Upcoming OSUG Leader Events: Russia, India
There are two OpenSolaris User Group leader events coming up in Hyderabad, India (March 26-27) and St. Petersburg, Russia (April 10-11), and some travel sponsorships are available as well. See Teresa Giacomini for details.
OpenSolaris: My Original Pre Launch Email in 2005
I was thinking recently about the original “good luck” email I sent to the OpenSolaris Pilot Community just before we opened the project in June of 2005. Fortunately, the opensolaris-discuss public archive actually goes back 9 months before we launched, so this mail survives in the open and from the other threads you get a glimpse into some of the very earliest conversations taking place when the project was private. Anyway, what strikes me is how different the situation was back then, how utterly conservative we were, and how my thinking has changed as a result of my experiences all along the way. A day after I sent this email, we opened. See my opening blog here, and the result of that opening announcement here. History. Enlightening.
[osol-discuss] Good Luck and Thank You
Jim Grisanzio Jim.Grisanzio at Sun.COM
Mon Jun 13 17:27:01 PDT 2005
Hello, OpenSource Pilot Community. I just wanted to chime in before the fur really flies around here: Good Luck, and Thank You! You all deserve Sun's thanks for your efforts and your patience this year. It should be wild day tomorrow, for sure, so light up those blogs and start talking, guys. The engineers are leading this launch tomorrow, make no mistake about it. Oh, and if you want to bring someone into the program, you *don't* have to call me and sign another f****** NDA. Just do it. I can't tell you how happy I am to not have to dig out another NDA. Not that I could read the damn thing but whatever. It's such a cold way to start a friendly little conversation, don't you think? Also, I've tried to honor as many of your requests (and those from internal people) as possible to get people into the program. We ended up with 145, but quite frankly, dozens and dozens of developers never made it in due to lack of time or resources. We even had a dozen Chinese engineers all briefed, translated, and NDA-signed but couldn't get export control approval in time. It drove me nuts for three months. I'm more than a bit pissed about that one. Anyway, I hope you are happy with the results of what we are all releasing. The core team here has worked almost non-stop for weeks on this to get ready for the final push. We wanted to do more, you know that, but hey, look at where we were last year and look at the potential tomorrow brings. Also, the OpenSolaris team internally really has been genuine in their intentions, I can assure you. At times we've not been as open as we could have been -- we get that -- but I hope you believe me when I say that many people on the team fought hard on your behalf all year long. Every time you told us we were full of shit on something we took it to heart and it went up line. There were a few, ah, heated, conversations regarding some of the issues that were discussed in the pilot. We won some and we lost some, but every time we moved a little closer to our goal of openness. As you've seen, this stuff takes time. I wish we could have exposed more of that process to you. Next time it will probably be easier to do that. As this program has grown it's garnered attention from all across Sun and from Sun's competitors and supporters. Just recently, I've heard from executives and engineers traveling to South America and to Asia, and they report that there *absolutely* is massive community interest out there. Even Wall Street has noticed. Some people are probably a bit confused since the Solaris community was supposed to be dead by now. Well, too bad. It's too late. They lost their window of opportunity to crush us. Our next step is to stay positive and to engage the interest we know is there, make it tangible, and grow this OpenSolaris community. In a very real way, you've all been part of something special here. You've helped change this company and potentially an entire market along the way. Some people may not know this quite yet, but they'll surely find out tomorrow. You are some of the most knowledgeable people in the world about Solaris, and you've help make OpenSolaris a possibility. Congratulations and we'll see you on the other side. Jim
On Being Genuine
McNealy’s bittersweet memo bids good-bye to Sun: “Scott McNealy, the smack-talking co-founder and long-running leader of Sun Microsystems, has bid adieu to his company in a memo that mixes nostalgia with a rallying cry for employees about to become part of Oracle. The memo, sent Tuesday under the subject line ‘Thanks for a great 28 years,’ has more genuine emotion than you’ll see in a year’s worth of official communications from most corporate leaders.” — Stephen Shankland, DeepTech, Cnet News.
I think those of us who have worked with Scott or interacted with him in any way would agree. It’s something you feel and you feel it right away.
Website Docs Updates
Spent some time cleaning up the content in the Website Community yesterday. The transition to auth/xwiki is over, so I rewrote a lot of the content we had pointing to the project management docs and moved some content to archive to clean up the nav. I cut the amount of content on the top level page in half. Roadmap & Announcements updated too. Over the last few months, we’ve accumulated a huge amount of information about the website project and various community processes. Still streamlining. Next needs to address the front page of the site.
Building Communities by Building Schools
“We don’t want our babies to die, and we want our children to go to school.”
That’s what motivates Greg Mortenson to build communities because that’s what women tell him in Afghanistan and Pakistan. They don’t want their kids to die. So to help out, Greg builds schools — in a region of the world that has known only war and poverty for generations. Hear Greg tell his story to Bill Moyers on PBS.
There are many more videos and articles about Greg and his foundations and books. Just a wonderful story all around. Even the highest levels of the U.S Military are now reading his book — Three Cups of Tea — and they are listening to him in the field because he knows more about the culture on the ground than most Americans involved in the battle over there. He’s not fighting terrorism, tough. He’s building community. There’s a difference. The first action is defensive, based on fear, and short term. The second is offensive, based on inspiration, and long term. One breaks. The other builds. But this no hand out from some rich guy in the West or even a government program. Greg is not rich and he built his organization from pretty much nothing. And people of modest means — and kids with pennies! — create and drive these programs. Not the rich. Not the governments. In this case, individuals make the difference and that’s why it’s so inspiring. And the schools have to be earned, too. Educational leadership and resources are contributed from the outside, of course, but things are distributed and managed locally as well. Land is given for free and so is labor. This way the local community owns what they build.
This guys knows what he’s doing, and he figured it out in real time. I just tripped over him today, but he’s been doing this for sixteen years. I will study him closely. Everything he does represents a repeatable model for building community anywhere in the world for any purpose. Think you can’t do something? Think it’s too hard? You must check this out. Very cool.
千の風になって
Beautiful. 千の風になって (Sen no kaze ni natte, Become A Thousand Winds). Original poem and the Japanese translation.
A Little Tennis & Hot Tub on Top
The view from the bathroom at the Sun office in Yoga, looking down on a tennis court and hot tub next to the Tomei Expressway.
The Automated Money Machine
Cars sucked through a toll gate, an automated money machine. This is one view from my office.
OpenSolaris Night Seminar 012210: Photos
Some images from the OpenSolaris Night Seminar in Tokyo earlier this evening with presentations from Junko Yoshida, Mami Sueki, and Shoji Haraguchi.
Hundreds more images from the OpenSolaris community in Japan right here.
Updated XWiki for OpenSolaris
Chris updated our implementation of XWiki yesterday to v2.1.1, which fixes a bunch of bugs we had been living with while using v1.8. The current bug list for hub is on defect.opensolaris.org, so please file any issues there. Also note we doubled the number of languages we are supporting with this update (screen of 17 language codes). See the localization page if you want to contribute translations. More website application updates to come: auth, repo, and poll are on tap next. Roadmap here.
Parts of Tokyo Tower
Added a few shots of a few sections of Tokyo Tower the other night …
Community Leadership Summit: July 2010, Portland
Great to see the 2nd annual Community Leadership Summit booked for July 17th & 18th in Portland, Oregon. I was at the first CLS event last year in San Jose. I really enjoyed it and learned a lot as well. And I saw a bunch of OpenSolaris people participating by running sessions, too. If you build communities — which means you run user groups, drive communications programs, create contribution mechanisms, manage engineering operations, host community infrastructure, evangelize the benefits of engaging, or contribute in other ways directly — then you are a leader (leadership by doing, I mean), and the community would benefit from your experience. This is not a traditional conference where only a select few present. Instead, everyone can present. Check it out.
Ghost
Couldn`t quite get this but got pretty close. Wanted the mask man in the background with my reflection up front but only half body. Could`t get the focus right, though. Got my right shoulder clear but too soft everywhere else. I like the half body bit, though. Interesting reflection.
2 New OpenSolaris Website Translation Projects
The latest version of auth.opensolaris.org is now in the Community Translation Interface for a localization update, and we are also now starting to localize repo.opensolaris.org as well. Because of many community contributions recently, auth.opensolaris.org already lives in 17 languages. It will be good to get the SCM Console at repo.opensolaris.org localized into a bunch of languages via the same process as we continue updating that application in the coming months. See the announcement from Ales on i18n-discuss for details about contributing to these these two website projects.
The localization of opensolaris.org — which is currently 15 applications — will come together over time and in various stages. But I really would like all of it localized into at least two dozen languages by the end of this year. Should be doable. So, if you are interested in participating, I wrote an outline about how we are breaking this into pieces and how you can get involved: Localizing Website Content. I will update the document as the project evolves. See the Internationalization & Localization Community for even more projects and information. Subscribe to i18n-discuss. Thanks.
OpenSolaris Night Seminar, January 22, Tokyo
Shoji Haraguchi just announced the next OpenSolaris Night Seminar in Tokyo. It will be on January 22nd in Jingumae. On tap will be Crossbow and Solaris Containers. Register early. These seminars generally fill up pretty quickly, and there’s only room for about 100 people in the room. You know, we really could use some bigger conference rooms to hold these events. Lots of people are interested in OpenSolaris in Tokyo. See you there.
The Necessity of Making Mistakes
Nice article on the brain biology behind how scientists actually create science. Accept Defeat: The Neuroscience of Screwing Up. Recognizing anomalies, making mistakes, being challenged, and engaging in conversation are all critically important elements that make science work. Context and perspective matter greatly as well. Seems all very human to me. I`m not so much interested in the brain chemistry that influences behavior in science (you can see this in partisan politics as well), but what fascinates me more is the notion that with this awareness you can dig yourself out of the natural traps that catch most people, and that can lead to new opportunities that only a few generally see. From the article:
Modern science is populated by expert insiders, schooled in narrow disciplines. Researchers have all studied the same thick textbooks, which make the world of fact seem settled. This led Kuhn, the philosopher of science, to argue that the only scientists capable of acknowledging the anomalies — and thus shifting paradigms and starting revolutions — are “either very young or very new to the field.” In other words, they are classic outsiders, naive and untenured. They aren’t inhibited from noticing the failures that point toward new possibilities.
The “acknowledging the anomalies” bit from Thomas Kuhn is key. It may enable you to jump paradigms or start revolutions, which is very cool, but in the process it also gets you a lot of knives buried deeply in your back. So acknowledge carefully. More than a few people have ended up dead challenging paradigms throughout the ages. Granted, the deaths are at the extreme, but why go through all that if it`s not necessary. Start small. Pick off what you can. Even though most people usually can’t change the paradigms in which they live, they can change the small things in their world by recognizing and resolving anomalies that crop up every day. Then, hopefully, over time the small changes add up to big changes. And when you are focusing on this process, you are more apt to spot big paradigm shifts coming along and you can jump when the opportunity is right. So, don`t be afraid to poke around and change your position and screw up from time to time. Failure is important. It helps you succeed.
Shogatsu 2010
Some images from Shogatsu 2010 from Kijima and Nagano Japan …
OpenSolaris at the 2010 Japan Developer Summit
The OpenSolaris Community will participate at 2010 Japan Developer Summit in Tokyo February 18-19. Subscribe to ug-jposug and ug-tsug for more information.
OpenSolaris 2010.03 Translation Cycle Continues
It’s cool to see the localization of the OpenSolaris distribution moving right along with contributions going directly into the development builds. [i18n-discuss] The 2nd translation cycle of OpenSolaris 2010.03.
