Unfortunately, I have been really really really busy this week with tests and programs and homework and studying which caused my blog to be put on hold - momentarily! However, even though I did not blog previously, I do have much to say about the POSSCON event.
It was very exciting to go to this conference because it was an open source software conference but also because I have never been to a conference before. It was awesome that Dr. Bowring was able to have vans for us so that we didn't have to pay for gas driving ourselves to Columbia. The drive was only about an hour and a half but it was nice to just be along for the ride instead of driving.
The conference was held in the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center and it was organized very well. As soon as you entered the building you were greeted, registered, and then served muffins and coffee for breakfast.
The sponsors for the conference had set up booths set up for questions and information. The Linode booth was giving out free t-shirts and naturally, we all stopped by. I actually did speak with one of the girls at Linode because she said she was doing web design/development. I would like to look into Ruby on Rails now after speaking with her because it might be a language I will need to know in the future.
Our task for the day was to pick three presenters and ask them questions. The first presenter I wanted to speak with was Chris Hinkley. There are a few minutes after the presentations when you are free to ask questions but I did not want to ask questions in front of other people so I decided to wait until afterwards. However, since this was my first conference I was just following along with the crowd on to the next session and I ended up missing out on speaking with Chris Hinkley.
The next presenter I wanted to speak with was Walter Bender, founder of Sugar Labs. I loved his presentation which was created using one of the Sugar activities. After his brief overview of what Sugar Labs is he showed everyone on of the OLPC laptops and the Sugar OS. He also showed us an activity created while on the plane coming to Columbia! (Although he was coming from Norway). There are three groups in our Software Engineering class that are working on Sugar activities and we all attended his presentation. Afterwards, we all went up to meet Walter Bender and to tell him about the activities we were working on. He made suggestions for the activities but seemed pretty happy to see we were actively helping. My questions to him were about how he managed to stay employed and also contribute so much to OLPC and Sugar Labs which can only give back the satisfaction of helping the children. I was mainly asking because most of us are seniors and we will be headed out to find jobs in the work industry which does not include open source projects. So, how could we manage our time if we wanted to continue contributing to open source? Walter Bender just basically said that is has to be something that you love doing since it will be done in your spare time. Also that you cannot expect to just jump into a project and be able to accomplish everything all at once. You have to learn languages and processes and just take your time.
I also spoke with the 3D printer guys. They had a booth at the conference and they were displaying the printer. The printer was actually printing an Android phone holder while we were there. I spoke with one of the guys about how the printer works and it basically just feeds in plastic, melts it down, and spins it out to create an object. One of the guys even showed me his 3D scanner which will scan a picture of an object using an camera and then the data can be sent over to the printer to replicated the object! He joked about printing out his cell phone face plate in every color, but this is a really cool idea.
All in all, POSSCON was a fantastic experience. I did not win the Samsung Galaxy tablet at the give away, but it was all worth attending. I am so happy to have been able to attend.
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