The first CEOS ended last night Friday night.
I had been otherwise occupied for
the days leading up to the conference (and for some of the conference proper),
but the other organizers pulled
off an utterly enjoyable event.
Like Sean, I too
enjoyed Billy’s and
Steve’s
talks. Both were to the point and pretty funny. You can tell that
these guys actually get F/OSS. But we knew that already. Other good
talks were those done by Iain Galloway and Daniel Richard.
Iain talked about this extensible embedded linux board that
his company makes for use in their own products, but
is flexible
enough for all kinds of other uses, too. It’s neat to think that on
that toilet you used last summer, there might have been a device
counting the number of flushes attached. Oh yes, and this device has a
built-in 2 port 10Mbit switch, 100Mbit fibre connection, and runs FTP,
telnet, and HTTP servers.
Daniel is a PhD student
in Dal’s Biology department (their lab has
a great domain name, by the way). It was refreshing to
hear the
perspective of a non-CS person on the whole F/OSS thing. Dan does use
emacs, so he’s not completely non-technical, but he’s more interested
in how you can use it than how it works.
I’m sure we’ll hold another CEOS next year (CEOS 2: The Return of
Durant), but I can’t say how much it will look like this year’s.
There will always be some difference in opinion between the hobbyest
and the professional, and between different classes of professionals.
No matter what the format of next year’s CEOS is, I will wear a suit,
because suits make me look hot.
Planning will probably begin, in some form, fairly soon. If you
have any suggestions, let us know.
I’m pleased to say that I was selected to be chair of CEOS 2006. What
this means to any submittors, of course, is that GNOME related works
may have a slight advantage in being selected. There will also be way
more Dr. Pepper available during the breaks.