26 Jan 2010
– lizhenry
I participated in the great geek love-fest that was DrupalSouth Wellington, and the online love-fest on identi.ca and twitter that accompanied it. I think the frenzy reached its greatest heights during Angela Byron’s demonstration of Drupal 7, the upcoming major upgrade with innumerable awesome features and improvements. Some of the geeks who did not attend DrupalSouth were less than enthusiastic about our enthusiasm, and my non-geek friends who were following along on Facebook were very confused. It is perhaps too much enthusiasm over a computer program, but DrupalSouth brought together about 100 people united over a single obsession, in a more concentrated form than linux.conf.au (LCA).
Drupal is a content management framework used to build websites ranging from small individual sites to some of the largest in the world. Like Linux and the kind of project that gets featured at LCA, Drupal is open source software and is motivated by the same principles of grassroots software development and community support. DrupalSouth piggybacked on LCA so that some of the international superstars of Drupal development could attend both events.
As at LCA, my DrupalSouth presentation was scheduled relatively early in the programme which meant that I was able to enjoy most of the event without speaker anxiety. While my LCA presentation was an introduction to humanities computing through the example of Founders and Survivors, the DrupalSouth one was a case study of how and why I used Drupal for F&S and some of the challenges that I had encountered. Even though I did less intentional preparation for this talk than for the LCA one, I felt more confident about it and got more directly useful feedback. I was speaking to a group of Drupal fanatics about how I used Drupal, so in the discussion/feedback we were able to get into the details of making good use of the system. I also received generally encouraging and enthusiastic feedback. I was surprised at how many people were genuinely interested in my talk and our project, but I shouldn’t be. The Drupal user base seems to be more diverse and multi-faceted than the traditional LCA population – DrupalSouth was not for people who were single-mindedly focused on low level programming and engineering.
On Saturday night some of us adjourned to the hotel for an impromptu hackfest where Angela and Emma Jane led us through various ways of contributing to Drupal development (coding, code reviews, themes, documentation…). After this I felt that with a bit of preparation (i.e. becoming more familiar with PHP) I could really contribute to the Drupal community… and I want to do this. I have been sitting on the sidelines of the free software movement for over ten years, and have contributed to it by trying to evangelise, but it has taken me this long to find a specific project that I think I understand well enough, and that is so important to me that I want to help out (and feel that I can).
At every previous LCA that I have attended, I have grumbled about how isolated I feel within the free software movement. Preparing my talk and going to DrupalSouth has given me an insight that is painfully, stupidly obvious. I feel isolated because I am isolated. For most of the year, I work, study and socialise with historians, public health scholars, theologians and church geeks (and assorted other groups, such as librarians). I attend my local Linux users’ group and lurk on LinuxChix and other online places where free software geeks meet, but I have tended to find these groups intimidating and I didn’t know whether I could belong in any meaningful way. At LCA this year I have finally reached a level of technical competence and familiarity within the Melbourne Linux community that I didn’t feel out of depth. At DrupalSouth, and with some of the Drupal people at LCA, I felt I was part of a community that bonded over curry/beer/gelato and late-night hackfests… because face-to-face contact still matters. I feel more positive about continuing these relationships online for the other 51 weeks of the year, alongside all the other communities and networks to which I belong.
26 Jan 2010
I participated in the great geek love-fest that was DrupalSouth Wellington, and the online love-fest on identi.ca and twitter that accompanied it. I think the frenzy reached its greatest heights during Angela Byron’s demonstration of Drupal 7, the upcoming major upgrade with innumerable awesome features and improvements. Some of the geeks who did not attend DrupalSouth were less than enthusiastic about our enthusiasm, and my non-geek friends who were following along on Facebook were very confused. It is perhaps too much enthusiasm over a computer program, but DrupalSouth brought together about 100 people united over a single obsession, in a more concentrated form than linux.conf.au (LCA).
Drupal is a content management framework used to build websites ranging from small individual sites to some of the largest in the world. Like Linux and the kind of project that gets featured at LCA, Drupal is open source software and is motivated by the same principles of grassroots software development and community support. DrupalSouth piggybacked on LCA so that some of the international superstars of Drupal development could attend both events.
As at LCA, my DrupalSouth presentation was scheduled relatively early in the programme which meant that I was able to enjoy most of the event without speaker anxiety. While my LCA presentation was an introduction to humanities computing through the example of Founders and Survivors, the DrupalSouth one was a case study of how and why I used Drupal for F&S and some of the challenges that I had encountered. Even though I did less intentional preparation for this talk than for the LCA one, I felt more confident about it and got more directly useful feedback. I was speaking to a group of Drupal fanatics about how I used Drupal, so in the discussion/feedback we were able to get into the details of making good use of the system. I also received generally encouraging and enthusiastic feedback. I was surprised at how many people were genuinely interested in my talk and our project, but I shouldn’t be. The Drupal user base seems to be more diverse and multi-faceted than the traditional LCA population – DrupalSouth was not for people who were single-mindedly focused on low level programming and engineering.
On Saturday night some of us adjourned to the hotel for an impromptu hackfest where Angela and Emma Jane led us through various ways of contributing to Drupal development (coding, code reviews, themes, documentation…). After this I felt that with a bit of preparation (i.e. becoming more familiar with PHP) I could really contribute to the Drupal community… and I want to do this. I have been sitting on the sidelines of the free software movement for over ten years, and have contributed to it by trying to evangelise, but it has taken me this long to find a specific project that I think I understand well enough, and that is so important to me that I want to help out (and feel that I can).
At every previous LCA that I have attended, I have grumbled about how isolated I feel within the free software movement. Preparing my talk and going to DrupalSouth has given me an insight that is painfully, stupidly obvious. I feel isolated because I am isolated. For most of the year, I work, study and socialise with historians, public health scholars, theologians and church geeks (and assorted other groups, such as librarians). I attend my local Linux users’ group and lurk on LinuxChix and other online places where free software geeks meet, but I have tended to find these groups intimidating and I didn’t know whether I could belong in any meaningful way. At LCA this year I have finally reached a level of technical competence and familiarity within the Melbourne Linux community that I didn’t feel out of depth. At DrupalSouth, and with some of the Drupal people at LCA, I felt I was part of a community that bonded over curry/beer/gelato and late-night hackfests… because face-to-face contact still matters. I feel more positive about continuing these relationships online for the other 51 weeks of the year, alongside all the other communities and networks to which I belong.
21 Jan 2010
– br3nda
I have attended linux.conf.au every year since 2007 (though I only attended a miniconference in 2008) and every year have felt some level of disconnection with the intensely technical nature of the conference and of many of the delegates. For the first time, though, I no longer feel uncomfortable about being a misfit at LCA. The conference has changed, and I have changed. Women are still a minority here, but it doesn’t feel like a painfully small minority as it did three years ago. The conference is intentionally family-friendly and there have been a few children around, which for me makes the whole conference feel less intense and intimidating. I have also come to accept that it seems to be my fate not to fit in perfectly in any community or culture, or rather, to be able to move between cultures easily.
Today’s and Tuesday’s keynotes both came from the perspective of observing the culture of free software, as a journalist (Glyn Moody) or as an anthropologist (Gabriella Coleman), and locating the culture and values of free software in the context of society at large. I was particularly encouraged by Moody’s keynote as it converged with some of the concerns of my talk. He talked about one of the great gifts that hacker society can share with the world, the culture of sharing, and how this could make a huge difference to a world facing political, financial and environmental crises. (Halfway through writing this post I went to a presentation on the Sahana disaster management system.) The challenge that I took from this was how we can share the culture of sharing with non-hacker cultures.
LCA is an anomolous experience for me. For one week, I enter an intense, almost obsessive environment devoted to free software and playing with technology. For the other 51 weeks of the year I am largely surrounded by historians and theologians, as someone whose personal priority is history and theology but who also does a lot of work with free software. I cannot seem to avoid living in two worlds at the same time. I don’t have to make the worlds meet, but they could know more about each other. Applying free software to research in the humanities – and talking about why I do this – is one example. Another place where these worlds can meet is in education. My fellow students and teachers are exposed to free software web applications on a daily or weekly basis: Drupal at the United Faculty of Theology and Moodle at Trinity College. There are enough staff at these institutions who have an IT background or are able to learn to use these systems, but more could be done to raise awareness about free software in these environments.
21 Jan 2010
I have attended linux.conf.au every year since 2007 (though I only attended a miniconference in 2008) and every year have felt some level of disconnection with the intensely technical nature of the conference and of many of the delegates. For the first time, though, I no longer feel uncomfortable about being a misfit at LCA. The conference has changed, and I have changed. Women are still a minority here, but it doesn’t feel like a painfully small minority as it did three years ago. The conference is intentionally family-friendly and there have been a few children around, which for me makes the whole conference feel less intense and intimidating. I have also come to accept that it seems to be my fate not to fit in perfectly in any community or culture, or rather, to be able to move between cultures easily.
Today’s and Tuesday’s keynotes both came from the perspective of observing the culture of free software, as a journalist (Glyn Moody) or as an anthropologist (Gabriella Coleman), and locating the culture and values of free software in the context of society at large. I was particularly encouraged by Moody’s keynote as it converged with some of the concerns of my talk. He talked about one of the great gifts that hacker society can share with the world, the culture of sharing, and how this could make a huge difference to a world facing political, financial and environmental crises. (Halfway through writing this post I went to a presentation on the Sahana disaster management system.) The challenge that I took from this was how we can share the culture of sharing with non-hacker cultures.
LCA is an anomolous experience for me. For one week, I enter an intense, almost obsessive environment devoted to free software and playing with technology. For the other 51 weeks of the year I am largely surrounded by historians and theologians, as someone whose personal priority is history and theology but who also does a lot of work with free software. I cannot seem to avoid living in two worlds at the same time. I don’t have to make the worlds meet, but they could know more about each other. Applying free software to research in the humanities – and talking about why I do this – is one example. Another place where these worlds can meet is in education. My fellow students and teachers are exposed to free software web applications on a daily or weekly basis: Drupal at the United Faculty of Theology and Moodle at Trinity College. There are enough staff at these institutions who have an IT background or are able to learn to use these systems, but more could be done to raise awareness about free software in these environments.
20 Jan 2010
I just delivered my linux.conf.au presentation on using free and open source software in collaborative humanities research. I have presented on this topic at smaller events, including LCA miniconferences last year, but this was my first presentation in LCA’s main programme. I was more nervous than usual as this is such a prominent conference, and I made some of the speaking mistakes (speaking too quickly, going in circles) that I find embarrassing, but I think I did well enough for a first-time LCA speaker.
One of the more entertaining and well-known speakers in the FOSS community was speaking at the same time, so it is not surprising that I did not have a huge audience, and I would have found a larger one more intimidating anyway. The audience was responsive and good questions were asked, so I think the presentation did its job.
My biggest challenge in this talk was distilling into 35-40 minutes the work that I have been doing for the last two years, and the background principles and my own ruminations on the topic. I am scheduled to give a version of this talk to Linux Users of Victoria in later this year, and may also give a necessarily different version to a group of postgraduate history students. There is still a lot of work I want to do on becoming better acquainted with similar projects elsewhere, and reflecting on the principles of humanities computing. If I can maintain the energy, this would be a good opportunity to work on a series of articles, blog posts or presentations.