Last week I attended LinuxCon North America in Toronto, where I represented the RDO project in the Red Hat booth, and also gave two presentations.

My first presentation – Introduction to OpenStack – was attended by about 50 people and was, as the name suggests, an introduction to OpenStack. I talked about the project’s history, the way that the Foundation works, and the software itself.

My second presentation was titled ‘RTFM? Write a better FM‘, and  as about documentation, end-user support, and treating customers  with compassion and respect. This talk was also well received, however, I always get the sense that people are only going to attend a talk like this if they are already predisposed to the message. I’ve been giving this talk, in one form or another, for most of 10 years. However, the last 3 or 4 times I’ve given it, I’ve rewritten it each time. I have so much to say on the topic that I can’t fit it all into an hour, so I emphasize different things each time.

The LinuxCon audience is very diverse, in terms of technology interests and depth of knowledge. So it was gratifying to have so many good conversations after my OpenStack talk, and a few at the booth, about what people are doing with OpenStack.

In the hours that I worked the Red Hat booth, we had very few OpenStack/RDO questions. Most of the conversations were around containers, or people that were looking for jobs at Red Hat. (Yes, we’re hiring!) The LinuxCon audience is very diverse, in terms of technology interests.

Photos from LinuxCon are HERE.

My presentations are HERE and HERE.

It’s also worth mentioning that I have awesome coworkers. It’s always a pleasure to do events with them. They work hard, and they also know how to have fun, and I’m very lucky to work on such an amazing team.