Humor lost...

Posted by Jim Jagielski on Wednesday, November 28. 2007 in Junk Drawer

It's a shame, but the tongue-in-cheek nature of my Invitations post appears to have been lost on some people... I guess those who know me, caught the humor in it immediately, whereas others may not have caught it at all... Hopefully, this clears *that* up :-)
More...

I evaluate my sessions at ApacheCon

Posted by Jim Jagielski on Tuesday, November 20. 2007 in Junk Drawer

At this year's ApacheCon event, I had 3 sessions: The State Of The Feather, What's New In Apache 2.2, and Advanced Load Balancing In Apache 2.2. Overall, I think I could have done better... Not so much on the actual content itself, but the actual presentation aspects. First of all, I don't get nervous in front of a crowd, so I have no real issue speaking in front of an audience. But I do tend to focus more on the feedback from the audience than maybe I should... for example, if I see a lot of confused faces, I try to figure out what they are confused about and drift off a bit on a tangent to hopefully address that confusion. What I do tend to do as well, is try to fit all the content in during the timeframe given, even if, due to external circumstances, that isn't feasible anymore. So instead of skipping sections, I rush through on the assumption that something is better than nothing. My first talk is a perfect example. It was scheduled to start at 9 with Doc Searls taking over at 9:30. Knowing how things go, I set the talk to last for about 20 minutes, knowing that we would start a little late. Unfortunately, Rich went a little long, leaving me quite a short timeframe to go through things. Since Doc was one of our keynoters, I for sure wasn't going to grab some of his time. So I knuckled under and picked up the pace and squeezed the whole preso into a timeslot that would have been more comfortable with an extra 5 minutes or so. That doesn't sound like a lot of time, but believe me, it is. After the fact, most of the comments I heard were "very good presentation, but a little rushed"... yeah, I know :-) My next was my What's New In 2.2 talk, also at 9am. I think this went well, since the topics that I just glanced over (authn/authz and proxy) had their own sessions the next day. I was pleasantly surprised that it was a packed room. My final was the last day of the conference, at 3pm (2nd to last session). I was shocked to see that this was also a packed room. Unfortunately, I had a cold coming and tended to get dry in the mouth. Plus, I think that some attendees thought it was an introduction to reverse proxying, rather than a review of the new features in the proxy module, which threw me off a bit. I wasn't happy with how it went, but still, I got some good feedback after the talk, and many people came up to me with questions afterwards. So maybe it wasn't *that* bad. All in all, I'll wait to see what kind of marks I get in the speaker evaluations... Hopefully, I won't be *too* embarrassed or disappointed.
More...

Invitations

Posted by Jim Jagielski on Monday, November 19. 2007 in Junk Drawer

It appears that Marc Fleury attended ApacheCon this year (for all you out there who have no idea who Marc Fleury is, he was the owner of the JBoss company). In his blog he laments that he had no idea that ApacheCon was in town, and surmises that his invitation to the event was lost in the mail. This surprises me, for a couple of reasons. First of all, I would assume that someone who became a multimillionaire based on the sale of a company whose products were, for a non-insignificant amount at all, leveraging and bundling ASF codebases, Marc would at least have a passing interest in what was going on within the ASF. It would make sense to me to follow the goings-in within a community that was at least partially responsible for my success... I guess not... And secondly, I don't think his invitation was lost in the mail, because I'm not sure what kind of conference Marc thinks ApacheCon is, that one requires an "invitation" to attend. I've attended lots and lots of conferences without receiving a written invitation to do so; heck, I've always considered the announcement of a conference as an implied invitation. I hate to think now that I've been such a rude conference attendee (and speaker, presenter, etc..) bursting in uninvited! How Borat! Anyway, since all the above implies that Marc doesn't follow the events of the ASF, he is most likely unaware of the Apache Sponsorship Program. This is a way for corporations, and entities, and people to show their support for the ASF by making non-directed financial donations to the ASF. So Marc, how about becoming an ASF sponsor? I figure that the Platinum Sponsor (at $100,000) is the right level. The donation would only be a bit over 0.06% of what you personally made off the JBoss deal, which is an amount I hope you could afford. If money is tight (and with the holiday season right around the corner, that's perfectly understandable), then maybe the Gold level ($40,000) is the right fit, at just 0.026%. Please don't hesitate to contact the ASF's fundraising team if interested. Heck, you can even contact me directly if you like. In fact, I'll even mail out a written invitation to sweeten the deal.
More...

Page 1 of 1, totaling 3 entries

Quicksearch

Search for an entry in IMO:

Did not find what you were looking for? Post a comment for an entry or contact us via email!