Event Report: LinuxDay 2012

This year’s Linux Day celebration is not too small like the one I did in 2010 but not too big like the one we did last year, 2011. It’s just about right.

Challenge: Spot the Filipino Fedora Ambassadors in the group (magie, engels, arnold, herson and dona)

There are three talks/lectures this year and mine is titled “Fedora Does Not Pay: How to convince them to open the purse”. The other lectures were given by Paul Magahis and Engels Antonio. Paul briefed us about owncloud while Engels discussed incrontab.

Of all the things we do at Fedora Project, there’s only one thing I’m better at than Engels, Magie and Arnold – that’s asking for money.

I got good feedback on the topic and this includes the usual gripes like payment lags, the need to follow-up a follow-up, jumping hoops to get an event funded, doing more work with less or at times with nothing at all. The collective experience of the group is quite mixed – I for one has a relatively good experience while others got previously burned or just don’t want to deal with the hassle.

Everybody are in agreement however that we should hold more meaningful events around the country and Fedora Project is a welcome enabler in this endeavour. To help hasten the process of local Ambassadors stepping up to the plate more often and more confidently, I reluctantly agreed to serve as point person for funding initiatives for future Fedora Events in the Philippines.

Some sort of a local spotlight, Ryan Terrenal shared with us that they are using Fedora as servers for the National Library of the Philippines, more specifically their online catalog service. Expect to hear more about them from me in a couple of months.

UPDATE: My slides are here.