User:Hchun/FSOSS 11
Free Software and Open Source Symposium 2011
Written by: Hyungryul Chun (ID:066606096)
Date: 11/4/2011
Course: DPS909
Introduction
When I was first told that I would need to go to FSOSS for DPS909 because we need to write a report on the symposium, I felt devastated. I liked open source and I definitely like free software, but I wasn’t sure if I liked the idea of giving up good chunk of my reading week, when most of the week would be already used up finishing up major assignments and studying for the business midterm which was scheduled the first thing after reading week was over. So what is FSOSS? Well, as the name suggests, it is a symposium for free software and open source. People gather to listen to other people talk about free software and open source topics… great! But, what can I, as a student who does has barely experienced real world programing by contributing to the popcorn.js project, gain from going to these seminars? How can I relate myself to those who is living and breathing open source? Would I even be able to understand the kind of things they are talking about?
MY Encounter
I doubted myself with questions like above and was hoping that I can make some sort of observation during the symposium in order to write this report. On the first day, I went to 2 workshops. The first workshop that I attended was a processing.js workshop was provided by Professor Humphrey and John Buckley. It was weird being in the usual class room that I have with my fellow classmates and my professor, but with bunch of old folks! These older people seemed to be professionals who are out in the real world programing. It felt weird but interesting that I would be taking a workshop with these people who probably have a load of experience developing. Even though I didn’t have a positive view about attending FSOSS, the seminar was very exciting and I had a lot of fun. I loved the basic commands that Mr. Buckley showed the class. We were able to test the code on the processing IDE, and also edit the code so that we can have our own variation to the tutorial code. The first workshop on the first day of FSOSS was already starting to change my mind about FSOSS.
I ended up going to all 3 days of FSOSS. On the first day I went to “Introduction to Processing.JS for Web and Mobile” by Jon Buckley and David Humphrey”, then finished with “Android Development – Web Service and Data Access” by Simon Chang. On the Second Day, I attended “Site Building Extravaganza” by Emma Jane Hogbin, “Free and Open Source Strategy as Practice: Participant Perspectives” by Mekki MacAulay and “XB PointStream: Rendering Point Clouds with WebGL” by Andor Salga. On the Third day I went to “Intoduction to the Google Android Platform” by Simon Chang, “When you cannot be there… Remote access and collaboration” by Raul Suarez and “How Web Browsers Work” by Ehsan Akhgari.
I was disappointed at times, because there was two talks that I really wanted to attend but they were both allocated to the same time slot and had to flip a coin to decide which one to go to… Out of the presentations I went to, I would like to talk about “Site Building Extravaganza” by Emma Jane Hogbin and “Free and Open Source Strategy as practice: Participant Perspectives” by Mekki MacAulay. I feel that these two talks involved a general topic of free software and open source when the other talks were a little more narrow, technical and talk specific.
