Greetings edu-siggers -- I'm still decompressing from an intensive 3-day OS Bridge conference here in Portland, Oregon. Having a purely Portland management and local focus made this a rather different experience, a small gem actually, well run and cram packed with interesting talent and talks, from a cyborg anthropologist to a typography expert. We're attracting more social science and artist types, musicians, clowns (professional) who explain the web in easy geek (thinking of Keroes).
My own talk hit most of my usual themes, filling in details regarding my work crewing with "buckaneers" as well as around marketing new kinds of geometry teaching (showed off the usual hypertoon, Scott Daniels actually in the same building this time -- he did the decorators). Re: me 'n farmer David: http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2009/06/show-time.html Lots of overlap with our Institute for Science, Engineering and Public Policy (e.g. the keynote speaker had been with us earlier -- she really gets around it seems to me (hi Amber)). ISEPP was not a sponsor though, and I was representing 4D Studios, which is a DWA thing (DWA and ISEPP are completely distinct). I represented ISEPP at Pycon (brought Josh Cronemeyer to Pauling House for a look see -- having missed him in Chicago (another geek with some Quaker connections)). Here's a blog post with links to the slides. Apologies in advance for the large file size (6 megs), but in making this a retrospective in some ways, I got into screen scraping at the pixel level, meaning we're often looking at fully stored bitmaps even where type fonts are concerned (no vector graphics). Turnout was low (lots of empty chairs) but it's quality not quantity. I had a professor from Linnfield College who'd been to my OSCON talk years ago. He came right up to me and said that as a result of that talk he'd gone straight back and started wheels turning, getting Python accepted. Now they're moving more physics to VPython, like some other schools we know about. This is all gratifying to hear, sounds like we're a lot on the same wavelength, whether or not we actually get to meet all that often (the years fly by eh?). As I noted to my lobbyist friend (Software Association of Oregon): """ PS: the low turnout was not a surprise, is somewhat par for the course in a geek conference averaging age 35, no one there a high school math teacher by training or future intent. I've been in rooms just like it with just as few, but once it was both Guido (BDFL) and Robin Dunn (wxPython), and this time I had you and ThoughtWorks/Chicago, plus there're the recordings and prestige, so lets just say I was not dissatisfied. What packs 'em in is when its directly about their career, so in a conference for math teachers needing computer language skills, you'd expect a tight fit, sometimes people on the floor (rolling?). ROFL. """ Plone was a presence. Canada is near. I'll blab some more as time goes on. Got a note that Paul is dropping off though continues tracking through various blogs and/or wikis. I invited him to rejoin and requit as many times as he likes (not that I'm listowner or anything -- that'd be Mr. Wilson or Andre or Dr. Pepper maybe). Cronemeyer's talk was Google App Engine related, as you'll find my blog post 'Winding Down' with his picture. http://mybizmo.blogspot.com/2009/06/winding-down.html Wave to Jeff Elkner, been yakking about you behind your back (all good). Not sure exactly how it works, but I think when Portland does its own FOSS conference, the dynamics with Microsoft are different. Redmond is part of the same bioregion. Their queen of open source made a big splash plus Python has generally been Windows friendly, given how tremendously successful her code base in this platform, now with the DLR's backing. You'd think their marketing machine would take more interest, especially with Sara Ford at the helm. Kirby _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig