mcnalu mcnalu@identi.ca

As of 2 hours ago, it has been 3 years since Rowan was born into my hands (unplanned homebirth, I can tell you the story later).

He's been the best thing in my life since then.

He's strong willed, opinionated, and best of all, loving. He truly loves everyone and wants everyone to be happy.

I love you, too, Rowan.

It's easy!

I've wanted to write up a blog post about #xoxofest, so I'm going to try to collect my thoughts here.

I went to XOXO in 2013 on the "Festival" pass, which gives you access to the parties but not the talks during the day. I didn't like it; among other things, the Festival pass was only given to people who weren't accepted for the main pass. It felt like a big "SECOND RATER" sticker, which made me feel pretty bad, and made me think darkly competitive thoughts about the other people who were given conference badges. ("What's that guy done? I'm way more interesting than him! And her? She hasn't done anything!") It's a bad headspace to be in.

So I was glad to see that there were more badges available overall this year and that the "festival" badges were optional rather than given as consolation prizes. I got a conference badge (maybe not all the attendees are happy about this, now that I think of it), and I was really looking forward to it, since people had been so enthusiastic about the talks in 2013.

Like last year, I collected the Twitter handles of people I know who are going to attend, and contacted them directly. I invited people to come meet me for pre-event beers -- both XOXO attendees and just friends from Portland -- as a way to make sure I spent some time with everyone I wanted to see. I got ~15 people together, which I'll say is a grand success. I'm going to try this trick again in the future; it can be really hard engineering 1-on-1 get-togethers with people.

The event itself was great. The talks were as good as I had heard, maybe more so. There was a definite tendency to go deep into personal territory in the talks -- Kevin Kelly, Justin Hall, Gina Trapani, Paul Ford all dug into their personal lives to give real meaning to the work they were describing on stage. I think, also, that the speakers really respected the audience -- these were their peers and they wanted to provide good value. It really showed.

But a lot of the value of XOXO is in the interstitials. There are a lot of breaks and a long lunch during the day, and I got to spend time with some pretty great people that I don't always get to see -- Kevin Marks, Alex Payne, and Blaine Cook stand out.

There's also a collegial atmosphere that makes it feel really OK to approach strangers and talk to them about their work. I found myself falling into heavy conversations with people I hadn't met before -- intoxicated by the air of passionate interest and self-investigation that the conference generated.

The night events were excellent. I watched some of my favourite podcasts recorded live, and I got to play some pretty excellent games (including a little too much of Two Rooms and Boom). The two Andys that organize the conference do a good job highlighting Portland's great culinary and drinks scene, so there is a lot of great food and drink during the conference.

There are a few things that I'd change if I could. The event is so well-planned that it doesn't leave a ton of room for spontaneous participation by the attendees. There's nothing stopping you, but there's also not a lot of room to bring your own art or robots or games or whatever. It's just not part of the culture. I don't think that's wrong, per se, but it's a notable difference from other events I went to this summer (YXYY and Burning Man).

Another is that there's not a clear year-round place on-line for XOXOers to congregate or organize other meetings. I think the community is largely coalesced around the #xoxofest hashtag on Twitter, which is great, but it's a pretty tenuous link, without much private space to, say, invite XOXOers to your house for dinner.

Finally, the two organizers, Andy Baio and Andy McMillan, are pretty far stretched. Their personal touch is what gives the conference its warm feel, but they clearly are running way over their manufacturer's recommended parameters. I hope they're able to scale the event to keep themselves from burning out without losing their important personal connection. It's going to be a real tight-rope walk for them.

I guess there are two main things that I worry about for XOXO. The first is community-oriented: the danger of groupthink. If you talk to people who attend, they'll tell you that the event is inspiring, the people are great, the whole experience is life-changing. When I hear this over and over, from the same people, it throws up a red flag for me. There's a danger, when we're telling each other this, of reconfirming each other and not paying attention to details. I think there's some value in keeping a sober and critical eye on the event and not snowjobbing ourselves. (I don't see any glaring issues right now, but I see the danger of not seeing them.)

The second is more personal. The theme of XOXO is independents building great stuff with the Internet. I found the chance to think more about, and talk about, my next project, really worthwhile. But I also wonder if hearing great talks about inspiring projects can actually keep you from building new stuff. Like, hearing about brave efforts gives you a sense of second-hand bravery and accomplishment, which satisfies your desire for personal action.

As of right now, I don't think that's a big problem, but I've made a mental note to check next year how many of the projects I heard about actually get made. I had a great dinner with Crystal Beasley and Mike Caprio on the night I left, and we all talked about our inspiration and plans for new projects. Having an on-line place to stay in touch might help people keep the torch going until they finish what they've started.

Most of all, though, I'm really grateful for the opportunity to be there. I caught Andy McMillan backstage at one point, and gave him a handshake and a hug and a thank you. He said, "I'm glad you stopped me; we do this all for you." We'd never met before, but everything they do for this conference really does make me feel like it's a personal gift to me, and it's what makes it a special event.

The Scottish Independance Referendum results are in. They voted No! Let's crack open the Irn Bru to celebrate!

I'm taking a much needed break from reality for the next few days.

If you need to reach me send a telegram to me:

c/o Lord Emsworth
Blandings Castle
Shropshire, England

PS - code here at parlementum.net is up to date as of now.

Cheers!

Bragging Rights

I've read the entirety of Moby-Dick & War and Peace (and loved them), I've seen all of Shakespeare's plays performed live (including Henry VIII & The Two Noble Kinsmen), followed on Twitter by the Oxford English Dictionary and Encyclopedia Britannica.

Naoki Hiroshima: I've got @n on identi.ca waiting for you. Email me at evan -at- e14n.com .

Here we go again. I really wish people would read and grok what I said about reporting GPL violations more than fifty months ago.

Colocated Raspberry Pi Computers

http://raspberrycolocation.com/

I think I'd love this. Maybe I would use it to host a single-user XMPP service. Or replace the VPN service I use with one hosted on the RPi.

I've written a blog post about GCC, LLVM, copyleft and for-profit companies.

I may never have been paid a higher compliment.

I am described on a friend's blogroll as:

Cultural Investigator. Country Gentleman. Scholar. Bibliophile. Future Cygniculturist. Devotee of excruciatingly obscure open-source arcana...

As for Cygniculturist, I think it means I'll raise swans.

This week I intend to attempt to construct a Red Matrix at the parlementum.net domain.

The mighty parlementum lives!

I always miss my grandma around this time of the year. Her house was always full of homemade food & treats. I'm making one of her dinners tonight: ham, potatoes & gravy, green beans.

Though the gravy might have been from a mix, and the beans from a can what I remember most about her cooking was all the love she poured into it.

I hope that @evan will read this and take it to heart.
http://mako.cc/writing/hill-free_tools.html

When Doris Lessing, who died y'day, was offered a Dame of the British Empire she responded with 'there is no empire & dames exist only in pantomimes'.

GNU-a-Day action #9: Have an Android phone? Install F-Droid, a repository with hundreds of free software apps. https://u.fsf.org/l9

«We can't imagine a more hostile reaction to the wave of privacy concerns sweeping the world right now than debuting a proprietary, network-accessible fingerprint scanner as your new 'feature'»

http://www.fsf.org/news/free-software-foundation-statement-on-new-iphone-models-from-apple