Moving Up and Remaining Open

September 11th, 2009

Many of you have already seen this announcement via other media, but I wanted to share here anyway Yesterday I sent the following email to the Koha Mailing List:

Hello everyone,

I wanted to write to you all before news started spreading and let you know that I have taken a position with ByWater Solutions and BibLibre that will start on October 1st. These two amazing companies have come together to offer me a role that will allow me to not only help libraries understand open source but to stay active in the community.

This means that I will remain your document manager – as I was informed at KohaCon – until I drop I have also been learning more and more about the software and participating more in submitting patches – something I hope to start doing more often.

Lastly, I read the comments in the most recent IRC meeting and wanted to thank all of you who said such kind things about me I enjoy being documentation manager and helping other learn about Koha and open source in general and would never have stopped doing that.

Thanks,
Nicole C. Engard
Koha Documentation Manager

I am very excited about this move and I have to say that my new job title is as cool as my last (maybe cooler) – I will be the Director of Open Source Education. Keep an eye out for more news throughout the month with details about the job and my future responsibilities.

[update] Press Release announcing my move. [/update]

Mentoring and Open Source

September 10th, 2009

There is a great post over on Perlbuzz that talks about the importance of mentoring in open source communities. As I work on compiling open source stories and experiences I find that what Esther says is right on point.

Open source offers amazing opportunities. There are almost no barriers to entry. If you want to try creating a new-to-you kind of application, or to learn how to write bright-shiny documentation, or to use the latest technology that your Day Job doesn’t give you access to — you can just barrel right in with an open source project and get involved. Once you become proficient (or demonstrate that you already are), you can apply those skills in the next phase of your career. Even better, you can choose which community you want to be a part of, and find a comfortable culture where your contributions matter.

However, because open source is so personally driven and self-motivated, there aren’t always a lot of opportunities to consciously improve your skills — except on your own. While that’s certainly valuable, it relies on you recognizing what needs improvement and then knowing what to do about it.

One of the biggest concerns I hear from librarians when I talk to them about open source is their lack of technology skills. While there are ways around this (support companies, freelancers, and even local students), I try to encourage people to let go of their fear and just jump in. I spent a year simply answering questions as I could on the Koha mailing list and then at KohaCon I decided to stay for the Developer’s Post Conference and I am so excited that I did!! I learned so much and that made it so that I was able to submit my first series of patches.

My point is that most open source communities are about … well … community People will help you out – they want you to succeed and they want you to help them succeed so just jump right in and ask for help – you never know you might end up adding a tiny enhancement that people have been asking for for ages

Also – make sure you read Esther’s entire post.

Open Source Participation

September 6th, 2009

David Eaves has an awesome post on his blog that takes a talk by Angie Byron a step further. I don’t just want to repeat his entire post, but it was so well written that I have been holding on to it to figure out a way to summarize it without repeating – and I couldn’t. So here’s what I’m going to share – and the rest you’re going read on David’s blog.

David takes this figure from Angie …

… and points out that while this is probably true, only a small amount of people have the skills necessary to participate in fixing open source applications we can change that by making community participation easier…

I can only speak for the one community I’m part of – but this is certainly something the Koha community tries to do. I have been submitting patches recently because of the patience of several experienced developers. The time they took to help me understand what I was doing made it so that I could patch bugs (I can do something about it) and add new features (things I thought were dumb the old way).

Read David’s entire post here.

My delicious bookmarks for 2009-09-04

September 6th, 2009

CS-Cart
CS-Cart is an “out of the box” ecommerce software solution with easy-to-use functionality that allows to start selling online immediately. Its feature set fits into businesses of any size, from a small single-product shop to a fully-featured online storefront.
Picok
Picok stands for Personal Information Cockpit. It’s an open source software package, aimed at enabling users to build their personal information dashboards. The users content is loaded into small draggable boxes, so called portlets, and laid out in a tabbed column-based interface.
openmeetings
Available in more than 20 languages, Openmeetings is a highly customizable Web conferencing app that includes desktop sharing and whiteboards, along with remote administration tools, a moderating system, and a tool for importing documents in 32 different formats. Openmeetings also integrates well with the educational learning management system Moodle.
Vmukti
VMukti Web Conferencing is a open source video communication platform which allows Multi-Point video and web conferencing.
Luminotes: personal wiki notebook
Luminotes is a WYSIWYG personal wiki notebook for organizing your notes and ideas. It’s designed for note taking and note keeping without the hassle of learning special markup codes. You simply start typing.
Task Coach
Task Coach is a simple open source todo manager to manage personal tasks and todo lists.
LyX | LyX – The Document Processor
LyX is a document processor that encourages an approach to writing based on the structure of your documents (WYSIWYM) and not simply their appearance (WYSIWYG).
CreativePro Office
CreativePro Office is the most complete set of online office management tools you’re likely to find at any price – and it’s completely free! Manage your team, clients, projects, invoices, events and quotes (coming soon) from one web-based application.

Library Mashups Book

September 2nd, 2009

If you missed my many other announcements, I just wanted to let you know that Library Mashups: Exploring New Ways to Deliver Library Data has arrived on my doorstep and is probably heading out to those of you who pre-ordered a copy soon!! If you write a review, let me know so I can read it and link to it

What I Learned Today…