I attended All Things Open in Raleigh this year. I’ve been so busy absorbing and thinking about the things I learned and ideas I was introduced to, that I haven’t written about it until now.
General thoughts:
1. They were very good about making sure everyone was explicitly aware of the code of conduct. Todd Lewis was very frank about it, and the part I appreciated the most was the “if you disagree, please do us all the favor and leave now.” Setting explicit expectations always works elsewhere, so it’s a logical step.
2. Hearing Dwight Merriman (the founder of MongoDB) talk was incredibly inspirational. It was a good reminder that with all the “candy” projects out there that get tons of attention and funding, there are real projects out there, projects that are doing good for the world and are about more than just making money. He was genuine and relatable and….comforting.
3. Scott Hanselman is full of win. He’s even funnier in person than he is on Twitter, which I find hard to believe but it’s true. Best talk I’ve ever heard, hands down; you almost forget that he works for Microsoft, or that he works for Microsoft and aren’t we supposed to hate them? Or something.
4. It’s cool that the City of Raleigh runs on open source everything. I felt like the presentations were a little stiff, though. It’s still exciting to live in a place that is doing this. It made me stop and think when she said that Raleigh went open source because of budget constraints- I wonder what they would have chosen if there weren’t budget constraints? I wonder if budget constraints are the driving factor behind the open source movement? Is there an open source movement? Obviously this is a rabbit hole, and I’m not sure how far it will go, so I will stop now.
5. RedHat has probably always been cool, I’ve just been oblivious. I got a copy of “Getting Started with OpenShift” and Steven Pousty was a great speaker and I would have loved it if his session was longer. It’s fascinating to me how so much server work has been condensed down to one command in command line. Freaks me out and excites me at the same time.
I can’t wait for next year.