Answered several sets of email interview questions for articles about the Desktop Summit.
Interviewed several more advisory board members. Tried to get the writeup out before GUADEC but didn’t quite manage.
Wrote one last invitation letter for the Desktop Summit/GUADEC attendee who needs it for visa/work reasons. (Sadly a couple of Nigerians and an Iranian didn’t make it for visa reasons.)
Wrote a press release that was delayed for a while … hopefully it’ll come out in a couple of weeks.
Booked travel for OSCON. Short trip to save on hotels and because doing two long trips (GUADEC and OSCON) in one month is too much for my family, especially during the summer.
Looked for other GNOME speakers, especially in Europe, to help out with events where GNOME is invited to speak. (Let me know if you’d like to nominate someone to be added to the list.)
Traveled to the Canary Islands - a long trip. Almost missed my connection in Madrid but thank fully I didn’t and I got to see Chema in the airport.
Attended the press interview for the local Spanish press at the Desktop Summit on Friday. They had questions like what is free software, is it as good as proprietary software, could our government be using it, why isn’t our government using it? The local politician we’ve been working with, Roberto Moreno, is a computer science professor at the local university.
Worked on agenda and location for GUADEC board of directors and board of advisors meeting. (Didn’t finalize board of advisors location until the day before with Rosanna’s help. It was all “mañana.”)
Went to the board of directors meetings. It was productive even if we were all a bit jetlagged. We welcomed Germán and Diego to the board. (Also, because of flight delays, Diego wasn’t able to join us until later.) We talked about logistical things like minutes and roles as well as things like an agenda for the AGM and other things. Minutes will probably come out shortly after everyone gets home from GUADEC.
Went to the opening party sponsored by Canonical. It was good to put faces with a lot of people I’ve met over the past year. (Including a few faces I met last year but didn’t remember since I met so many hundreds of people in that first week on the job …) Also talked to the keynote speakers, Walter Bender and r0ml, about their keynotes …
Pinged about a lot of last minute Desktop Summit details. Most of them are turning out well.
Attended the first day of the Desktop Summit. Went to the keynotes in the morning and then spent the afternoon in the press room. Walter Bender and r0ml’s keynotes were great. Walter has a great project and cause and r0ml is a very entertaining speaker. Richard Stallman’s keynote caused a lot of controversy. (It also had a lot of old content and when keynoting, it’s generally understood that you show something new unless specifically requested to regive an old talk.) The local media was extremely interested in speaking to Stallman and I think he probably helped promote free software in the Canary Islands quite a bit.
Had lunch with the board of directors and Richard Stallman. He reminded us to use free software instead of the term open source software in order to show support for the free software movement. He also wanted to discuss C#/mono. (This was before the latest Microsoft announcement. I don’t know if the conversation would be different now or not.)
I have a very long to do list. This is only part of it. (Anyone is welcome to help out too!) I’ll publish the entire list in an update after the Desktop Summit.