TPOSSCON Day 1, 2

i'm sitting in the email garden at the Trans-Pacific Open Source Software Conference, finally with a moment to breath as i got back from lunch too late to go to any of the presentations.

soon after arriving on tuesday i went out to the old digs on the leeward coast of Oahu. it was amazing how almost nothing had changed. time seems to stand still out there. after a dinner and a quick drive around the community we went for a swim in a quiet lagoon.

Bruce Perens opened the conference with the day 1 key note, and i spoke later in the morning presenting KDE 3.4. the day was dynamic and there were a lot of interesting people here. while attendance isn't very high, the people who are here are of very high quality. state politicians, people in decision making positions in city government IT, PBS, the lead people from the government group that is transforming Malaysia into an open source country .... the day capped off with a panel discussion. John "Maddog" Hall, Bruce Perens, Larry Rosen, John Terpstra and myself sat on the panel and discussed issues of open source and "intellectual property". great conversation, even if Perens and Larry did go at it a few times. ;)

John Hall, Terpstra, Rosen and myself retired back to Sheraton for drinks and dinner, eventually meeting up with the convention coordinators, the Novell folk and a state government senator for pizza. the pizza was amazing. mmmm. thanks Novell! we talked into the night and i eventually got back home at 1am. had a glass of wine with Kaikapu, the husband of the couple that my mom is living with at the moment, and chatted some more before hitting the sack.

6am came way too quickly, but i got up and ready and met Hall and Terstra for breakfast before catching a cab with Robin Miller to the conference. after Bill Winberg's excellent opening keynote on open source licensing, the group from Malaysia gave and excellent presentation on what they are doing. their handout booklet was impressive and their plan looks comprehensive. John Hall, Larry Rosen and I went to lunch with the Malaysian delegation and had an intriguing set of conversations. it's really interesting to see the issues faced first hand by a group in their position moving open source forward on the scale they are doing so.

there's also a really interesting open source medical track going on.

John Terpstra put the source for his KDE app Bible Time on my watch so when i get home i can fix a crash that occurs on SUSE 9.2 for him, as i have that on my laptop. hopefully i'll be able hacking-capable after tonight's fun. i'm going out again, including a meeting lined up with Weinberg to discuss OSDL related topics. at least i'm staying in Waikiki tonight rather than tracking back out to the leeward coast. =)

oh, and i got this most entertaining pen from one of the vendors at the show. it's got one of those rock-em-sock-em boxers on it that's just amazing. ok. so, i'm easily entertained. =P

pictures to follow, once i get my laptop in the same space as my camera for a few minutes.