SCALE: Gareth Greenaway, SCALE Community Relations Chair & Orv Beach, SCALE PR Chair
Michael: Michael Shiloh, OpenMoko

SCALE: Michael, what role do you play in the OpenMoko Development Community?

Michael: I’m the advocate for the community within the company, and the advocate for the company within the community. It’s a bit hard to describe, but I try to make sure information, questions, and issues flow as freely as possible between the two.

SCALE: How involved are you with the development of the OpenMoko software and the development of the hardware that runs the software?

Michael: I wear a number of hats. One is to develop sample applications and demonstration code, both pure software projects, but also projects involving add-on hardware. Since the openness of OpenMoko extends beyond the software (e.g. the availability of expansion pads on the PCB) we want to show people how they can extend the hardware as well. In addition, the fact that the USB port is both device and host means that external USB devices can easily be hooked up. I think this will be an invaluable way to prototype new hardware.

SCALE: That’s a really good feature, the host & device based USB port…that’s huge. There aren’t many people are doing that.

Michael: Yeah, that was actually the single feature that caught my eye when I first heard about the project, and caused me to look into it further. of course I loved what I saw. Read the rest of this entry »

The BSD Certification Group (BSDCG) will offer the BSDA certification exam to attendees of SCALE 2008.

The exam will be paper based and in English. Exam information is available from the Certification page of the BSDCG website. Exam candidates should be proficient in the BSDA Certification Requirements and the Command Reference, both of which are available for free download from this page of the website.

Exam candidates must bring valid photo identification matching the name they used when they registered for their BSDCG ID. Those who participated in the 2007 BSDA beta program are eligible for a 50% price discount.

The exam will be offered on Saturday, February 9 at 11:00 and 15:30 in the National room.

Due to limited seating at the event, the number of candidates per session is limited to 40 and pre-registration is required.

Participants have to register for a BSDCG ID first here. Note that it may take up to 24 hours to receive a BSDCG ID. Once you have an ID, you can choose an exam location and pay for the exam. Prices are in USD, ($75 or $37.50) and payable through Paypal or credit card.

About the BSD Certification Group

The BSD Certification Group (BSDCG) is a non-profit organization committed to creating and maintaining a global certification standard for system administration on BSD based operating systems. The BSDCG works with the BSD and sysadmin communities in order to provide a practical and relevant certification.

The BSDA certification is designed to be an entry-level certification on BSD Unix systems administration. The successful BSDA candidate is able to complete common administrative and troubleshooting tasks and has a good understanding of general BSD Unix and networking principles. In addition, the successful candidate demonstrates basic skills with these BSD operating systems:

Dragonfly BSD
FreeBSD
NetBSD
OpenBSD

We’ve been trying to document what goes on at SCALE every year. Not just in written documents; we’ve tried audio recordings and some video with mixed success.

This year SBLUG will be assisting us with video recordings of the sessions, the keynotes, and the expo floor (props to Tom King and his crew!)

Ilan, the SCALE Chair, scored an opportunity for us to try out some spiffy new audio recording gear from a startup. That startup is the Trinity Audio Group, and they have a nifty product called the Trinity. Here’s a picture of it:

We’ll have an opportunity to test them out, as Trinity Audio has loaned SCALE two of them to try out for “man in the street” audio recordings!

Read the rest of this entry »

We finished assembling the program and sent it off to the printers for proof. By assemble, I mean we gave all the ads, bios, and schedules and other content to Ron Golan, our graphics arts guru. He assembled them, posted a draft PDF online, and we critqued it, all in the SCALE IRC channel. When done, Ilan pushed it onto the printer’s FTP site. We had to send it back to them again due some issue with ads and transparencies, but they turned it around quickly. Here’s more evidence that SCALE has grown: the program last year was 12 pages. This year it’s 20 pages. And props to Ron for putting out an excellent piece of work! We’ve used Dot Graphics in Chatsworth for our printing needs for the last three or four years, and they’ve been very responsive to our requirements and the products have been of good quality. We’ve used them for programs, posters and other signage, and postcards (both printing and mailing). Recommended.

The SCALE team will be holding an “Open Source Jobs” BoF. If you are hiring or searching for any open-source related positions, we invite you to participate.  Each employer will have an opportunity to briefly describe their organization and the jobs they have available.

The event will be held on Saturday February 9th, in evening. Specific times and locations will be available later this week.

If you are hiring and would like an opportunity to present your open roles, please contact ilan@socallinuxexpo.org

It’s two weeks away from the So Cal Linux Expo, so we’re all pretty busy:

• Gareth and I were on Digital Village on KPFK yesterday (Saturday). It went very well; this is the third year we’ve been on Digital Village pimping SCALE, and the hosts are very comfortable with the concept of FOSS. Due to the inclement weather (ice and snow), their FM transmitter on Mt. Wilson went down sometime late this week (it was down Saturday morning, and it still off the air at this writing). Fortunately they weren’t completely down; they stream their program content on the Internet. So, even though listeners with radios couldn’t hear us, those with computers could. And apparently someone was listening, we had several SCALE registrations shortly after the show with the promo code Gareth gave out during the program

• Ilan and I will be on The Linux Links Tech Show podcast on Wednesday, Jan. 30th, at 5:30 p.m PST. That is, the show starts at 5:30, and it seems like it runs about two hours. I don’t when we’ll be on during the show. I’ll post that afterwards.

• We finished assembling the program and sent it off to the printers for proof. By assemble, I mean we gave all the ads, bios, and schedules and other content to Ron Golan, our graphics arts guru. He assembled them, posted a draft PDF online, and we critqued it, all in the SCALE IRC channel. When done, Ilan pushed it onto the printer’s FTP site. We had to send it back to them again due some issue with ads and transparencies, but they turned it around quickly. Here’s more evidence that SCALE has grown: the program last year was 12 pages. This year it’s 20 pages. And props to Ron for putting out an excellent piece of work! We’ve used Dot Graphics in Chatsworth for our printing needs for the last three or four years, and they’ve been very responsive to our requirements and the products have been of good quality. We’ve used them for programs, posters and other signage, and postcards (both printing and mailing). Recommended.

• Last year Stu (Tech Committee chair) designed a bulletproof LAN for SCALE, with about 75 VLANs for isolation of booths and wireless. It ran almost flawlesslly. He’s doing the same sort of thing this year - but we’ll have over a hundred VLANs(!). He’s elbow-deep in programming switches for SCALE at this point.

• Registration for SCALE continues to run well above last year. It’ll be interesting to see how many more visitors we actually get compared to last year. We’re concerned about it being overcrowded, in spite of moving what we believe will be the most popular sessions into the theater at the Westin LAX. Regardless of how SCALE 6X goes, this is almost certainly our last year at the Westin; we’ve outgrown it.

• Interest in SCALE from the press is up, too; I’ve given out more press passes and press lists than in the past.

So it’s down to the wire - SCALE is less than two weeks away!

– Orv -

SCALE Publicity Chair

Linux Journal’s Mr. Gadget podcast recently posted a video review of KySoh’s Tux Droid. KySoh is a Silver Sponsor of this year’s SCALE event and will be present on our expo floor in February.

Ilan Rabinovitch and Orv Beach will be on The Linux Links Tech Show on January 30th, at 5:30 PST. They’ll chat with the TLLTs crew about FOSS in general and SCALE specifically. Listen in if you like!