Tag: Speaking

Travel, Conferences and Other Work

While updating my expired ssl certificate, I realized I haven’t posted here since just after the first of the year. What have I been doing in all that time?

Travel

According to TripIt, I’ve traveled 30 out of 78 days of 2013 to 9 cities and 2 countries. That’s 38% of my time spent away from home. Most of it has been work travel, including trips to Mozilla Mt. View and SF offices as well as Madrid to meet with Geeksphone and Telefonica. While I was in Spain, I was able to wander a bit and take some photos, including of the Angel Caido:

Monumento del Ángel Caído

Mother Daughter Vacation

Early in March, Sherri and I took our mothers to Hawaii. This was extremely special for me and I’m so grateful we were able to make it happen. Those of you who know me well know that my mother and I have had a long journey together, one during which we have not always been close. What I learned on this trip is that love is less about staying connected 100% of the time and more about doing the hard work to find each other again when connection is lost.

Mothers and Daughters

If you want to see photos from the trip, here are mine and here are Sherri’s.

Mozilla, Conferences and Other Community Work

Life at Mozilla continues to be hectic as we work on launching Firefox OS. I’m thrilled that we’ll developer phones will soon be available for us to distribute (and for the public to buy).

Another key reason I’ve been quiet here is that January and February was consumed with a lot of Syndicate tasks. Kirsten and I worked to finish transitioning the role of treasurer from me to her and we also completed and submitted our IRS 1023 form (application for tax-exempt status) and other tax paperwork. I can’t express what a relief it is to finally be caught up on many of these tasks.

At the same time, I’ve been helping to plan Barcamp Portland,  the Open Source Day at this year’s Grace Hopper conference as well as Open Source Bridge.

In the middle of all that, I managed to re-work our OSCON tutorial on event planning into a 30 minute talk for this year’s PyCon US (video). I had a great time giving the talk and attending the conference in general. PyCon organizers and volunteers do a great job making their speakers feel welcome and prepared. Thank you!

Health, Home and Caretaker Duties

Sherri and I are still struggling to stay on top of all the duties caring for ourself, her mom, our six animals and two houses entail.

Maintaining Mom’s health requires constant attention and frequent medical appointments. We are taking her for bloodwork and a port flush every two weeks (but not at the same time). Despite therapy, she continues to need blood transfusions about every six weeks (and this is an all day affair). And then there are her regular medical checkups.

When you combine this with the bodywork Sherri needs to manage her chronic pain, and my weekly allergy clinic visits, I feel like one or the other of us is nearly always running off to an appointment. Meanwhile, I feel guilty every time I realize that all six of the pets are behind with their own annual medical check-ups.

However, slowly we are figuring out how to make things work. This includes learning when and how to call in and build extra support and when to take breaks and practice self-care. Even thought it’s difficult, I don’t regret where we are now.

Next Couple of Months

It’s not going to get any less busy until at least late summer. Barcamp is less than two weeks away. By the time that event concludes, we’ll be in full planning for Open Source Bridge. I’ll have some more work travel coming up, although I’m still working out the details. Events that I am planning to attend are Write the Docs (April), AdaCamp and Open Source Bridge (both June), World Domination Summit and OSCON (both July), and Grace Hopper (October).  If you’re planning to attend any of these, let me know so we can meet up!

Oh, and if I can managed to get in to the allergy clinic on time I might actually finish the building phase of my immunotherapy.

At OSCON All Next Week

I’ll be at OSCON all next week. I’m very much looking forward to giving our workshop, Event Planning for Geeks. And, it’s on the first day of the conference, which means once we’re done, I get to relax and just enjoy the rest of the conference. Oh, what a nice break it will be to simply attend an event, rather than be one of the organizers.

If you’re planning to attend, and would like to connect, please do get in touch. You can find my info in the attendee directory.

Also, be sure to stop by the non-profit pavilion of the Expo Hall, where the Stumptown Syndicate will have a booth.

The Expo hall is open during the following times:

  • Tuesday, 7/17: 5:00pm – 6:00pm (Opening Reception)
  • Wednesday, 7/18: 10:00am 4:30pm, 5:40pm – 7:00pm (Booth Crawl)
  • Thursday, 7/19: 10:00am – 5:00pm

If you don’t already have a ticket for OSCON, use the code OS12FOS for a 20% discount, or register for a free Expo hall pass.

And, we’re still looking for a few volunteers to help staff our booth. If you’re interested in helping for an hour or two, let me know.

Oh, and will also attend at least part of this weekend’s Community Leadership Summit.

Event Planning for Geeks Workshop to Debut at OSCON 2012


This summer, Sherri, Audrey and I will debut our Event Planning for Geeks workshop at OSCON. We gave a very successful session on this topic at last year’s OSCON and decided to scale it up to be a three-hour interactive workshop.

I’ve included the description and abstract below, or you can read about it on the OSCON schedule. If you’re planning to attend OSCON, but haven’t yet purchased your ticket, use the code OS12FOS to receive 20% off your ticket price.

Description

A fun, comprehensive tutorial on how to host a successful code sprint, hackathon, (un)conference or workshop.

Abstract

Event Planning for Geeks is back with even more resources for event organizers from beginners on up! We’ve expanded our successful talk from last year’s OSCON into a full three-hour workshop.

If you’ve ever thought about hosting a code sprint, hackathon, (un)conference or workshop, this talk is for you. We’ll give you an overview of what you need to know to execute a successful event, including:

  • assembling and organizing your planning team
  • identifying and securing a venue for your event
  • how to get money and pay for things
  • volunteer recruitment and management
  • determining your event format and creating your event’s schedule
  • advertising your event
  • tickets and registration
  • insurance, liability and what to do when things go wrong
  • deciding on must haves and nice-to-haves (e.g. food, wifi, etc)
  • dealing with venue logistics (space, sound, power, etc.)
  • codes of conduct, after parties, considerations for serving alcohol
  • how to keep the momentum once your first event is over

Attendees will also receive copies of our event planning handbook and links to examples of how we run specific events like Open Source Bridge, Ignite Portland and BarCamp Portland.