Tips to Become “Influential”

Last week, I was a little bit flummoxed to learn that MindTouch had named me one of the “400 Most Influential in TechComm and Content Strategy.” As honored as I felt to be part of this list (see my other site for an initial reaction), I’m still not quite sure what I did to earn such a high place (57) on the list. This is probably a good thing, as otherwise I might be plotting to make the Top 50 next year.

As a longtime blogger, and WordPress author, I do get the occasional question from people along the lines of “Can I get rich and famous from blogging?” My answer is usually the same lines: “It’s been done, but it ain’t easy.” Well, I am not rich (at least in the financial sense), and I’m only (very) slightly famous. Apparently, however, I am at least a little bit influential, so I do have some vague notion (maybe) of how I got here. Can I share?

Find experienced people who can help

When I first became a technical writer, my predecessor in the job moved to the marketing department of our company. I asked a lot of questions and soaked up all the information I could—not just about the software we documented, but about tech writing as a profession. Among other things, she shared with me a stack of publications from the Society for Technical Communication (STC). What a good idea that was!

Find a professional organization in your niche

Finding STC connected me with hundreds of other folks who had my job (or something similar) looking to become better at it. When I first started going to meetings of the Rocky Mountain chapter, I met people I was actually in awe of, but were still friendly and helpful. I learned more, and got more involved as time went on. STC is not a perfect organization (does such a thing exist?), but I’m still involved.

When that first tech-comm job ended and I came back to my hometown, I found another group of kindred spirits at BarCamp Milwaukee and Web414. Scroll through the archives here for some thoughts on what I’ve picked up from them over the years. One of the best things I picked up was an early acceptance of Twitter as a communication tool!

Go to conferences

My annual routine includes as many BarCamps, tech comm conferences, and WordCamps as I can attend. Most years, that’s only one or two of each, but I pine to see more. What’s great about conferences? Even if you don’t get to travel to some exotic location, you can get out of the daily routine and learn something new. There’s meeting and hanging out with a different set of people too.

I’ll remind you that WordCamp Milwaukee is coming in June, WriteCamp will be around that time, and BarCamp Milwaukee is the first weekend in October.

Share what you know

When you learn something, don’t hoard that knowledge. Whether you just retweet an interesting link, write a blog, or start speaking at conferences,it’s important to share. In my early days on Twitter, somebody out there suggested that a key to success on Twitter was to “always be linking.” Just don’t make your links all about yourself!

Have a personality, but don’t parade your ego

Here’s a generalization: Most people don’t care for people who just talk about themselves. When you’re interacting with people at all these events I’m suggesting you participate in, aim to be nice, and aim to be helpful. Whether you’re online, in print, or in person, don’t be the know-it-all (even if you think you do know a lot). Always remember that you’ve been wrong before, but maybe not now. Never be afraid to just listen, too. That is how you learn things.

I don’t know for sure whether these practices turned me into an influential character, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be doing what I do without these practices. Many thanks to all who have helped me over the last decade or so. Quite a few of those folks are also on the MindTouch list, but many others are outside the field.

Happy New Year! May you be influential in your niche too!

Curating News: MuckRack Shows Off Mainstream Media

In the not-quite-two-decades since I first got online, I like to think I’ve gotten smarter and better informed as a result of tons of reading and interacting with people I’d never met. It’s one of the greater things about a life spent online.

(Digression: On December 25, 1992 I got a modem installed on my first PC, with an install floppy for the Prodigy service–a walled garden co-owned by Sears and IBM that helped many ordinary people get online when AOL only ran on the Mac. Expect a much longer reminiscence of those days in …oh, about a year.)

It might be a cliché by now, but true nonetheless: there is so much information accessible to us with some keystrokes and mouse clicks, it’s hard for an ordinary mortal to keep up. Did I also mention that the same is largely true about misinformation? So a ton of services, sites and software tools have sprung up to help us cope with the firehose of data and help us (ideally) get smarter and better informed in the process. Or maybe just give us more ammunition in the daily debates. They’ve come to be called “curation services,” because like art museum curators, they try to choose the best and/or most representative works for a particular exhibit.

I’m trying to sort through these services to find the One True Source (or maybe the Two or Three True Sources) of curated news. And I hope you’ll find the results of this search useful, interesting, and perhaps even a little entertaining. The chronicle of the journey will be occasional over the next few months, and assuming I get to Post #2, it will have its own category over there on the sidebar.

MuckRack, where you find out what reporters geek out on

For the first experiment in this area, I want to tell you about MuckRack, a two-year-old site I only found recently, but that has proven quite addictive to this news junkie. I could spend hours here daily, if I didn’t have a real job.

The premise here is to aggregate journalist postings on a variety of social media (originally just Twitter, but now all the usual suspects) to “get tomorrow’s newspaper today.” As a business model, they’re looking to pair up PR folks with writers who are actually interested in the pitches.

So as a news consumer, what does this site give you?

• You can see the stories that the mainstream media is following at any given moment. MuckRack offers a Trending Now box in a sidebar, and the individual writers who are the busiest posters in the country.
• When reporters link to other news stories, you can see the story (and the commentary about the story from the assembled reporters) on the page.
• Anyone can also view the MuckRack Journalist Directory, organized by media organization. Click through to follow your favorite reporters.
• You can also sign up for the MuckRack Daily, a cheeky morning newsletter that delivers the hot stories in a very digestible format, along with the “Watercooler” section, where you see what reporters are reading about journalism and the media business.

In short, if you want to learn more about mainstream journalism and the process of creating the news, MuckRack is the place to go. It’s not perfect; as all the weaknesses of “follow the pack” journalism tend to be on display here. Despite naming the site after the original “muckrakers,” known today as investigative reporters, you won’t see a lot of investigative stories here on any given day, but I suppose that’s a reality generally.

You will see the wit and wordplay that come to writers naturally, though. And reporters know how to craft a punchy sentence, a big plus when you’ve got a 140-character limit.

How do you keep up with the news in general, or other topics of interest? Has the Internet made you smarter, or better informed (reasons, please!)? Is there a favorite (or less favorite) curated news site you’d like to see me review in this spot? Comment away…

Happy New Year everyone!

Related articles (from Zemanta):

• Tracking journalists on the all-new Muck Rack (lostremote.com)
• The all new Muck Rack tracks what journalists are talking about on Twitter (thenextweb.com)
• News organisations’ activity on Google+ courtesy of MuckRack and Poynter (charman-anderson.com)

Somewhat Shameless Self-Promotion: WordPress in Depth

Image via Wikipedia

We’re not especially into the hype and commercialism that often slips into the blogosphere. At Notes from the Metaverse, the goal is to empower ordinary folks to use technology to find their voice and get things done. I hope this blog helps you navigate the occasionally treacherous waters of open source technology, especially desktop Linux and WordPress. I firmly believe that good content is the most important SEO tool there is.

That said, if you happen to know someone who is thinking about starting a blog in 2012, or wants to take advantage of all WordPress has to offer, you could do a lot worse than picking up a copy of WordPress in Depth.

I have to say that I’ve been amazed and humbled at some of the reviews for the second edition that have appeared at Amazon.com. Indulge me for a minute while I show you some of the quotes that warm my heart (even if the spelling isn’t always perfect):

It is well-written for people like me who know there way around a computer but don’t consider themselves too technical.  –Michael Gallagher

This book WordPress in Depth, is easy to understand even when talking about the professional side of WordPress. –S. Nichols

Some manuals have the detail but not the clarity required to be user friendly. This one delivers the information in a clear manner and is well organized. It describes putting up a WordPress blog in a chronological manner that would allow the reader to sit down at the computer with the manual and just work their way through the process.  –Lou Belcher

I was very happy to receive this book because I am interested in starting a blog and I have absolutely ZERO experience with WordPress and very limited experience with any kind of programming at all, but I am pretty good at following “recipes.” To push the analogy, WordPress In Depth (2nd Edition) not only gives you the recipes, but teaches you how the various ingredients chemically react to one another to produce a result. Some chefs want to know that stuff; others just want the cake to come out right. This book is for the former.   –S. Rudge

Bud Smith and I worked hard to make the new edition more “in depth,” yet still friendly to the rank beginner. Admittedly, not everyone agrees that we succeeded.

Thanks to the inevitable lag in publishing schedules, the book doesn’t cover some of the newer embellishments in WordPress, but watch this space for help on that score soon. If there’s something in particular you want to know about, please leave a comment here.

You can find WordPress in Depth wherever you find quality computer books (and I know that’s harder than it used to be), be it in your town or at your computer. It comes in paper and electronic versions.

As the pitchman always says: If you liked either edition of WordPress in Depth, tell a friend. If not, tell me, in the Comments. Ideas for future editions are greatly appreciated too. What have you had trouble learning in WordPress? What features excite you most?

While you’re still in the book shopping mood, you might also want to check out these recent releases:

• Bud Smith, my outstanding collaborator, never stops writing. He’s got Using iPad 2 out now.
• Rochelle Melander, the WriteNow Coach, inspires writers in Milwaukee and elsewhere with her blog and workshops. She’s also a friend of WriteCamp Milwaukee, which makes her a all-round terrific person. Her latest, Write-a-Thon,  is something I’ve been meaning to get since before it came out, but I procrastinate.

And so concludes our marketing interlude. I’ll return to helpful content sooner than you think!

Whatever holiday you celebrate this time of year, I hope it’s a good one! And may 2012 be the best ever!

Dreaming of Summer — and WordCamp Milwaukee!

Image by planetc1 via Flickr

You have no idea how excited I am that WordCamp is coming to Milwaukee next June 2-3, 2012. A small group of us, led by Scott Offord, have been laying the groundwork for this two-day conference on all things WordPress at Bucketworks. We’re ready to accept visitors.

What’s WordCamp? It’s a gathering of WordPress users of all types, where the experienced can share what they know and the neophyte can share their enthusiasm and quandaries. It’s for folks who just started blogging at WordPress.com. It’s for folks who want to understand how plugins work (and maybe why it’s not).  It’s for bloggers, designers, developers … anyone who wants to learn more about WordPress.

Things are still in the early planning stages, but we can tell you the weekend will feature three tracks:

• User Track: more focused on the end-user (bloggers, writers, customers, clients, less-technical, marketing, experience-driven, plugins to make your life easier, SEO, etc)
• Developer Track: more focused on web development using WordPress (Frameworks, creating plugins, customizing the dashboard, contributing to the open source project code, etc)
• Unconference Track: It being at Bucketworks, the home of BarCamp Milwaukee and so many other unconferences, you know we’d have one. This track is more focused on multi-person discussion (create your own session, conversational, philosophical, interactions about WordPress-related topics, unplanned and only slightly structured and guided by you)

In between sessions, we want to set up a “Happiness Bar,” where you can get specific questions answered and problems solved with the help of experts. We’re trying to think of other fun and useful things to do.

You can sign up for WordCamp Milwaukee 2012 right now for the early bird rate of just $20 at the Milwaukee WordPress Meetup site. In the new year, we’ll put out a call for speakers, and launch a more formal site at WordCamp Central.

Want to know more about WordCamps? You can see a ton of video from past WordCamps at Wordcamp.TV. Live around here and want to help? Tell me or sign up at Meetup.

You hear a lot about “community” around open source software generally, and certainly around WordPress. WordCamp is where that community can make itself felt. Hope to see you in June!

Feel free to share your WordCamp memories and questions in the Comments.

Related articles

• What Is A WordCamp All About? [infographic] (thetechscoop.net)

Google Knol Comes to WordPress

You’ll be forgiven if you’d forgotten about Google Knol, an online encyclopedia project begun with much fanfare as a “Wikipedia killer” in 2007.Thus, when Google ended its sponsorship of the project last week, some folk’s first reaction was “it isn’t dead already?“

Many in the mass media and tech press thought this site would become the place to go for solid basic information on the Internet. After all, Knol was backed by the most popular brand on the Internet and written by peer-reviewed professionals, clearly to be trusted more than the hive mind producing Wikipedia.

Clearly that didn’t happen, nor would it be the first time the collective punditry of the universe was wrong about something, either. But this post is not an obituary for a failed project, nor is it a victory celebration for Wikipedia and the hive mind. I want to briefly look forward, and suggest that the project might now see new life.

You see, Knol authors are being offered the opportunity to continue their project on WordPress, by way of the Annotum Project. As the original Knol site fades away (no new content after May 1, 2012; closure in October 2012),  Knol authors can choose to move their existing articles to WordPress.com, or set up their own Annotum sites using self-hosted WordPress. Of course, this means that Knol authors are less likely to be isolated off in their own little part of the Internet (where they could be easily forgotten), and become part of the broad and lively WordPress community. Could be good for all of us!

Meanwhile, it’s been a week since the announcement by Google and WordPress, and it appears that Annotum may prove to be a rebirth, not a final resting place for Knol. The beginnings of an infrastructure for Annotum are coming together:

• In the first week, the Annotum base theme has been downloaded more than 5500 times from WordPress.org.
• A support site is live at UserVoice, with a knowledge base and a small bit of feedback.
• Annotum even has “Annotum2Go” packages at GitHub that will set up a web server on Windows and Mac machines and configure WordPress/Annotum sites.

Recognizing that this bit of optimism might also end up entirely wrong, I intend to follow the project’s progress, and see what happens. I might even contribute a WordPress or openSUSE article at some point.

If you’re a Knol author, welcome to the WordPress community! I really want to know what you think about the future of the project. Are you sad that Google pulled the plug? Are you surprised that you didn’t transition to another (say, more Googlish) platform? I know of at least one person who is. Will Annotum meet your (individual and collective) needs? Will the Peter Arno article ever be finished?

Other comments on Knol and Annotum appreciated too.

Installing openSUSE 12.1

Last weekend, I got my system ready to install the latest and greatest from the openSUSE community. After I wrote that post, I thought I was going right into the installation, but life intervened (as it so often does). Between tending to other priorities (some of us are still working while the economic crisis continues) and wanting to reserve a large block of time for the install, just in case anything went wrong, I didn’t get to install openSUSE 12.1 until Wednesday.

The good news is that it went pretty smoothly. Let me tell you about it…

The last item of preparation last week was to burn the KDE LiveCD to use for the installation. I kept the Transmission BitTorrent client going 24×7 throughout this period, sharing the 32-bit DVD, KDE and GNOME ISO files (in case you’re wondering, the share ratio indicating the demand for each file wound up at over 5 for the DVD, and both live CDs around 2, with GNOME slightly ahead) for roughly a week.

Before I shut down the laptop, I popped the burned CD-RW into the holder, without sliding it in. I powered down the machine, and the CD drive pulled in the disc. After a couple of deep breaths, I fired up the laptop, and the CD loaded and displayed the KDE desktop, as expected. Two things made me happy to begin with:

• The desktop displayed in both the laptop and my attached second monitor. They were identical images, so I couldn’t (yet) use the big monitor as an extension of the desktop, but it was a good start for the open-source Nouveau driver.
• KDE also found my Ethernet cable, attached to the DSL router. I was slightly disappointed it did not immediately locate the wireless card, but I was pretty hopeful that the networking piece of the install would go smoothly.

In the KDE folder view that presented itself on the LiveCD was a lovely Install button. The adventure was about to begin. Clicking the button generated a warning box, telling me I didn’t have enough memory (less than 1GB) to complete the install and run anything else. While thinking “Wow, you mean with a newer system I would have been able to get screen shots? Or even tweet the whole process?”, I resigned myself to reality and started the install. Sorry folks!

The openSUSE installation process has changed a bit since the v10.3 install I documented in openSUSE Linux Unleashed back in 2007, but similar to more recent versions. On the first screen, the installer identifies the language and keyboard you use, with drop-down menus in case it guesses wrong. It also displays the GNU General Public License v2 text, which you do not have to “sign,” but have the option to read.

Clicking Next takes you to the gorgeous full-color world map that allows you to define your time zone, either by clicking your spot on the map, using the drop-down menus or some combination of both. Because this is YaST, you get the option to use the Network Time Protocol (NTP) to set your clock with the help of time servers associated with ultra-accurate atomic clocks. As I had yet to set up my Internet connection, this didn’t work—but I got it working (set to the us.pool.ntp server) later. Click Next.

The third screen offered a suggestion for partitioning the hard drive. YaST reproduced the existing partition table exactly as I had it written down last week, and recommended only reformatting the root (/) partition. For a truly clean install, I could have reformatted /home too, but I was getting anxious and lazy, so I let it slide.

After the suggested partition table, you get three check boxes to select from:

• Create an LVM-based proposal; this Logical Volume Method would start over and create new partitions across physical hard drives. Choosing this option also allows you to encrypt certain volumes.
• Propose a separate home partition, selected by default (though I don’t know whether that was because I already had that setup). This is an excellent idea, by the way, for the simple reason that you can store and backup all your data in one place. Then you can choose whether to continue using that data when you change computers or operating systems.
• Use btrfs as the default filesystem. This new filesystem type (pronounced “Butter-FS”) is intended to be faster and better organized than ext4, the dominant filesystem for UNIX/Linux. But it’s new, and relatively untested.This is not checked by default, and I seriously considered selecting this option, but chickened out on my main production system.

When I clicked Next, I ran into the first glitch of the install, based on the fact that the LiveCD was still running. While the install program (YaST) was trying to identify an initial set of software packages, PackageKit was using the same YaST Software Management module to check for new software, generating an error message from the install program. I had to press Ctrl+Esc to get the System Activity module up to kill PackageKit to continue. that’s Tip #1 for a first-time installer!

Once the software conflict was resolved, the fourth screen of the install appeared, where I created my first user. YaST asks for your Full Name, and offers your first name as your user name. You can change this manually if you prefer something else. You are then asked to type a password twice for that user.

Here you also get three check boxes for this user:

• Use password for system administrator. This is how Ubuntu does things, but critics (like me) suggest that this is a bad convenience-vs-security tradeoff. I prefer to have a separate admin password, so I clear this box.
• Receive system mail. Because I am the main user of this system, I do check this box, so when the system wants to tell me something it found in its logs, it will tell me (not the Root account that I never log into directly).
• Autologin. This box is checked, and is OK to my mind if you’re the only user of your computer (or at least the Linux side). OTOH, if you like to choose your desktop from the login screen, you might not ever see the login screen.

Also on this screen, you can select an authentication method (how the system is to know that you are really you). By default, openSUSE will use the classic UNIX method of a passwd file in /etc. If you have one, you can also select a digital certificate stored on a Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) server, a Network File Server (NFS) or a Windows share. Your password will be encrypted using a SHA-512 key, the most secure protocol available, by default. You could choose a lesser cipher (DES, MD5 or SHA-256), but I don’t know why you’d do such a thing.

If you opted to create a different Root/admin password, clicking Next lets you set that password, otherwise you will see the Summary page of all the decisions you’ve made up to this point, with a final opportunity to make changes. You can also select what happens at boot time on this machine. openSUSE presumes you want to start at runlevel 5, with a graphical desktop, but if you just want to run a server of some type, with just command-line access, you can choose that here.

Click Next, and you’ll get the last warning to turn back. The installer then formats the partition(s) it’s slated to and starts “copying the root filesystem.” You can walk away or read a magazine article while it works. On my laptop, the install took 27 minutes. You will be asked to reboot the system.

After the reboot, the automatic hardware configuration kicks in, and two minutes later, your shiny new KDE desktop appears on your screen! From starting the LiveCD to a new working system took less than an hour, and would have been even faster had I not been taking copious notes.

Of course, I wasn’t quite done yet. You remember the problem I had with PackageKit earlier in the process? Well, I still hadn’t done my network setup, so the newly installed PackageKit replacement, called Apper, tried to find updates and promptly crashed.

I opened YaST, and set up my DSL connection with AT&T. After some poking around, I finally found KNetworkManager in the KDE “Configure Desktop” settings application and set up the wireless connection too. Finally, I set up my software repositories in YaST without a hitch. The KDE Crash Reporter was then able to get a proper backtrace, which was sent off to the KDE team.

Over the course of the holiday weekend, I’ve had to fix a few settings, and install a bunch more software, but overall I’m a happy guy! Yes, I’ve successfully booted to Windows and booted back to openSUSE again. I hope your install/upgrade goes as well as mine. If you’re still on the fence about installing, here are some of the other new features. Don’t forget: Have a lot of fun!

Related articles

• Preparing to Install openSUSE 12.1 from Scratch (metaverse.wordpress.com)
• OpenSUSE’s new Linux distribution is for the clouds (zdnet.com)
• Try OpenSUSE Linux 12.1 for Stability and Flexibility (pcworld.com)

Preparing to Install openSUSE 12.1 from Scratch

You may already know, but openSUSE released v12.1 of the community distribution this week. With a new number before the decimal point, I thought it would be a good time for a fresh, clean install on my aging laptop. I could just upgrade my existing v11.4 installation, but I like to see what the new install looks like from time to time. Doing a clean install also means I can share the process with you too.

Clean installs do require a bit of preparation, though. You will be wiping your partitions, so you want to preserve your existing data, and a bit of your configurations before embarking on a new install. In this post, I’ll share what I did.

1. Review Existing Repositories in YaST

While you can find software to do just about anything with just the default repositories in openSUSE, sometimes you need something that isn’t in there, or even in the community repositories that you get access to with every installation. Fortunately, the openSUSE Build Service (OBS) allows anyone to create packages to distribute with openSUSE, or any major Linux distribution.

When you use the 1-Click Install option, the packager adds his/her  repository to your system so you get all the updates. Checking what packages come from what repositories can save you some time later.

As I write this, it occurs to me that the repo list is probably stored in /etc somewhere, but you will still want to write down the repo names and the relevant packages that to install on 12.1.

2. Full Backup

Speaking of packages I got from a non-standard repository, I use BackInTime to handle regular backups of my /home drive to my ever-trusty Seagate FreeAgent external drive. It backs up that info weekly, and is a no-brainer to set up. Nonetheless, I wanted to ensure that everything got backed up before the uninstall/reinstall, so I wanted to make my own archived /home drive, and also the /etc space (where system configuration files tend to be kept).

I thought that would be a simple task with KDE‘s handy Ark tool, but I ran into a permissions issue. Apparently the place I wanted to back up to was restricted to Root! So using the Krusader file manager in Root mode, I was able to change the permissions for the backup folder, and perform the backup; shrinking the 25GB on my /home path to just 9GB. Data is safe!

3. Understand Your Partition Table

Now some people might get angry with me, but I still have the occasional need for that Microsoft operating system. Lots of folks still use it, and the appropriate screen shot is still helpful for my readers (thanks, all of you!). So I’ve been running a dual-boot system for pretty much this entire millennium. Maybe you don’t have to, so you can skip this step. Otherwise, I highly recommend knowing what your system currently looks like. the openSUSE install program should recognize everything that’s there already, but in the off-chance that something goes wrong, if you know how Linux already sees your drive, chances are better it will stay that way.

Again, YaST helps in this regard with the Expert Partitioner module. This tool will reorganize your drive if you need it to, but I’m just going to look at the table now. I wrote down the current partition table, noting that the physical drive was split up into eight pieces (including an extended partition that holds just about everything). I made careful notes of the file system on each partition (so I know where Windows sits) and the size of each. After I wrote it down by hand, I took a screen shot  for additional peace of mind. I should be able to recreate that during the install.

4. Release Day Arrives: Let’s Pull Down Torrents!

As I awoke on the morning of November 16, openSUSE v12.1 was released. I went straight to the download site, and downloaded the torrent files for the full 32-bit DVD release, and LiveCDs containing the GNOME 3.2 desktop and KDE 4.7.2. I can’t make DVDs with this laptop, but I suspected that I could be of help to others if I got all the stuff. The Transmission torrent client went to work as I did the same. When I got home from work, all three files were downloaded to the FreeAgent drive and seeding other people’s downloads.

I guessed right, as my share ratios indicate the DVD is by far the most popular form of download. Interestingly, the GNOME LiveCD has maintained a slight edge over KDE every time I’ve checked the ratios.

BTW, If all this talk of torrents and share ratios have you scratching your head, please let me know. This post has gone on too long already, but I’m happy to take up the topic later.

5. Burn the KDE LiveCD

So let’s see: Data’s backed up; we know where to find random packages, we know where to install the new version and got the installation program. All that’s left is to put the install program on CD. For that task, I use K3B, the excellent CD/DVD burning tool that comes with KDE. Throw a CD-RW into the drive, go to Tools > Burn Image, and point to the openSUSE-12.1-KDE-LiveCD-i686.iso file. Another dialog comes up, where I ask K3B to confirm the data is valid on the CD after writing it, and 10 minutes later, I have a CD ready to go.

In the next post, I’ll tell you how the install went. In the meantime, let me know how you prepare for a new install. Fewer steps? Always just a dist-upgrade?

If you’ve already upgraded to openSUSE 12.1, I’d love to hear how it went, and what you think. Of course, if anything went badly, please file bug reports!

A Weekend Like No Other (with no BarCamp)

Image via Wikipedia

This was supposed to be my review of BarCampMilwaukee6, with all the usual comments on what I learned, what I shared, and how much fun I had with the always-unique band of BarCampers. Only problem is that I missed it, for the first time.

I don’t know if this qualifies as a legitimate excuse, but there was a unique confluence of sporting events in Wisconsin last weekend:

• The Milwaukee Brewers faced the Arizona Diamondbacks in the first two games of the National League Division Series (btw, that Miller Park photo up there was taken by my friend, Jeramey Jannene)
• University of Nebraska made its Big Ten Conference debut in Madison against the U of Wisconsin-Madison
• The Denver Broncos came into Lambeau Field in Green Bay to play the Packers

Like 225,000+ other Brewer fans, I tossed my name into the virtual hat to get what limited seats might be available for a playoff game at Miller Park. Astonishingly, I was one of the 5500 names selected to buy tickets for the Division Series. At the time, nobody knew when the games would be, so there was a chance that BarCamp wouldn’t be affected at all. But I had a plan, just in case the games were on the weekend: I’d buy tickets for the Sunday game, and go to BarCamp Saturday.

When the time came to actually login and buy the tickets, the Virtual Waiting Room was not kind to me. By the time I got through, there was just standing room available for Game #2. Didn’t want to spend $25 to walk around the ballpark, so I dropped out.

What I didn’t know at the time was that my brother-in-law got tickets for Game #1. After he offered me one of his tickets, I was on Plan B: I’d see baseball on Saturday, and go to BarCamp Sunday. This is what happened last year, when I went to the Farm Aid show at the same location. This would be fine.

Until Thursday. I was working hard when I got a call from my boss’ boss. This sort of thing never happens. Any worries I might have had about the subject of the call were dissipated early. The CEO was wondering if I might be interested in using his tickets to the Packer game Sunday.

For a multitude of reasons, I said ‘yes.’ I was immediately glad I didn’t get those Sunday baseball tickets. But now what? Plan C goes into effect: Baseball Saturday afternoon, BarCamp in the evening (I could forego the Badger game), Green Bay on Sunday.

We had a great time at Miller Park Saturday afternoon. What I was not expecting was that my back would suddenly start acting wacky the instant I came home from the ballpark. I literally could not get out of my chair without great pain. So I was hosed.

With several big doses of ibuprofen and a long car ride to Green Bay, I somehow managed to make it through the football game too. It was my first time at the Temple of (American) Football, and it was certainly unforgettable. But I felt pretty bad about missing my favorite (un)conference. This will be different next year.

Anyway, if you’d like to see what we all missed, here’s the schedule.

If you went to BarCamp, please share some highlights in the comments. Feel free to denounce me for my wicked choices too.

Have you ever had a conflict between two or more events that you had major passions for? How did you resolve it? Was it the right decision? Comment below.

One more thing: GO BREWERS!!

BarCampMilwaukee6 Just Two Weeks Away!

Have I mentioned this lately: I love conferences! There’s not much better times than the opportunity to get together with folks of like interests, like mind and similar skills, get away from the day to day and schmooze. Occasionally, even learning takes place. For serendipity and wide-ranging topics, few conferences beat the ones falling under the  BarCamp umbrella.

A week from Saturday (October 1), BarCampMilwaukee 6 opens at Bucketworks on South Fifth Street in Milwaukee’s Walker’s Point neighborhood. If you happen to be within traveling distance, you should come. You will meet fabulous people, eat marvelous food, play with assorted ideas and toys,and probably get a t-shirt too. For the second year, there will also be KidsCamp, which should be great fun. As always, there will be robots, too. Did I mention it’s all free of charge? Unless, of course, you want to make a donation.

You can peruse the Conferences and such category here to learn more about all six versions of BCMKE. Register for BCMKE6 at the site. Watch this space for further reminiscing.

And speaking of conferences, watch this space too for some WordPress news.

Another Transition: Linux Journal Goes All-Digital

Image via Wikipedia

The word went out Friday: the 208th monthly edition of Linux Journal would be the last of its kind in print. Starting immediately, the magazine would no longer be printed and delivered to newsstands and subscribers. Instead, a plain PDF or enhanced PDF from a company called Texterity will be delivered to subscribers.

Doc Searls described the reasons for the switch thusly in the article linked above:

Just this month, ABC reported that newsstand magazine sales fell 9% in the first six months of this year. The Wall Street Journal reported a drop of 9.2% for consumer magazines, with double-digit drops for celebrity weeklies like People andStar. Women’s Wear Daily reported similar drops for all but one fashion magazine: Vogue, thanks to one Lady Gaga cover.

The big computer-industry trade magazines from the ’90s have either disappeared or gone digital. Of the big three publishers, only IDG is still intact, but relatively few of its old magazines are still in print.

We survived while others failed by getting lean and staying focused. But the costs of printing and distributing continue to go up. We could keep publishing in print if we could raise the number of advertiser pages, but we don’t see that happening.

So, after a fashion, you can see the writing on the wall. The backlash against the decision can be seen in the comment stream. These ranged from the likes of (not actual quotes) “Well, duh, this was inevitable. You gotta get used to it” to pleas for the ability to read the magazine while camping.

One of the more thoughtful critics wondered whether historians and archaeologists of the future might believe humans of our age lost the ability to write, given the lack of tangible artifacts. I suspect there’s a good sci-fi story in that idea; wish I had the imagination to write it.

Now I’ll admit that I lean more toward the side that says “isn’t a printed computer magazine something of an anachronism these days?” But I’ll also admit that I don’t really make time to read all the electronic publications I subscribe to. I find it a little hard to make time for the print publications I subscribe to as well.

I do think that we will eventually everyone will be going all-digital, and probably sooner rather than later. As some folks in the LJ comment thread noted, it’s important to do it right, though. I hope that as this transition proceeds, we can all find the right form(s) for our information.

As a writer, I also hope that LJ remains a paying market for the people who provide the content we all read. To that end, I intend to keep my subscription for as long as possible, and recommend you do that too. I’d give ‘em a raise too, but that’s just me. Disclaimer: I sold a story to the website (not the print version) a few years ago, and hope to do so again one day.

Do you read Linux Journal? Other Linux-oriented print publications? Do you read electronic magazines of any kind? Are print magazines on the way out, and is that a good thing? Just a few of the many questions raised by this decision; feel free to comment here on any or all of them.

Related articles

• The end of Linux Journal (cartesianproduct.wordpress.com)
• Linux Journal Goes – Surprise! – Digital (news.slashdot.org)