Dev-Picayune

I debated briefly about which blog to use and decided on this one because what I am going to talk about is intimately tied to programming and the technical world. I’ll post my thoughts on Portland on my other blog.

So there has been at least a small amount of discussion about OSCON 2006 and OSCON in general lately. I’ll be honest that I haven’t exactly searched high and low in an effort to find everything that everyone has to say, but I’ve come across a few items here and there and I intend to talk about some of my thoughts of OSCON especially as it relates to different perspectives that folks seem to have on it.

One of the more provocative things written about OSCON is Luke Kanies’ “An Open Letter to Tim Bray about OSCON”. In his musings, Luke obviously was still bitter about the talk submissions process. Apparently his talk proposal was not accepted and then after he posted comments on some blogs and a spot opened up, he got to present afterall. I’ll break down Luke’s complaints here (as I see them). Luke felt like there was a definite A and B list type of thing going on…

I thought it was the most insular conference I’ve ever attended; every party was invitation-only, and invitations were not exactly trivial to come by. Well connected people got even better connected, and poorly connected people (such as myself; I’m well-connected in the systems world, but apparently not in the O’Reilly world) stayed poorly connected.

So basically, he feels that there is clearly and inner and outer circle thing going on at OSCON. I have news for Luke: you’re right! But see, that’s essentially true for any group of people on the planet. The whole well-connected thing is almost as predictable as gravity. Heck, Jesus had an inner group. That didn’t mean he wasn’t willing to hang with folks, but he had a group of 12 that he was closer with. Just like the laws of physics, the laws of social interaction naturally apply to the open source community as well. But I will say that I was positively shocked at just how open it really was. I briefly hung out at a table with Guido van Rossum, John Lam, and Jim Hugunin. Had I really had something really cool to say to Guido about Python or anything else that I thought he would have cared about, I probably would have said it because he and many others I met I found quite approachable. Talking to Jim and Dino and Martin was nice because I had followed the IronPython project starting in it’s pre-MS stage and they all seemed genuinely interested to talk to me despite the fact that I readily identified myself as a lurker. I was also really impressed to see Tim O’Reilly mingling in the exhibit hall. He was obviously a little less approachable, but theoretically, if I had something really insightful that I thought he needed to hear, I feel I could have told him. And this last point brings us back around to the issue that Luke has.

He obviously hasn’t learned this about group dynamics but I’ll try to share my experience here and that is that you need several things for folks to deliberately want to reach out and invite you to parties or to spend additional time with them: aptitude, accomplishments, and potential. Here when I mention aptitude I am talking about social aptitude. You can’t be severely socially awkward (even among software geeks if you can believe it) and the more charisma you have and the more likeable or humorous your personality the better (generally). Accomplishments are important because it’s all about prestige and what you have to offer. People (especially software folks) like to spend time around individuals that they feel they can really learn something from because chances are that’s how they learned to program or work on computers in the first place was thanks to others tutoring them and passing on their wisdom and experience (albeit in bits and pieces). Finally, there is potential. Obviously, we’re not talking about marriage here (well, maybe in Mass.) but seriously we’re talking about either a conscious or subconscious thought of whether the other person is someone they figure they could really be friends with. So you look at those three things and whether their perception of those areas are correct or not (because socially everything is subjective) is how you’re judged and whether you get “invited in”.

However, to clarify, there is no “illuminati” group here. There are guys (face it… there are only a handful of women) who seem to be well connected and some that don’t, but I would not say there is any sort of magical true inner group.

Whew! Moving on, Luke also complains, as I first mentioned, about the proposal selection process. His idea is that there needs to be a true open source conference that is itself open. What’s funny about this suggestion is that I suspect that if the conference talk selection committee were really large and open like he’s suggested, then he never would have been able to present. As it is, he was able to plead his case directly with Tim and Nat and others that he knew (at least via blogs — hey! maybe he’s not as poorly connected as he thought) and eventually got a spot. If talks were controlled by large groups of voters, you’d have something closer to a true democracy but I suspect then there’d be no way to slip in something or for someone to break through.

Finally, Luke had one other complaint that required a little bit of thinking:

Really, though, I think the conference just lacks a purpose — is it to enable better OSS software? Bring developers and users together for networking? Inform developers and users? Help build business around OSS? Or just to talk about anything and everything related to OSS?

All I can say here is that it really is different to different people. I met one guy who’d come to 6 or 7 OSCON’s (in its various forms) and for him it was about catching up with people he knew and had a common interest and passion. For another person it might be figuring out how to utilize open source software in their current work environment and to stay on top of the trends. For another person, it might be an overall interest in the concept of open source software and a desire to “further the cause”. And still others might be looking for ways to profit from the open source movement or learn something new or something I haven’t thought of. I think it’s all of those and no, I don’t think it’s exceptional at any one of those things. It is what it is.

My best bud, Brandon Corfman weighed in on OSCON 2006 and summarized (aside from his funny plug for my as yet to be released blogging system) his experience like this:

it was definitely more about connecting with the folks than learning from the sessions or the tutorials

I guess going to other conferences, I’ve learned not to expect too much in the raw skill gathering department. I was looking for direction and motivation. I spent one day learning some Ruby and Rails and while I was amazed with how quickly certain things could be done, I remain as unconvinced as ever that I will get into it. Django looks interesting but only because it’s Python based instead of Ruby. On a positive note, I got inspired to think more seriously about ways to hack devices in my house thanks to Jon Oxer. I also was encouraged by the status of the IronPython project, amazed by what John Lam has been able to accomplish by creating a framework for interacting with the CLR within Ruby. I’m also fairly impressed with the thorough and exhausting work done by the Mono team. I’m looking forward to hearing stuff come out of Firefox/Python/XUL in the next year. I was pretty underwhelmed by Scott Yara. He shamelessly plugged Greenplum in what seemed like every sentence and I was disgusted with his use of the President as a cheapshot joke in what he thought would play to the audience’s political temperment (backfired on me I guess). Honestly, it is a very eclectic conference.

Update: Looking over the direction I took with this post, I realized I had gotten carried away with the whole social theory stuff and it had turned into a bit of rant against Luke… read the comments below. Honestly, Luke did have some good points. Plus, I failed to look at his post in the context of what he was responding to and that was Tim Bray’s thoughts on OSCON. And if you want to get a flavor for the attitude of Tim Bray, then just check this quote out:

I mean, welcoming grass-roots voices is good, but if you want to know where Python is going, you need to listen to Guido, and if you want the bleeding edge on the Atom Protocol, along with a command-line demo, I’m your guy.

So clearly, since Tim thinks of himself as the elite (essentially equating himself to Guido), then obviously he’s probably okay with the “we’re enlightening the rest of the tribe” type of thinking. That’s one thing I think ruffles feathers and what might have inspired Luke to write what he wrote along with the point that I essentially conceded and that is that the purpose of the conference is somewhat in flux. So again, my apologies to Luke for diverging into social rabbit trails and making it personal. No apologies to Scott Yara… I believe I was spot on there.

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