BarcampLA-5 was pimpin´!!!

My 2nd most favorite saying is ¨Pimpin´ ain´t easy, but someone´s gotta do it!¨ It seems like I´ve been missing out before this weekend but BarcampLA-5 sure was ¨doin´ it.¨

Great event. Every single person I met was very cool, down-to-earth & into technology. I spoke with some great folks & can´t wait to go to the next one. The tracks were so good, that I stayed late on Sunday to catch the SEO talk (which was very informative) even if it made me late for my LAMPSIG Planning Committee meeting. Like I said about SCALE 6X, you know an event is good when you´re having to make really tough decisions on which talks to attend.

Every talk I attended was really great, but the highlights (for me) were:
Travis Savo´s talk on Digital Lifeforms (I´m still trippin´ out on that concept & what they´ve been able to do).
Alex Peake´s presentation on his very cool company & what they´re doing to change the world (really looking forward to collaborating on some things, both musically & on the non-profit tip).
Ethan Bauley´s chat on business models & getting VC funding (really smart, cool cat who I´m so taking to lunch!)
Strom Carlson´s impromptu session on how to DJ 101 was awesome. Matter of fact, I´ve already told all my Morrissey fan friends about where he spins on Saturday nights @ Hully Gully in Downey & we´ll be dropping in on some of his sessions.
ArtLung´s interactive chat on Wordpress was really informative. Everyone there was really helpful & there was a great discussion on what folks were using w/their Wordpress sites.

There were others who were also good & a TON of others which I didn´t have a chance to even visit. I can´t wait ´til the next one & run into some of the cool folks there!

Heading over to Barcamp LA

Barcamp LA starts later this morning! I can´t wait to attend as it´ll be my first one.

I was hoping to attend the 2012 Conference as it´s only a 1-day event & there´s NOTHING like this that´s ever gone down. I´m hoping to drop by regardless & soak up some knowledge...

Having to decide between two very revolutionary conferences is a nice problem to have. :)

Microsoft Heroes Happen Here

LA kickoff event just happened but I´m going to go see what all the fuss is about in April in Anaheim.

I know I talk a lot of smack about M$, their monopolistic practices, vendor lock-in strategies they employ & how they generally just ¨scare¨ you into buying their bloated, buggy products but having the whole story isn´t a bad thing. I just want to be fully-informed.

EU Fines Microsoft 1.3 BILLION!!!

So it finally happened! They´ve been getting sued by the whole EU for years & finally got fined.

I blogged about it almost a year ago (well, made a small comment on it) but went a bit more in-depth on the historical tip. I talk about it as I run into SO many people that had no idea this was going on. Sure, all the slashdotters knew the 411, but this is something you didn´t even hear an iota of on the mainstream media (they prefer to talk about less-relevant stuff like ´roided up baseball players).

Just remember, the U.S. isn´t holding M$ accountable here in the states for the EXACT same practices they were accused of overseas. It´s not gonna happen, too much of the government´s infrastructure is built on Microsoft products. $250 toilet seat covers are actually sounding like a good investment now...

It´s about to get real busy

Well after the wonderful SCALE 6X conference, there were a few things born out of that. My conversation w/Zak started as a question re: whether he´d seen something on the internet that I´d thought about for like 3 years (but I hadn´t seen anything after repeated google searches). Even though I´ve never done anything like this"before, Zak encouraged me to basically just start it. He´s totally right, so my 1st project is starting a tech-based non-profit. It´ll be a web-based tool & since I´m going to have to teach myself a few things to create the cool features I want to provide the community, it´s going to take a while...stay tuned.

The 2nd thing I´m now working on is the IndaMixx project. I also met Ron @ SCALE & we had some real good conversations.

I´m really looking forward to the creation of a service for the community-based, grass roots organizations through technology as well as being a part of a revolutionary musical endeavor.
200GR8!!!

On the eve of SCALE 6X

So it's the eve of this year's Southern California Linux Expo aka SCALE & I can't wait. The schedule is jam-packed with topics I'm interested in. Heck, even the Birds of a Feather (anyone being able to create a mini-conference of like-minded folks is such a cool idea!) events seem super interesting. The Friday ("pre-SCALE") lineup has tracks that are right up my alley- open source solutions in healthcare IT, open source in education & women in open source. All are things I've either worked on directly or evangelized about.

All that plus seeing several current & (I'm sure) long-lost friends should be really cool. The only 2 other conferences I'm equally excited about are UbuntuLive & ComiCon. ;)

DopeTracks

So one of the presenters at the Startup Project- LA who is currently using Amazon Web Services is this startup called DopeTracks. It is a website where hip hop fans can go create beats & rhyme over user-created beats all for FREE! It is driven by Flash so there is nothing to download or install on your computer. I checked it out (briefly) & think it is a great tool for our youth who are lovers of hip hop to produce & MC. While it is not perfect, you cannot go wrong with "free" & it even has a feature to export your rhymes & beats to your MySpace page.

While it is not a production-quality digital audio workstation (DAW), it is still a wonderful tool- personally I use Reason as my DAW. Especially since DAWs (Pro Tools, Reason, Cubase, etc.) are quite expensive so, hence, make it financially prohibitive for folks to even play around with the technology who do not have the means to do so. Give it a try, you might dig it!

Startup Project- LA

So I attended the Startup Project- LA event on 10/23/07 at the V Lounge in Santa Monica hosted by Amazon Web Services (AWS). I recognized the place right away since I used to go clubbing there when it used to be called Lush. However, some of the negatives started showing themselves right away. Parking was a nightmare as the nearby side-streets had street sweeping on one side & "parking by permit only" on the other. I finally found a metered spot 4 blocks away but it was 2-hour parking for a 5-hour event, oh well. I went inside, got my name badge & noticed no room to sit (they'd just started setting up some folding chairs). Lastly, the whole event felt more like a marketing ploy. Heck, even my friend, Eric, who'd turned me onto AWS at SGVLUG's Slashdot party (& who's using it extensively) bailed early. I stuck around a little longer than I would've only because I wanted to let traffic on the 10 settle down.

But there's good news. Amazon Web Services is really awesome as cloud computing seems to be the wave of the future. Additionally, it's super, duper cheap to use (1 of the presenters talked about having a $60/month bill, which is amazing to me) & seems to be getting adopted by all types of businesses- not just startups. Everyone I spoke with from Amazon was really knowledgeable, friendly & ready to help me with the solution I'm thinking of providing through my small business (that, in itself, was worth the trip for me). Lastly, the presenters provided interesting & unique ways in which they're using AWS for their varied businesses.

All in all, it was a worthwhile endeavor with a few logistical problems & provided me with a nice learning experience & a chance to network with some like-minded entrepreneurial geeks. :)

European Union (EU) suing M$

The proverbial snowball started rolling down the hill a few years ago. In that story, the BBC talks about some pretty shady dealings in Europe & how they were trying to weasel their way out of sanctions.

While I talked about this a couple months back, it´s only a matter of time before they get smacked down where it hurts (in the wallet!)...the clock is cticking...

Contributing to OpenOffice also

Figured since I´d come clean about contributing to Songbird, that I should also mention the other project I´m contributing my rusty QA skillz to. I mentioned OpenOffice.org (aka OOo) almost a couple months back.

OpenOffice rocks the socks off of M$ Office for MANY reasons. There´s versions for ALL operating systems, includes all the same types of programs as Office &, probably best of all, you can save any file you work on as its Office counterpart (in case you´re, say, sending a resume to a company that uses M$). Oh, by the way, it´s FREE too!!!

Music in the digital age

Paul McCartney just released his new album- his 21st solo edition- & even though he's 64, he's still keeping up w/the Jones'! He just ended his long-standing relationship w/EMI Records & this new record is being released completely as a music download.

Quote from the article:
"I was bored with the old record company's jaded view." "They're very confused, and they will admit it themselves: that this is a new world, and they're a little bit at a loss as to what to do. So they've got millions of dollars and X budget … for them to come up with boring ways — because they've been at it for so long — to what they call 'market' it. And I find that all a bit disturbing. "I write it, I play it, I record it, and that's all fun. And you go to the record company, and it gets very boring. You sit around in rooms with people, and you're almost falling asleep."

This is no surprise. As music moves further into the 21st century, you hear of SO many artists doing it their own way. Look at Maroon 5, they got in on the music via the internet thing just before MySpace started getting big & they've sold millions of tunes online. Reminds of me a GREAT article I read a while back praising the rise of indie labels & the mantra: “If you are an independent artist or record label and you don’t love LimeWire then you are just plain stupid!”

My neighbor's a musician & we talk about this all the time. Big record companies are upset because so many folks are downloading (for pay or for free) music instead of buying CDs so we've become all too familiar w/phrases like RIAA & DRM. It's the music industry's fault, if you ask me...I mean, how many years did we pay $15/album for 1-2 good songs? It's no surprise that artists are going to indie labels or doing it all on their own- they get a bigger chunk of the pie AND still maintain creative control. Besides, artists on large labels get more cash out of doing their tours than CD sales...so like I've always said: Support your music, go to a concert!

One Laptop Per Child

I heard about the One Laptop Per Child project in February of 2006 (when OLPC had just opened their headquarters in Massachusetts). All I could think of was "wow, why didn't anyone think of this before?" Needless to say, it was going to be a tremendous undertaking- producing laptops for $100 apiece for the SOLE purpose of handing them out to kids in emerging countries (to start) so that they could have a fighting chance of competing on a worldwide level with more fortunate kids their age (who probably take things like this for granted). The idea behind it is that no kids should be "left behind" by the ever-increasing digital divide- an idea I've championed & kicked around in my brain in terms of what I can do here in L.A. (I actually had a great idea for a non-profit which addresses this same issue for inner-city kids back in 1996 but I've yet to be able to act on it...patience, there's still time & that project of mine can still come to fruition). It's really not very different from the FOSS (free open-source software) movement in that its basic tenet is that access to software shouldn't be determined by age, race, class, gender or socioeconomic status. OLPC just takes it one step further in that its goal is to give a laptop to EVERY child in the world. As you can see from the link above, there's lots of partners that have now gotten involved & the software which powers it is free & open-source & uses open-document formats (ODF) which is also something I'm a huge proponent of.

I've actually had some email correspondence with a couple people that are part of the project in those last 16 months in order to see what I could do to provide my help & expertise. Initially, they wanted people to talk to corporations & educational institutions so I spread the word in my own little way (to other techies, educators, etc. I know). Now that the organization is fully up & running (kids in rural areas who are given these laptops can connect to the world through broadband access which, to me, posed a significant, initial obstacle for getting the project off the ground), I feel like I can be more of a help. It should be noted that these aren't for commercial sale here in the U.S. but OLPC is planning on offering it in the near future.

It's about time I wrote about it in an effort to reach even more people & now that the infrastructure's fully operational, I think the time is right to raise more awareness. So please visit the OLPC website, take a look around & see what you can do- whether you donate money or your time, it's a wonderful program created by great visionaries who are revolutionizing computing as we know it. Now this is a "no child left behind" idea that's REALLY working.