agreed, or balked
21:37 <Jennifer> I did. I will make sure I don’t work so I can do it properly.
21:37 <Jennifer> 5 people, right. Plus us, of course.
21:38 <Jennifer> ?
21:38 <herlo> yeah
21:38 <Jennifer> Yep, for 3 days? I can do that. :)
21:38 <herlo> so far, I have Ian, Scott, Larry and Mirano and possibly Scott (from LA)
21:39 <herlo> it does mean that it has to be ready kind of early though…
21:40 <JenniferDean> Yep
21:40 <herlo> kk, grerat!
21:40 <herlo> or just great!
21:40 <JenniferDean> That’s what prep the night before is for
21:40 <herlo> lol, yeah
21:41 <JenniferDean> The only rule is: stay out while I’m cooking. Lol

So as you can see, I just had to comment about it right now!  Jennifer is awesome!

Looks like our guests will be well taken care of during UTOSC 2009!!

See you all there! October 8-10, 2009.  Register today!

Cheers,

Herlo

Looking forward, I’m thinking a lot about the tracks we’ll be having at UTOSC 2009.  I’m wondering what others think, but I want to have at least Developer, Business and Beginner tracks.  I know that Laura Moncur and I have are already been discussing the beginner track, so that’s very exciting.

So here’s my thinking, if you want to see a particular presentation at UTOSC 2009, comment here, or on one of the blog posts on utos.org.  In addition, when we put the call for papers out, we’ll try to do a similar thing to other open source conferences, like open source bridge, linuxfest northwest and others have done.  We’ll show you all of the presentation submissions.  We’re also hoping to alter our voting system to allow anyone who has registered for the conference to vote for or against a particular presentation.

I’m getting really excited about the Utah Open Source Conference 2009.  I hope you all are too.

Cheers,

Herlo

After creating the Fedora Project Mind Map, I was better able to understand how UTOS was currently structured.  I was able to put together the main pieces pretty quickly, although it seems there are several gaps in my thought process still.  For that reason, I’m opening the UTOS structure up as well.  It might not have as many contributors, but I’d like to see the structure grow.