Try It Lab
Everyone
Speaker: Keith Wright

General troubleshooting techniques and tools for LInux

This presentation will cover basic troubleshooting strategies and tools available for most Linux distributions. We start by by covering how to be prepared for troubleshooting – documentation, backups and spares. Then we'll look at logs and using debug options and command history to assess the scope of the problem. Troubleshooting the X11 subsystem and the GNOME Desktop Environment is explained. We'll review how to monitor and manage general processes. We'll discuss how to check important settings and preferences. Networking, both wired and wireless, is another key area that is covered. Key command line and graphical tools for diagnostics and configuration are explained along with the important configuration files and how to verify them.
WIOS
Everyone

In this session, several girls who are involved as users of and contributors to open source projects present some of their work. This is followed by a Q&A session for the audience to explore how to get girls involved in open source.

Malakai, Mirano, and Saskia are self-identified girls and self-described Fedora Mascots, who have participated in several open source projects as users and contributors. From using free and open tools for writing, art, and music, to contributing to XO/Sugar, these girls were first introduced to using Linux by their dads. For the first 1/3rd of the presentation, the girls present some of their art, open collaborations, and favorite programs. They introduce "chat play", an interactive role playing game they invented while travelling last year as Fedora Mascots to multiple Linux and open source festivals. The girls are active in an unorganized young people's QA team for Sugar/OLPC activities. In the last 2/3rds of the time, the girls would like an open discussion with the audience to explore what can get more girls involved in open source. "Disclaimer: we are not responsible for anyone's head going a'splode."
Program Track A
Speaker: Russell Miller

How to use open source tools to create a completely (or nearly so) automated deployment system.

Having worked at a couple of very large Linux installations (one of them having four thousand servers across three data centers, and one having about six hundred across two), and having built one of these environments completely from scratch, it becomes obvious very quickly that normal manual deployment processes, such as using a CDROM or other physical boot media, simply do not scale. Add to that configuration for different server roles and application deployment, it becomes obvious that an automated end-to-end deployment system becomes the only way forward. This talk will cover creating and end-to-end deployment system with little to no manual intervention, using only open source tools. The open source tools involved are: - RT/AT (Asset Tracker) - nictool/djbdns - dhcpd (and the pros and cons of using your own integration script) - PXE/tftpboot - kickstart - puppet - subversion I will discuss how to turn these tools into a deployment system which will allow you, once configured, to quickly and easily set up as many servers at a time as you have SSH sessions available, and even ways to not have to use SSH sessions and kick the build off programmatically, using expect and other such tools, and to do so using different configuration and application profiles, all controlled from a central information source.
Program Track B
Everyone
Speaker: Steve Oualline

An introduction to some of Vim's more useful intermediate and advanced features

Vim is the most commonly used text editor in Linux. It is a extremely powerful and flexible editor. This talk introduces people to many of the more advanced features that they might be unaware of including: * Multiple windows * Commands for searching through *multiple* source files. * Diff mode * Commands for locating files when you only know a partial name.
Program Track B
Everyone
Speaker: Karen Sandler

An introduction to the basics of trademark law, along with best practices recommendations.

This session will provide the very basics of trademark law along with recommendation for best and minimum practices. Common misconceptions about trademark law will be debunked and community interests in trademarks will be contrasted with corporate ones.
Program Track B
Everyone
Speaker: Jon Cruz

Color Management has moved from being a niche area to one of importance to both high-end professionals and average end users. This talk will present firsthand information on the hows and whys of implementing and using color management.

Color Management has long been perceived as a niche area, of interest mainly to professional graphic designers and the like, however it has come to be important to a much wider audience. At the same time it is also becoming more and more accessible to much larger groups of people. What used to be reserved for high-end service bureaus and professional publishers has now come to be usable in areas such as 1 hour prints at a local drugstore, web sharing and emailing of family photos, and output of graphics and photos on home printers. This talk will first focus on color management in general, and many of the different types of end users who can benefit from it. Photographers, digital painters, illustrators, website creators, graphic designers and different home users can all gain in many different ways from adopting at least a bit of a color managed workflow. Aside from the obvious graphics professionals, potential users include anyone who might email a photo from a cell phone to their home computer, or who might edit a website on an OS that might be different from that used by some people viewing it. Also developers themselves can benefit from adding at least minimal color management support to projects they work on. After the general information of color management and who might benefit from it, the focus will then move on to the history and current state of color management in Open Source software. In just the last few years large advancements have been made, with GIMP and Inkscape among those joining the projects supporting color management and a color managed workflow. Tools including Argyll CMS, LProf, xicc and others will be covered. Specific examples and cases will then be drilled down to, with a focus on illustration and SVG. The speaker's experience in adding color management to Inkscape will be leveraged to show concrete examples for workflows before and after color management. Issues such as printing output, spot colors, CMYK printing, mobile devices, and integration with raster paint programs will be covered. Finally, pending improvements in Open Source software will be highlighted with an eye to inspiring both end users and developers. End users can look forward to the improvements to come, and can help ensure their individual needs will be covered. Developers can see that adding color management to their project is not difficult to start, and can lead to even wider acceptance of their software and of color management itself.
WIOS
Everyone

We will question the 1% female representation to FOSS development projects by proposing a critical analysis and overview of women's contributions to FOSS, which turns them from absent to invisible for the community.

Whenever there is a debate about women's representation in FOSS, the answer is 1%. This discouraging statistics has not been much questioned, but only repeated. However, smaller research announces 15% of female participation, while Angela "webchick" Byron, announced 7-10% of women in Drupal (2009). We will present the results of a MA research, based on a qualitative analysis women contributions to FOSS. We will classify women's contributions, by proposing a typology of contributors: technicians, mediators and diffusers. Then, we will propose some reasons for women's “invisibility” based either on the effectuation of “invisible” tasks inside FOSS or on contributing FOSS knowledge to other communities such as libraries, community centres, public administration, education. In conclusion, we will identify risks from the option women's work in FOSS remains invisible and provide recommendations on how to value the work not only of women but also of non-programmers and non-experts in the field.
WIOS
Everyone
Speaker: Emma Jane Hogbin

If we really want world domination of free and open source software, we need to have the self-help guides worthy of our code--this talk shows you how.

Developers write documentation. Technical authors write manuals. But in a perfect world, your users read software self-help guides. Consumers expect documentation to reflect the sophistication of the software they are using, and will abandon an application if they cannot easily find the answer to their problems. If we really want world domination of free and open source software, we need to have the self-help guides worthy of our code. In "Writing Self Help Guides for World Domination" we'll take a look at the strategies and tools needed for really awesome documentation. Imagine a world where documentation actually helped you to find an answer, or solved one of your problems. If that sounds like a pipe dream, it's because you've had to struggle with too much crap documentation. Technical writing can be fun and accessible, but more importantly, it can be truly useful. By analysing how people use software, and where they stumble, we can drastically improve the experience our users have with our software documentation. Creating relevant documentation needs a little more than just a scraping of code comments though--and this talk will show you how it should be done. Open source tools for writing documentation are very sophisticated, but generally our mastery of them quite simply sucks. Whether they are using DocBook, Mallard or DITA, many projects have opted for very powerful markup languages for their documentation, but often use only a fraction of what the tools can do. Other projects have opted to go with Web-based content management systems and have failed to create a cohesive self-help experience for users. You will learn how to effectively use these common tools for creating and maintaining collaborative documentation. Real examples will be pulled from open source projects. If you've been wanting to help make the user experience better for your project, this talk is a must-see.

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