what I do

Video Streaming in a Perfect World

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I’ve done enough social media coverage of conferences now to have some ideas on my ideal set-up for this, although I have not yet achieved that ideal in practice. Here’s how I’d like to do it:

1. Have presentations available online in advance, so that:

  • participants in the video stream can download them and follow along while I focus the camera on the speaker (I’d use the UStream chat window to let them know when the slide changes)
  • I can copy slide titles into a spreadsheet beforehand, ready to enter the timing of slide changes (knowing this timing helps me later edit the slides into the video as graphic overlays)

2. Have a small laptop pre-tested with UStream and ready to go. I don’t really care about the OS (Solaris, OpenSolaris, Windows, Mac) as long as it has Flash installed in Firefox and knows what to do with a video camera attached to the Firewire port.

NB: Even on a pre-tested laptop, UStream can be a problem. When we tried to stream last night’s FROSUG meeting, UStream crashed my browser repeatedly (both Firefox and Safari), crashed Firefox on another Mac, and only worked on a Lenovo – which, unfortunately had messed-up sound so couldn’t actually be used. What’s up with that, UStream?

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travel in India

The Classic Indian Bun Omelette

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This one includes tomatoes and probably green chilis, and was served on a bun with funky pink and green candied fruit.

Recipe:

  1. fry onions in butter until soft (or brown, if you like)
  2. fry tomatoes too, if you’re using them
  3. add eggs lightly beaten with a little milk
  4. add green chilis (chopped into small rounds) and fresh cilantro/coriander
  5. flip to cook the other side
  6. when cooked, fold in half and serve alongside bun as shown above or (better) fold into quarters and serve ON bun. Bun should be toasted in the same pan so it gets nice and greasy.
  7. Have sweet, milky tea with it.

Above omelette courtesy of Mussoorie’s Tip Top Tea Shop at Char Dukan:

Tip Top Tea Shop

In case you’re wondering: cheese noodles is Ramen or Wai Wai noodles with cheese stirred in so it melts while the broth is good and hot.

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women in technology

Who’s a Guy?

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One session I (and many others) attended at the Community Leadership Summit was on women in technology/communities. Frankly, I lost patience very quickly. As I said then, we all have horror stories; I’m more interested in discussing fixes. (Which, with Sara Ford to get the ball rolling, we did.)

One meme that came up repeatedly during this session was the sexism – or otherwise – of using the term “guys” to refer to a mixed group of men and women. In other words, is it offensive to walk into a room containing both sexes and say: “Hi, guys” ?

Some felt that it was sexist, though probably unconsciously so, others felt that anyone who thought so was being over-sensitive. Impasse.

A few days later during OSCON, I found myself in a Moscone Center women’s bathroom at the same time as one of the women whose job during the conference was to make sure that no unbadged person got into a session. We were the only people in the room. She said to me: “You guys are really rare at things like this.”

It took me more than a few milliseconds to parse this. She meant: “Women at technical conferences are rare.” And used the term “guys” to refer to me and women like me.

Case closed. “Guys” no longer refers to men only, so we can stop arguing about whether it’s sexist.

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what I do

Bolinhas!

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It pays to know your local market.

Sun’s Brazil team had the bright idea to have 2000 small soccer balls printed with logos, to use as giveaways at FISL. Along with much other show stuff, these arrived in the bus that drove from Sao Paolo to Porto Alegre. Then they had to be stored in the hotel we were all staying at…

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When we finally got them to the show floor, they filled a tall column (which had holes near the bottom to extract them from):

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There were over 8000 attendees at FISL this year, so not everyone could have a ball just for the asking. And they did ask: we had a constant flow of people into the booth requesting a bolinha (little ball). They were cute, all right.

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The few little kids at the show got one automatically, but everyone else had to work for it, usually by doing soccer tricks:

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Even in Brazil, soccer ability is not a given in a geeky crowd like this, but three girls who were not only beautiful but knew how to play soccer had been hired to “coach”:

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They were very popular; all the young men and boys wanted to take photos with them (a few of them also asked for photos with Teresa and me, to our surprise), but they smilingly refused – that wasn’t part of their contract (and they would have spent all day doing nothing else, had they agreed).

The girls also kept the coffee machine running, a big plus for those of us working the booth, as well as the many who happily lined up for free coffee – this was a trick discovered by Sun Brazil years ago, now imitated (with less booth-filling success) by several other companies showing at FISL.

By the end of the fourth day the tower of balls was empty, but there was a reserve bag of souvenir balls for us hard-working Sun employees. I took four, and gave them all away before I got back to the US, the last two going to Bill and Sherry’s kids in Brisbane.

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what I do

Community Leadership Summit

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Several Sun folks attended the Community Leadership Summit in San Jose, just before OSCON. I didn’t get many photos or notes – was too busy listening, talking, and meeting people. I also led a session on videoblogging which 14 people attended.

Photo gallery from CLS and OSCON 2009

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Deirdré Straughan on Italy, India, the Internet, the world, and now Australia