LugRadio Live USA: 12-13th April 2008, the Metreon, San Francisco, CA

For those of you who missed the greatness that was LugRadio Live USA, or those lucky lucky people who were there and couldn’t see all the talks, we’re now starting to make videos of the talks available for download! Tony Whitmore, our hyper-competent video guy, is busily processing the videos, and as they’re made available we’re adding them to the LugRadio Live USA schedule. Currently there’s video of the LugRadio live show recording, Ted Haeger talking about “Freedom and the Cloud”, and Emma Jane Hogbin talking about women in open source. More will be appearing over the next few weeks! Keep an eye on that page to find video that you can stream or download in a load of formats.

(Those of you who are hyper-keen can actually get the videos quicker by watching the official video thread in the LugRadio forums, too.)

I haven’t had much time to blog - work has been insanely busy recently.

LugRadio Live USA 2008 was an utter blast - everyone seemed to have a great time, and it was a lot of fun. Thanks so much to everyone who helped with the organisation and thanks so much to Google, Dice, LinuxQuestions and Linux Pro Magazine for their help. Thanks also to the SCALE guys in particular for their help - they really did help a lot to spread the word. The weekend seemed to run pretty smoothly, Aaron Bockover did a stunning job in the Gong-a-thong, the live show was huge amounts of fun, and there were a bunch of excellent talks and much discussion going on around the venue. It really did feel like the UK atmosphere translplanted in a very large room in the US, and that was always the core goal - to get the atmosphere right, and we were all really pleased with it.

So…Hardy is released on Thursday! Woo! Its been a pretty hectic release schedule, but the release is feeling really great. It is always hugely satisfying around the time of a release to sit back and look at what needed to happen to make the release reality, not just in terms of development, but documentation, user groups, parties, and of course the excellent work that is done upstream. I never cease to be inspired by what our community achieves.

Oh, and while I am here and speaking of parties, there is a UK release party going on at De Hems in the West End from 7pm on Thursday - the great and good of the UK Linux Ubuntu scene are sure to be there!

While I feel slightly guilty for not saying anything here for quite a few weeks now, it’s not the first time this has happened and well, I’ve spent all of my time working on preparations for LRL USA for probably the last 3 months, so, y’know, not much time to spare.

Well I guess I ought to be telling everyone how great the event was, how all the hard work was worth it and so on, but sadly I started to come down with a nasty cold during the flight home and it really hit on the evening I got home, so I’ve barely done anything since getting back except sleep and lie in bed reading a book. Seriously, I slept for 19 hours when I first got home.

So, yeah, LRL USA 2008 was great fun, very exhausting with the jet lag and so on, I’ve never been the best at handling sleep related issues so I began crashing by 3pm and was humourless by 6pm most days, however it was great fun either side. I met some truly fascinating, inspiring and welcoming people. I met some nut cases too, but I genuinely didn’t meet a single person I didn’t like and that’s pretty rare anywhere, so thank you to all the people who made it, particularly the exhibitors as I had most dealings with them, I wish I could have met you when I was a little more together

Anyway, back to my pit of sickness and despair

LugRadio Live USA 2008 is THIS WEEKEND!

35+ Speakers. 40+ Exhibitors. A man in a thong. Lots of fun. Its gonna be great, and it is only $10 for the whole shebang. You can still pre-register and win prizes!

Now, some details about the social events in the evenings…

For those of you getting in on the Friday, we will be having a gathering at the The Thirsty Bear at 8pm. I have spoken to the pub and they say it can be busy in there on a Friday, so you may want to go and eat first and then come to The Thirsty Bear for drinks. The address is:

ThirstyBear Brewing Company 661 Howard St. San Francisco, California 94105

Telephone: 415-974-0905 Fax: 415-974-0955

On the Saturday night we will be having the official Lugradio Live USA 2008 party at Jillian’s, and Google, our gracious and generous main sponsor will be providing a healthy bar tab to help the night get off to a cracking start. We will be meeting in there at 8.30pm - this gives plenty of time to go and grab dinner after LugRadio Live USA 2008 has finished on the Saturday, and then get over to Jillian’s for the party. The address is:

Jillian’s 101 4th Street, Ste 1070 San Francisco, CA 94103

Telephone: 415-369-6100

We look forward to seeing you all at the social events!

I’ve been noodling about in Inkscape, and reading The Order Of The Stick, a webcomic. It’s got a unique visual style, which always makes me laugh, and I thought (despite my lack of artistic ability): I wonder if I could do that?

(there’s the SVG too to look at, which is a better size, although it’s 1MB because of the embedded images)

I’m not brilliantly happy with Chris or Adam, but I think Jono and I came out OK :)

Maybe I should do a LugRadio webcomic.

Inkscape’s a really good tool, by the way. The people who do it should feel very proud. I am distinctly short of artistic ability, and I’ve barely used Inkscape before, and I managed to put that together in relatively short order. Good work, Inkscape team.

Oh, yes, and LugRadio Live USA is this Saturday. We’re coming to America. Get ready.

OK, here is another round-up of quick things going:

• Ubuntu Release Parties! - we are heading to release, so why not celebrate the release of Ubuntu and party it hard? Check out this guide to setting one up. You gotta fight for your right to party!
• FossCamp is coming, and it is going too be a blast, so go and check out the website and see if you can come along. Last time it was a blast, and really useful, and this one is in Prague. If you can make it, be sure to update the Attendees page.
• I did an interview for DownloadSquad about LugRadio Live USA 2008 as well as LugRadio Live in general and the show.
• I finished Guitar Hero III on Medium and I am half-way through it on hard. It never stops being fun.
• 5-A-Day Team Support continues to rock-and-roll - go and get your LoCo Team involved!
• The March Ubuntu Community Report is out!
• LugRadio Live USA 2008 is NEXT WEEKEND! It is still all to play for for the pre-registration prizes too - want to know what is happening at the event? Well, read this.
• I bought a George Foreman Lean Mean Grilling Supreme High Esteem Grilling Machine. Love it.

In other news, some of the blocks are falling into place for this - thanks to everyone who is involved. You know who you are.

A few months back I did an interview with the Sun Developer Channel and it was released today. The interview covers Ubuntu, MOTU, community building, developer communities, extremists, LugRadio, LugRadio Live USA 2008 and more:

Can’t see it? Click here!

You know what, I have done interviews before, but in this one I found it pretty nerve wracking. Something about a video camera poked in your direction in nerve wracking enough, let alone a full-on studio, like the one buried away at Sun’s Silicon Valley campus. Thanks to Barton for the interview.

I was asked to knock up a quick flyer for LugRadio Live USA 2008 with details of the event. This flier is scaled to US letter size, and I would love to encourage anyone who wants to do a good deed, to take this flyer, print it out and go and hand it out to people who might be interested - particularly those locals in San Francisco. If you get people to the event, a pint and incredible admiration will be waiting for you.

Here is the full US Letter size image.

Two weeks to go! Remember, you can win prizes by pre-registering!

Just when you thought that LugRadio Live USA 2008 could not rock any more, with 35+ speakers and 40+ exhibitors, well….we have confirmed a key part of the show - who, is going to be presenting the legendary, and now world-famous Gong-a-thong Lightbulb Talk Extravaganza.

For those not clued into this, the Gong-a-thong Lightbulb Talk Extravaganza is a collection of very short five minute talks in which a bunch of people get up and talk about something interesting. The original idea, when I was chatting to Aq one night on the phone was to have a small gong that was hit to mark the end of each five minute talk. And then…in what I would like to consider a rare moment of brilliance…I remembered those old Rank movies with the guy, baby-oiled up, hitting a huge gong, and we knew that we needed someone, in a tight pair of undies, with a large gong.

Well, last year, we did it for the first time, and it was oodles of fun. The man in the hot seat…erm underpants, was our very own Adam Sweet:

Pasty white Brit seeks companion for fun and friendship…

I can’t tell you the special sense of pride that Aq and I felt, stood at the side of the stage, seeing Adam come running out from the back of the hall, to the Rocky theme music in a robe with ‘Sweet’ written on the back. There is a special sense of satisfaction seeing such an insanely ludicrous idea realised before your very eyes. It went down really well, and everyone had a blast watching it.

This year for LugRadio Live USA 2008, we thought very carefully about who to get in the thong, and one name kept popping up. Some say he never ages, locked in a constant state of being 12 and 3 quarters years old. Some say that when he grows up he is going to drive a train. And some say that he can put away more alcohol than a small country. We all know him as this guy:

Thong, thong, thong, thong, thong…

Ladies and Gentleman, boys and girls…I present the LugRadio Live USA 2008 Gong-a-thong host, Aaron Bockover, the lead developer behind the popular Banshee media player. If you look at the schedule you will see that Aaron will be hosting the gong-a-thong at 2pm on Sat 12th April, with his main Banshee talk at 3.30pm, in which he and Gabriel will be showing off some of the brand new work the awesome Banshee team have been beavering away at.

35+ speakers. 40+ exhibitors. A small man in a thong. All for $10. What more could you want? Go and pre-register and win prizes if you refer people to pre-register.

LugRadio Live USA 2008 - 12th/13th April 2008 - The Metreon, San Francisco.

There has been a lot of talk about LugRadio Live USA 2008 on this blog and elsewhere, and I just wanted to write a single post that summarise everything that is on offer right now as the event of the year. Yes, it is indeed the event of the year, as voted by the LugRadio team and our close friends.

First things first. It is on the 12th and 13th April 2008, thats just a few weeks away! It takes place at The Metreon, 101 4th St, San Francisco, California, 94103. If you are coming, do please go and pre-register although tickets are available on the days.

Things to see and do

With three stages and a large exhibition area, in which we encourage all of our exhibitors to have things to see, touch and play with, there is a huge amount going on at LugRadio Live USA 2008. First up is our incredibly diverse range of speakers, representing a huge range of areas such as Linux, the desktop, digital rights, power management, usability, the web, kernel development, multimedia, online communities, distributions, databases and much more.

The line-up of rock-stars includes:

• Miguel de Icaza (Mono / Novell / Co-Founder Of GNOME)
• Ian Murdoch (OpenSolaris / Founder Of Debian)
• Robert Love (GNOME / Google)
• Aza Raskin (Mozilla / Humanized)
• Benjamin Mako Hill (Ubuntu / Debian / FSF)
• John Buckman (Magnatune)
• Val Henson (Kernel / VAH consulting)
• Christopher Blizzard (Mozilla / GNOME)
• Mike Linksvayer (Creative Commons)
• Alex Graveley (VMWare / GNOME)
• David Schleef (GStreamer)
• Matthew Garrett (Power Management / Kernel)
• Danese Cooper (Intel / OSI)
• Aaron Bockover (Banshee / Novell)
• Liana Holmberg (Second Life / Linden Lab)
• Emma Jane Hogbin (Hick Tech)
• Joe Zonker Brockmeier (OpenSuSE / Novell)
• Kristen Accardi (Kernel)
• David Lefty Schlesinger
• Joe Born (Neuros)
• Selena Deckelmann (PostgreSQL)
• Stewart Smith (MySQL)
• Dan Kegal (Wine)
• Ben Collins (Ubuntu / Kernel)
• Jason Kridner (Texas Instruments)
• Jeremy Allison (Samba / Google)
• Christian Hammond (VMWare)
• Ian McKeller (Songbird)
• Alison Randall (Parrot / Perl / OSCON)
• David Huffman (LVM)
• Brian Will (Pigeon)
• Belinda Lopez (Ubuntu)
• Ilan Rabanovich (SoCal Linux Expo)
• Eddy Mulyono (Packaging)
• Matthew Walster (Demo Scene)

In addition to this, we have an incredible collection of exhibitors, showing off a range of different projects, and at LugRadio Live we have always endeavored to ensure the community projects share as much of the megaphone as companies. I think you would agree that the following list shows a nice balance between the commercial and non-commercial sides of Open Source and technology:

• Google
• Dice
• GNOME
• PostgreSQL
• O’Reilly
• OpenSuSE
• Magnatune
• Neuros
• Sun
• Texas Instruments
• South California Linux Expo
• Komputers 4 R Kids
• San Francisco LUG
• BytesFree.org
• Ontario Linux Fest
• Frets on Fire
• OpenNMS
• One Course Source
• Haiku
• Hyperic
• BitNami
• OpenStreetMap
• FreeBSD
• Ubuntu
• Inkscape
• Mandriva
• One Laptop Per Child San Francisco
• KDE
• Linux Pro Magazine
• San Francisco Community Colocation Project
• Indamixx
• Untangle
• SF Hardware Hacking Community
• The Digital Tipping Point
• San Francisco Perl Mongers

Fun and Games

LugRadio has a very unique atmosphere. The main priority for the show is fun. We absolutely want to provide a fun, social, relaxed, entertaining and inspiring atmosphere. Our goal is to make everyone who comes feel like they are in a room of friends. Our atmosphere is unique, and often referred to as a rock-conference - it is not your typical dry computer conference, it has all the elements of a computer conference, but wrapped up in a fun and loose atmosphere where every feels part of it.

In addition to the oodles of speakers and exhibitors, we also have some more fun things:

• Gong-a-thong Lightbulb Talk Extravaganza - in this hour, a collection of people will get up and talk for 5 minutes about something they are involved in. If you like quick-paced summaries of cool things, this is for you. We have slots open for talks for this hour - if you want to get up for your 5 minutes of fame email us.
• The Mass Debate - we get four luminaries of the Open Source and technology world together onto the main stage to answer your questions. Go in prepared to grill them…they love it.
• LugRadio Live And Unleashed - we will be recording a live recording of LugRadio in front of a raucous audience, which is always a lot of fun for everyone involved.
• Evening social events - on both the Friday and Saturday evenings, specific venues will be selected for drinks, schmoozing and more fun.
• Win things - we will be giving plenty of prizes away throughout the weekend, and you can even win some incredible prizes by recommending people to pre-register and come to the event. See below for more.
• Nutsacks - every visitor who comes to LugRadio Live USA 2008 will get a special visitor bag with a raft of rather cool freebies, one such example being an incredible Neuros shot-glass. Believe me, when we go after schwag, we try to do it right.
• Lunch - a light lunch is provided, as well as drinks and snacks to keep your energy levels up throughout the weekend.
• Lazy Areas - everyone needs space to chill out, relax and maybe do a spot of hacking. We will have bean-bags aplenty, ready for your relaxing pleasure.
• Low cost enough for everyone - $10. Ten measly bucks. Thats all it costs for the full weekend, all talks, all exhibitors, all events, everything. Do go and pre-register, and you could win some prizes (see below).

Hotels and Travel

Our Travel page contains a lot of details about how to get there by plane, rail, car, hoverboard or otherwise.

There are also some hotel deals available:

• From $169/night - The Marriott - right across the street from The Metreon - book on line directly at www.sfmarriott.com. No codeword needed.
• From $119/night - The Pickwick Hotel, 85 5th St. San Francisco, CA 94103 - ask for the “Metreon Meeting” rate.

San Francisco has a huge range of hotels for a variety of prices. If you have any travel questions or problems, do get in touch with us.

Pre-register and win prizes!

Asus EEPC, Neuros OSD, O’Reilly books and limited edition LugRadio t-shirts up for grabs. Read on folks.

You can win an Asus EEEPC or a Neuros OSD and some O’Reilly books for yourself as well as LugRadio t-shirts and O’Reilly books for your friends, while all the time helping to make LugRadio Live USA 2008 on the 12th and 13th April at The Metreon in San Francisco an awesome event.

The idea is simple - we want to encourage as many people to the event as possible, and we would like to reward you for spreading the word about LugRadio Live USA 2008. With this in mind, we have some rather nice prizes to give away. All you need to do is to encourage people to come to LugRadio Live USA 2008, ask them to pre-register and when they pre-register they will be asked for the name of the person who recommended the event to them. In that box they should enter your name.

The person who refers the highest number of people will win themselves their choice of an Asus EEEPC or a Neuros OSD, two O’Reilly books of their choice and a limited edition LugRadio t-shirt. In addition to this, the people that the winner referred will each receive an O’Reilly book and a limited edition LugRadio t-shirt. The next highest number of referrals will win either the Asus EEEPC or Neuros OSD that remains. Thanks to efficientpc.co.uk for providing the Asus EEEPC and to Neuros for providing the Neuros OSD prizes, and thanks to O’Reilly for providing the books.

So, to re-iterate, getting involved is simple. Follow these easy steps:

• Talk as many people about coming to LugRadio Live USA 2008 as possible - spread the word, blog it, hassle your friends and colleagues and encourage them to come.
• Ask them to go to this page and pre-register. Tickets for the event cost only $10 for the full-weekend with full access to all the talks, exhibition and activities and a light lunch is provided.
• While pre-registering, they will be asked who referred them. Ensure they put your in your name in this box for it to be counted.

The winners will be announced at LugRadio Live USA 2008. Please note - only those people who actually attend LugRadio Live USA 2008 will count as referrals and all names must have a matching ticket - no trying to stooge the system folks.

Good luck and we look forward to seeing you at the awesome greatness that will be LugRadio Live USA 2008!

If you meet these people from Google:

• Leslie Hawthorn
• Cat Allman
• Kynan

Go up to them and hug them. Seriously. They rock, big time. They are helping make LugRadio Live USA 2008 happen in San Francisco on the 12th and 13th April. They have been a huge help, and are doing a stunning, stunning job. They are on the Christmas card list. Yes indeed.

Thats all. It just needed to be said.

The organisation for LugRadio Live USA 2008 on the 12th and 13th April at The Metreon in San Francisco continues apace, and I wanted to remind everyone that you can win one of these:

Asus EEEPC Sub-Notebook

…or one of these…

Neuros OSD Media Center

…as well as a bunch of O’Reilly books and some limited edition LugRadio t-shirts, which look like this…

Gorkon, a LugRadio fan shows off the new t-shirt, having won it on the show

Simply encourage people to come to LugRadio Live USA 2008, get them to pre-register and enter your name in the referrer box when they pre-register. The person with the great number of people mentioning their names as the referrer will win either the Asus EEEPC or the Nauros OSD, Two O’Reilly books and a LugRadio t-shirt. Everyone who mentions the name of the winner also wins an O’Reilly book and a LugRadio t-shirt. The runner up wins either the Asus EEPC or Neuros OSD that is left and a LugRadio t-shirt.

So…go and pre-register!

Time for an update on LugRadio Live USA 2008 happening on the 12th and 13th April at The Metreon in San Francisco!

I can now confirm a raft of additinal exhibitors, this now takes the list to:

• Google
• Dice
• GNOME
• PostgreSQL
• O’Reilly
• OpenSuSE
• Linden Labs
• Magnatune
• Neuros
• Sun
• Texas Instruments
• South California Linux Expo
• Komputers 4 R Kids
• San Francisco LUG
• BytesFree.org
• Ontario Linux Fest
• Frets on Fire
• OpenNMS
• One Course Source
• Haiku
• Hyperic
• BitRock
• Hyperic
• OpenStreetMap
• FreeBSD
• Ubuntu
• Inkscape
• Mandriva
• One Laptop Per Child San Francisco
• KDE
• Linux Pro Magazine
• San Francisco Community Colocation Project
• (we expect to confirm another ten or so more too)

…plus don’t forget to check out the incredible list of speakers that we have!

Also, don’t forget you can win an Asus EEEPC or Neuros OSD, O’Reilly books and limited edition LugRadio t-shirts! Simply encourage people to come to LugRadio Live USA 2008 and ask them to pre-register at http://lugradio.org/live/USA2008/register - when they do this, they will be asked for the person who referred them. In this box they should type in your name. Now repeat with lots of people. If you get the highest number of referrals (as in, the most amount of people that said you referred them) you will win your choice of an Asus EEEPC or Neuros OSD, as well as two O’Reilly books, and a limited edition LugRadio t-shirt. Also, each of the people you referred will get an O’Reilly book and a limited edition LugRadio t-shirt too - so everyone is a winner! We will also have a runner-up winner who will win the Asus EEEPC or Neuros OSD that is left - lots of opportunity to win! Thanks to efficientpc.co.uk, Neuros and O’Reilly for the prizes.

To help spread the word, here are a bunch of banners - folks, this is all community organised and community focussed, so we need your help to help spread the word about it! Here are some banners to add to your websites:

Available in:

• 728 x 90
• 500 x 62
• 240 x 30

Available in:

• 468 x 60
• 240 x 31

Available in:

• 338 x 328
• 240 x 240
• 100 x 100
• 75 x 75

Spread the good love about LugRadio Live USA 2008.

Asus EEPC, Neuros OSD, O’Reilly books and limited edition LugRadio t-shirts up for grabs. Read on folks.

I wanted to let everyone know how you can win an Asus EEEPC or a Neuros OSD and some O’Reilly books for yourself as well as LugRadio t-shirts and O’Reilly books for your friends, while all the time helping to make LugRadio Live USA 2008 on the 12th and 13th April at The Metreon in San Francisco an awesome event.

The idea is simple - we want to encourage as many people to the event as possible, and we would like to reward you for spreading the word about LugRadio Live USA 2008. With this in mind, we have some rather nice prizes to give away. All you need to do is to encourage people to come to LugRadio Live USA 2008, ask them to pre-register and when they pre-register they will be asked for the name of the person who recommended the event to them. In that box they should enter your name.

The person who refers the highest number of people will win themselves their choice of an Asus EEEPC or a Neuros OSD, two O’Reilly books of their choice and a limited edition LugRadio t-shirt. In addition to this, the people that the winner referred will each receive an O’Reilly book and a limited edition LugRadio t-shirt. The next highest number of referrals will win either the Asus EEEPC or Neuros OSD that remains. Thanks to efficientpc.co.uk for providing the Asus EEEPC and to Neuros for providing the Neuros OSD prizes, and thanks to O’Reilly for providing the books.

So, to re-iterate, getting involved is simple. Follow these easy steps:

• Talk as many people about coming to LugRadio Live USA 2008 as possible - spread the word, blog it, hassle your friends and colleagues and encourage them to come.
• Ask them to go to this page and pre-register. Tickets for the event cost only $10 for the full-weekend with full access to all the talks, exhibition and activities and a light lunch is provided.
• While pre-registering, they will be asked who referred them. Ensure they put your in your name in this box for it to be counted.

The winners will be announced at LugRadio Live USA 2008. Please note - only those people who actually attend LugRadio Live USA 2008 will count as referrals and all names must have a matching ticket - no trying to stooge the system folks.

Good luck and we look forward to seeing you at the awesome greatness that will be LugRadio Live USA 2008!

Been a while since I did one of these…

In Season 5 Episode 13 of LugRadio, ‘Embracing (and Extending) Change’, a hungover Jono Bacon, Stuart Langridge, Chris Proctor, Adam Sweet and International VoIP Hero/former presenter Adrian Bradshaw discuss Aq’s modified views on Mono, why Blu-Ray beat HD-DVD and whether Sony pwnz uz 4ll, muse over Microsoft’s interoperability announcements, announce the exhibitors confirmed for LugRadio Live USA 2008 and read out your emails.

You can get this alcohol soaked morning after feeling, along with the chance to the LugRadio Finger of God at http://www.lugradio.org/episodes/96.

Registration for LugRadio Live USA 2008 is now open at http://lugradio.org/live/USA2008/.

If you feel like you’ve been missing the LugRadio love since the last time I linked to an episode, you can get the last 2 from:

http://www.lugradio.org/episodes/94

http://www.lugradio.org/episodes/95

In what appears to be an oversight on my part, LugRadio Live USA 2008 is now less than a month away and we’re still looking for exhibitors so if you’d like to exhibit your project or organisation at LRL USA 2008 or even at LRL UK 2008 which takes place in July, please drop us an email to show at lugradio dot org and include the word ‘exhibit’ in the subject line to make it easy to filter out

And now we have the schedule for LugRadio Live USA. Go and see and plan which talks you intend to watch!

LugRadio Live USA 2008 schedule

When I was a kid I played with Lego: specifically, Technic Lego, which is the one with the rods and cogs and whatnot. It occurred to me that it’d be pretty cool to have the Lego people be at LugRadio Live USA with a huge table covered in bits that people could go up and play with and use and look at. They can’t make it, though (it’s a long way from Scandinavia to San Francisco!). So, what are the cool kids using for building things now other than Lego itself? There was Fischer Technik when I was at school, but I’ve got no idea whether anyone still uses it; if this was LugRadio Live 1978 rather than 2008 then Meccano would have been good; what else is there? Nominate your favourite building stuff…

Four years ago, four guys got together in a room in Wolverhampton and recorded the first episode of LugRadio. Since then, we’ve started running a yearly “rock conference” event in the UK, LugRadio Live, we’ve taken LugRadio Live international with the first US event, we’ve won an award for marketing, we’ve changed two of the presenters and then changed one of the replacements, we’ve gone to Guadec and PyCon and Guadec again, we’ve done nearly a hundred episodes, we were crowned “best open source podcast” by Linux Format, and we’ve built up a really cool community.

Four years, eh? I’m pretty proud of what we’ve done with the show. Thanks, all of you who listen and send in emails and come to LugRadio Live and post on the forums and hang around in #lugradio and make your own podcast about us and help us out with sysadmin stuff and run a mirror and talk about the show and enter competitions and laugh at the show on the bus. Here’s to four more.

DIGG!

Well, today LugRadio turns 4. Quite a roller-coaster it has been too.

Just over four years ago, in the far corner of The Moon Under Water pub in Wolverhampton, we hatched the idea of LugRadio. For a while I had been thinking of doing on online radio show about Open Source, and when Matt Revell joined Wolves LUG, he mentioned he had had thoughts of doing an online radio show too. We roped in a few loud characters from Wolves LUG (namely Aq and Sparkes), and LugRadio was born. It would be a few months before we finally got round to recording our first show in my tiny home studio in my house. Although my home studio was reasonably kitted out, it was nothing compared to the current setup - we were using a cheap multi-tracker running on a PC, four drum mics (with socks as pop-shields), and all four of us crammed into an extremely small space. The first show was 22 minutes and 38 seconds long and was frankly…rubbish by today’s standards, but at the time I think it genuinely brought something new to the Open Source community, and the core LugRadio formula was there in its rawest form. Knowing we could not afford to distribute the shows, we concocted a devious scheme of allowing our listeners (assuming we would get listeners) to mirror the show and therefore share the bandwidth hit. That system is still in place now, and a typical show will have 15+ mirrors pumping out shows to an estimated 20,000 listeners.

We were all pretty nervous if LugRadio would go anywhere; we figured it would either generate some interest or really piss some people off and last only a few shows - we knew the recipe would be somewhat controversial for some people. In fact, in the early days, I was a full-time freelance journalist, and I will never forget going to karate with this deep uncertainly about whether LugRadio would be a wise idea for my career. At that point, my work was starting to become fairly public (due to my magazine work), but my voice was always carefully written, edited, crafted and refined before it ever went to the editor - LugRadio however, was balls-to-the-wall frankness, largely un-edited and up-front. As I mulled on this over a few days I came to the conclusion that I am my own person, and I should never hide my personality; I figured that as a journalist, and eventually as an advocate and community manager, being frank and truthful with people is essential, not optional. Fortunately, LugRadio has had the opposite effect and helped grow all of our careers, as opposed to hinder them.

We are all amazed at where LugRadio has gone in the last four years - none of us ever expected it to grow like it has. There are many milestones that have freaked us all out - people who we respect listening to the show, showing up at conferences all over the world and people saying they like the show, winning a marketing award, topping magazine reviews of podcasts - each of these was a huge surprise as we have always seen the show as fundamentally four loud blokes rambling on in a room; our benchmark has always been other shows, and we have always felt somewhat amateur and still do to this day. To see formal recognition like this is a very strange experience, but a huge buzz too.

The community that has grown around the show is stunning, and it always amazes us that we have such a thriving community and importantly, a culture that has been defined around the show in the forums, planet, facts, quotes, clan, #lugradio IRC channel, and with hashlugradio. People contribute to the show in many ways - we have nearly 1000 members on the forums, and around 100 people constantly in #lugradio on Freenode, and people constantly contributing emails and ideas to the show. The emails segment in the show has always been my personal favorite segment - it is really great to have some fun with the emails people send in, and we get some truly interesting and amusing mails. One thing I love about our listeners is that they don’t take themselves too seriously and are more than happy to put the boot in where required - it always provides fun and exciting content. Our incredible community has helped with all aspects - the content, the website, the system administration, the mirroring, the promotion and more.

Thanks must also go out to the 100+ interviews that have been conducted in the last four years, and some of the frankly bizarre questions we may have asked people - these include Simon Willison, Quim Gil, Lennart Poettering, Rob McQueen, Christian Tismer, Niall “digitaldeath” O’Brien, John Alfred Knottenbelt, Alan Cox, Sean McGrath, Greg Kroah-Hartman, Adam Williamson, Havoc Pennington, Colin Walters, Will Stephenson, Sacha “Sago” Goedegebure, Alexandre Juillard, Gavin Henry, Lee Jordan, Jeff Waugh, Miguel de Icaza, Sven de Marothy, Aaron Seigo, Mike Hearn, Seth Nickell, Kevin Carmony, Michael Meeks, Ralph Giles, Edward “lamb-burning surrender monkey” Hervey, Ryan Quinn, Henrik Nielsen Omma, Carl Worth, Joe Shaw, Paul Leonard, Adrian Keward, Paul Sladen, Caroline Yates, Jonathan Riddell, Maria Blackmore, Hubert Figuere, Alex Hudson, Aquarion, Schwuk, Digit0, Mozrat, Richard Allan MP, Howard Berry, Russ Phillips and Jen Phillips, Mark Shuttleworth, Dave Camp, Yannick Pellet and Carlos Guerreiro, Ian Brown, Sarah Ewen, Greg Mancusi-Ungaro, Ian Wilson, John Leach, MrBen, Adam Leventhal, Philip Copeman, Bill Hilf, Jeremy White, Jacob “jimmac” Steiner, Dave “pig-carrying Irishman” Neary, Chris Messina, Simon Phipps, Timothy Miller, Cliff Brereton, Jeremy Katz, Matthew Garrett, Michael “mdk” Dominik, Ted Haeaeaeaeaeaeagear, Rory McCann, Matthew East, Gareth Bowker, Mirco Müller, Aaron Bockover, Robert Love, Luis Villa, Bastian Nocera, Philippe Normand, Jan Schmidt, Graham Taylor, Justin “juski” Hornsby, Peter Hollingsworth, Justin Davies, Cory Ondrejka, Sava Tatic, Stephen “SheepEatingTaz” Garton, Pia Waugh, Scott James “Three Shot” Remnant, John Cherry, Eric Raymond, Alan “Popey the sailor man” Pope, Matt Wilson, Andrew “spline” Lewis, Chris DiBona, Stéphane Marchesin, Mickey Lauer, Wouter van Heyst, David “tyrion” Dolphin, Christian Schaller, Becky Hogge, Ian “Howlin’ Mad” Murdock, James Governor, Matt Lee, Chris Jones, Jeremie Zimmerman, Neuro, Branden Holtsclaw, Bradley M. Kuhn, Zeth Green, Barbie…

Of course, LugRadio has also spawned LugRadio Live which has seen three UK shows (2005, 2006, 2007) and the up-and-coming LugRadio Live USA 2008 and LugRadio Live UK 2008. We delved into and analysed the ethos and formula behind the audio show and worked to convert into conference form and every LugRadio Live has has been an utter blast. Particular thanks must go to the people who believed in LugRadio Live back in 2005 when we had no reputation behind us - and specifically to our good friends at Bytemark Hosting for supporting us every year. Two particular things stick in my mind with LugRadio Live. Firstly, I will never forget in the build-up to the first LugRadio Live - Aq and I would have lunch together in Birmingham to discuss and make plans, and we were both hugely terrified that no-one would show up. We came to the conclusion that if around 60 people attended, we would be happy. When it got to the big day, we had over 200 people attend in our tiny little venue. We were stunned. The second memory was the unbelievably heartening feeling that ran through my veins when we ran the 2007 event - we had over 12 crew (all LugRadio fans and volunteers) get to the venue at 7am and within minutes of us getting in, every single crew member was chipping in, working hard and doing their best. With all of the crew adorned in yellow t-shirts, it was like a pack of animals dispersing - they shot out across the venue and started constructing the entire event in two hours. With the months and months of build up, stress and tension that we had put in, seeing the crew put in every ounce of energy they could that weekend, was simply stunning.

I am so proud of what LugRadio has gone onto achieve - we are not the most insightful, we are not the best produced, we are not the funniest, but I am hugely proud to see the sheer amount of content around LugRadio and LugRadio Live, and every bit of it has been entirely volunteer based, done in spare time, fueled by caffeine and late nights. To be honest, we were half-expecting that the energy from the listeners and us would wain after the first year or so, but four years on, it is just as exciting as ever - LugRadio would be nothing if it were not for our incredible listeners. Thank you everyone for sticking with us.

I would love to hear people’s fave memories from the show, LugRadio Live or anything else - head over to this forums thread to add yours.

At LugRadio Live in the UK, we traditionally play a lot of rock music in-between talks - it keeps the atmosphere loose and fun. With LugRadio Live USA 2008 on the horizon, and well aware of the dictatorship that is the RIAA, I am keen to find a collection of good rock and metal that is suitable for legal public performance at LugRadio Live USA 2008. As such, musicians, I am looking for your help here - please add a comment on this blog entry pointing to bands and music that produce music licensed that will allow us to publicly play it at the event.

The kind of music we are looking for is good-time party rock and roll, like AC/DC, Beastie Boys, Rage Against The Machine etc, but also heavier music and metal is very welcome too. Get those suggestions in - this is an excellent way to get your music played at one of the premier Open Source events in the USA.

Oh, and don’t forget registration for LugRadio Live USA 2008 is open!

Cool. Mike Linksvayer of Creative Commons writes about how he’s speaking at LugRadio Live USA and as a free bonus of making me feel proud, links to my writeup of the process of relicensing LugRadio episodes. Cheers, Mike! Naturally, if you want to see Mike and 40 other people speak, go and buy a LugRadio Live ticket now!

If you’re coming to LugRadio Live in the USA this year, you can now go and buy your LRL ticket! I can’t imagine that there are people reading this who don’t already know what LugRadio Live is, but you can read all about LRL to find out that we’ve got the cream of the open source community talking about their projects and their work and their thoughts for two days in San Francisco, on the 12th and 13th of April. If you pre-register there are, like, extra bonuses and prizes and stuff, and you can be sure of getting in (we’re a bit worried that we might hit the fire limit on the venue, so you want to buy a ticket!). Tickets for two days of glory are a practically-free $10 for the whole thing, too. Go thou and buy a ticket and buy a ticket for your friends. Do that now.

The other thing we’re concentrating on right now is exhibitors. We have a full schedule of speakers (and I’ll be publishing the schedule in due course so you can plan who you’re going to watch!), but we do still have space in the exhibition area. If you want to show off your project, or demonstrate the stuff your company makes, or just let people know about your cool technology, contact us and let us know what you want to do and how much space you’ll need.

PLEASE DIGG THIS STORY BY CLICKING HERE

Registration for LugRadio Live USA 2008 is now open at http://lugradio.org/live/USA2008/register, and tickets for the two-day spectacular cost only $10 for the full weekend, including full access to all talks, the exhibition, evening events, and a free bag o’swag for visitors. Pre-registrations also enjoy additional benefits at the show and the first 50 registrations will receive a free copy of Postal 2: Share The Pain (subject to age verification), thanks to Running With Scissors. All pre-registrations will also be entered into a raffle to win prizes by a variety of vendors.

LugRadio Live USA 2008, the ‘rock-conference’ from the team behind the popular LugRadio podcast (http://www.lugradio.org), brings the successful and unique formula of the UK LugRadio Live events to The Metreon in San Francisco on the 12th and 13th April 2008. The event is supported extensively by Google and also supported by Dice.

LugRadio Live USA 2008 brings together over 30 speakers across three stages, 30+ exhibitors, a range of BOF sessions, debate panels, lightbulb talk sessions, demos and much more, all wrapped up in the unique event that the UK incarnation has become known for, combining an incredibly loose, social, inclusive, and amusing atmosphere - if you are new to LugRadio Live, it is nothing you will have seen before.

Confirmed speakers for the event include:

• Miguel de Icaza (Mono / Novell / Co-Founder Of GNOME)
• Ian Murdoch (OpenSolaris / Founder Of Debian)
• Robert Love (GNOME / Google)
• Aza Raskin (Mozilla / Humanized)
• Benjamin Mako Hill (Ubuntu / Debian / FSF)
• John Buckman (Magnatune)
• Val Henson (Kernel / VAH consulting)
• Christopher Blizzard (Mozilla / GNOME)
• Mike Linksvayer (Creative Commons)
• David Schleef (GStreamer)
• Matthew Garrett (Power Management / Kernel)
• Danese Cooper (Intel / OSI)
• Aaron Bockover (Banshee / Novell)
• Liana Holmberg (Second Life / Linden Lab)
• Emma Jane Hogbin (Hick Tech)
• Joe Zonker Brockmeier (OpenSuSE / Novell)
• Kristen Accardi (Kernel)
• Joe Born (Neuros)
• Selena Deckelmann
• Stewart Smith (MySQL)
• Dan Kegal (Wine)
• Ben Collins (Ubuntu / Kernel)
• Jason Kridner (Texas Instruments)
• Jeremy Allison (Samba / Google)
• Christian Hammond (VMWare)
• Ian McKeller (Songbird)
• Alison Randall (Parrot / Perl / OSCON)
• David Huffman (LVM)
• Brian Will (Pigeon)
• Belinda Lopez (Ubuntu)
• Ilan Rabanovich (SoCal Linux Expo)
• Eddy Mulyono (Packaging)
• Matthew Walster (Demo Scene)

The show will also see a large number of exhibitors, which will be announced in the coming weeks, with plenty to see and do. In addition to this, the LugRadio team will be recording a live performance of their cult-hit podcast, which has over 20,000 listeners, in front of the LugRadio Live USA 2008 audience - like the UK event, this is always quite a spectacle, and excellent fun for all involved.

More information about LugRadio Live USA 2008 can be found at http://lugradio.org/live/USA2008/

We are cranking into exhibitor mode for LugRadio Live USA 2008 and we are looking for exhibitors for the show!!

The dates are the 12th and 13th April 2008 at The Metreon in San Francisco, and are interested in a range of exhibitors, from Open Source projects to commercial vendors and companies. If you have something cool to show off, we want to hear from you. We can provide a space and an audience, you provide something cool to show off and talk about.

If you are interested, contact us at show AT lugradio DOT org.

Well, we nearly have our list of speakers for LugRadio Live USA 2008 complete - four or five slots are left to fill, and we have had a stack of submitted papers to select from - thanks to all those who submitted papers. Our current speaker list is now:

• Miguel de Icaza (Mono / Novell)
• Ian Murdock (OpenSolaris / Sun)
• Jeremy Allison (Samba / Google)
• Benjamin “Mako” Hill (FSF)
• Robert Love (Kernel / Google)
• Christopher Blizzard (Mozilla)
• Matthew Garrett (Power Management / Anger)
• Aaron Bockover (Banshee / Novell)
• Dan Kegel (Wine)
• Val Henson (Kernel / Intel)
• Allison Randal (Perl / Parrot)
• John Buckman (Magnatune)
• Danese Cooper (Intel / OSI)
• Ben Collins (Ubuntu / Former Debian Project Leader)
• Belinda Lopez (Ubuntu)
• Aza Raskin (Mozilla / Humanized)
• Ian McKellar (Songbird)
• Eddy Mulyono (Packaging)
• Matthew Walster (demoscene)
• Christian Hammond (VMWare)
• Kristen Accardi (kernel hacker)
• Joe Born (Neuros)

We hope to be opening registration next week, and there will be plenty of perks for people who pre-register. More details soon - make sure to make the 12th and 13th April free in your diary to get along.

The day I flew home, I went into San Francisco to check out The Metreon with the always incredible Leslie and Cat from Google, and the venue is simply incredible - it is a perfect place for LugRadio Live USA 2008, has a stunning view, and has plenty of room for the talks, exhibitors and BOFs. It is right in the heart of San Francisco, and it is going to be an incredible event.

I will be announcing the final, complete list of speakers over the next day or so.

We have a few speaker slots for LugRadio Live USA 2008 on the 12th and 13th April 2008 that we are about to finish up and fill, and today is the close of the Call For Papers. If you would like to speak, mail show AT lugradio DOT org - this is your last chance to submit a paper.

Step back, put on the protective visor, and get ready for some quickies:

• I did an interview with Orv at SCaLE about Ubuntu, Canonical, LugRadio, SCaLE, speaking and various other things. Go and grab it here.
• Ubuntu Developer Week is kicking arse and taking names, and do continue to Digg it. It is going to be an excellent week, and I am looking forward to seeing you all online at the sessions.
• Big thanks to Ilan for taking me into Los Angeles and showing me around - after three years, I finally made it there. Hollywood is an interesting and wacky place, and I certainly want to get back there again.
• The Ubuntu California LoCo team did an excellent job at SCaLE with the Ubuntu booth. It is great to see LoCo teams in action, and it sounds like it was a great success.
• Nathan from the Ubuntu Californian LoCo team did a video interview with me while I was in the bar at the end of SCaLE. Go and see it here. I was a few beers in at this point, so be sympathetic to my ramblings.
• Right now I am in San Francisco and I fly back later today. At 1pm I head to The Metreon in San Francisco to do a tour of the venue for LugRadio Live USA 2008. Google are sponsoring the venue and loads of other stuff, and the always awesome Leslie and Cat from the Google Open Source center are helping to pull everything together. They are doing a stunning job there.
• Meryl gave me a a ‘Meanie Baby‘, which is a beanie duck with it’s head removed. This duck thing continues to plague my presence at conferences, and she is the ring-leader. She must be stopped.
• Ken VanDine needs to change his name to Ken Van Damme. He was also seperated at birth from Jorge Castro.
• WARNING: I am writing up a big blog entry about metal. Those of you who are into false-metal will not be my friend.

More soon.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, I am pleased to announce that the LugRadio Live UK 2008 dates have been finally confirmed, and the event to rule all other events will be taking place on the 19th and 20th July 2008 at the Wolverhampton Union Student Union, Wolverhampton, England. It is going to rock harder than an entire fleet of cars, being made out of rock, drag racing them at high speed and then driving them into the grand canyon. Rock, with a healthy chunk of roll, thrown in for good measure.

This is the same venue as where we held LugRadio Live UK 2006, and we have some incredible things planned for the event. Right now we are deep in LugRadio Live USA 2008 plans, but the ball is rolling for UK plans, so if you would like to speak, head over and see this page. Also, if you would like to exhibit at LugRadio Live UK 2008, send us a mail to show AT lugradio DOT org.

So, stick the dates in your diary, bring it on.

What with all the excitement over here in LugRadio Towers about the upcoming LugRadio Live USA (April 12th-13th in San Francisco! Cool speakers! An exhibition of greatness! You can’t afford to miss it!), some people might be thinking: have we forgotten about the UK? And the answer is, hell no. LugRadio may be going international this year for the first time, but we’re still here in the UK as well. I am pleased to be able to say that

LugRadio Live 2008 UK will be happening on the 19th and 20th July, in the Wolverhampton University Student Union, Wolverhampton, UK!

We’re pretty heads-down sorting out the US event at the moment, but if you’re interested in speaking or exhibiting at LRL UK this year, let us know — the big push for this will start when we get back from America. European and UK people: Get ready.

I’ve had this sitting on my laptop for a week or two now and now it has been released, I present the LugRadio Live USA 2008 video trailer.

Can’t see the vid? Click here.

It really is worth downloading one of the video files and watching it full-screen if you can, it brought a lump to my throat. Serious thanks to Tony Whitmore for his hard work producing it.

Go to LugRadio Live USA 2008, 12-13 April, San Francisco! Watch this, then spread the word!

The speakers schedule for LRL USA 2008 is really starting to shape up now and so we turn our attention to the exhibition area. We’re looking for people, companies, projects, distributions and organisations who are doing cool things with Linux, Free Software, Open Source, hardware and digital freedom issues that are willing to rock up to the Metreon Theater, San Francisco on the 12th and13th April 2008.

We’d like to hear from you if you have cool stuff to show off, shiny gadgets, interactive demos, hardware, games and so on are always winners but a stand with some literature and people who are willing to take the time to get chatting are also important if that suits your project better. We’re interested in cool people, diversity and fun stuff. It’s about the people not the megabucks, so you don’t need a marketing budget to be a valuable exhibitor at LugRadio Live. If you’re project is interesting, that’s all that is required, though if you need to blow a marketing budget, you could always become an event sponsor and help us provide extra facilities or gifts for our attendees, which means they will like you more

We’re also interested in hearing from people willing to host a BOF session, talks or suggest cool ideas for stuff we can at LRL USA 2008, which is out of the ordinary, as LRL is an extraordinary event.

Send in your suggestions for BOFs and talks or put yourself or your organisation forward as an exhibitor by emailing show at lugradio dot org and we’ll see you at the Metreon for the coolest geek out of the year.

Below is a list of speakers confirmed for LugRadio Live USA 2008, stolen shamelessly from Jono:

• Miguel de Icaza (Mono / Novell)
• Aaron Bockover (Banshee / Novell)
• Allison Randal (Perl / Parrot)
• Danese Cooper (Intel / OSI)
• Belinda Lopez (Ubuntu)
• Ian McKellar (Songbird)
• Eddy Mulyono (Packaging RPM/Debs)

This is in addition to our already announced speakers:

• Jeremy Allison (Samba / Google)
• Ian Murdock (OpenSolaris / Sun)
• Robert Love (Kernel / GNOME / Google)
• Dan Kegel (Wine)
• Val Henson (Kernel / Intel)
• John Buckman (Magnatune)
• Ben Collins (Ubuntu / Former Debian Project Leader)
• Aza Raskin (Mozilla / Humanized)

There will be many more, and you could be one of them! The Call For Papers Is Open!

LugRadio Live USA 2008 takes place on the 12th and 13th April at The Metreon in San Francisco and it’s not too late for you to submit your talk for addition to the list. While big names are important to headline any event, we’re also interested in hearing from anyone doing anything cool with Linux, Open Source or Free Software, digital rights, hardware hacking and so on. If it’s fun or interesting then you could be speaking at LugRadio Live USA 2008 about it. So email show at lugradio dot org to submit your talk.

Just in case you didn’t already know, you might be interested in finding out what LugRadio Live is all about. I was amused by “…it’s about nipples”.

As we descend deeper into LugRadio Live USA 2008 organisation, we are now looking for projects, companies and other cool and interesting people to form our Exhibition area.

We are looking for Open Source projects, distributions, interesting hardware hacking projects, games, companies and more to come and form our exhibition area. We are particularly interested in cool things to see and do - demos, hardware to play with and other shiny things are all ideal exhibition candidates. That is not a requirement though - if you can come along to show off your project with a few laptops and some fliers, thats cool too.

Time and space is limited, so do get in touch with us ASAP if you can make it along - send us an email to show AT lugradio DOT org.

The LugRadio Live USA 2008 organisation continues apace, and we have some more speakers to announce:

• Miguel de Icaza (GNOME / Mono / Novell)
• Aaron Bockover (Banshee / Novell)
• Allison Randal (Perl / Parrot)
• Danese Cooper (Intel / OSI)
• Belinda Lopez (Ubuntu)
• Ian McKellar (Songbird)
• Eddy Mulyono (Packaging RPM/Debs)

This is in addition to our already announced speakers:

• Jeremy Allison (Samba / Google)
• Ian Murdock (OpenSolaris / Sun)
• Robert Love (Kernel / GNOME / Google)
• Dan Kegel (Wine)
• Val Henson (Kernel / Intel)
• John Buckman (Magnatune)
• Ben Collins (Ubuntu / Former Debian Project Leader)
• Aza Raskin (Mozilla / Humanized)

There will be many more, and you could be one of them! The Call For Papers Is Open!

LugRadio Live USA 2008 takes place on the 12th and 13th April at The Metreon in San Francisco.

LugRadio Live USA 2008 is coming…

Go to LugRadio Live USA 2008, 12-13 April, San Francisco! Watch this, then spread the word!

Can’t see the vid? Click here.

Go submit your papers too, potential speakers.

We are now 74 days away from LugRadio Live USA at the Metreon in San Francisco, and the Call For Papers is open! We’ve already confirmed some great speakers — Jeremy Allison, Aza Raskin, Val Henson, Ben Collins, Ian Murdock, John “Magnatune” Buckman, Robert Love, Dan Kegel — but we want more. If you want to speak at LugRadio Live, and you can be in California on the 12th-13th April this year, we want to hear from you. Drop us a line before Friday 15th February and tell us what you want to talk about!

We’re collecting names of exhibitors, too. This year we’re really keen to get some cool stuff into the exhibition. If you’re part of a project and want to demonstrate it, or you’ve got some cool technology you want to show off, or you think people would love to see what your company does, get hold of us and let us know. Exhibition space is free, too!

To find out more about LugRadio Live, take a look at the website and what is LRL?.

Well, the three other large gents and I are beavering away on LugRadio Live USA 2008 which happens on the 12th and 13th April 2008 at The Metreon in San Francisco, and I have two exciting bits of information to report.

Firstly, we have our first set of confirmed speakers. They are:

• Jeremy Allison (Samba / Google)
• Ian Murdock (OpenSolaris / Sun)
• Robert Love (Kernel / GNOME / Google)
• Dan Kegel (Wine)
• Val Henson (Kernel / Intel)
• John Buckman (Magnatune)
• Ben Collins (Ubuntu / Former Debian Project Leader)
• Aza Raskin (Mozilla / Humanized)

Secondly, the Call For Papers is NOW OPEN!!

We are not just looking for out and out rock stars, but any talks that cover interesting subjects. See this page for more details, and get your submissions in by the 15th Feb 2008!

For more details of the event see this page and the main website. Lets all make LugRadio Live USA 2008 kick arse and take names.

A random collection of things that I don’t have enough time to properly write about but which ought to be noted for future reference:

• All sorts of news in the world of Humanized. Enso is now free to download, although disappointingly not Free Software. However, Jono di Carlo has left a comment suggesting that that might happen; my fingers are crossed. I’d love to see Humanized and the free desktop in partnership, because I think their work is excellent, and we have a dearth of good usability engineers. Another potentially great move in this direction is that Mozilla Labs have hired some of the Humanized engineers.
• We’ve announced dates for LugRadio Live USA: come to the greatest show on earth on April 12th and 13th 2008 in the Metreon, San Francisco. I’ll shortly be allowing people to register for the event; at the moment I’m trying to decide precisely how to do it. Paypal’s a pain (because they hassle you to create an account if you don’t have one), Google Checkout requires you to have a Google account as far as I can tell: any other suggestions for how to do online registration are welcomed.
• Adam Jackson writes that the phrase “Linux is about choice” is holding everything back: “It strangles the mind and ensures you can never change anything ever because someone somewhere has OCD’d their environment exactly how they like it and how dare you change it on them you’re so mean and next time I have friends over for Buffy night you’re not invited mom he’s sitting on my side
  again.” I couldn’t agree more, I really couldn’t. Well said, that man.
• Stuart Colville (currently fourth in a a Google search for “stuart”, one place behind me, ahaha, take that, Colville!) writes about the new Macbook Air and compares it unfavourably to the Eee PC. I’m a big fan of the Eee, because Asus have the right idea; there are lots of similar sub-notebooks coming out which all have the idea “we need to make a small notebook” but don’t have the idea “and we need to not charge a thousand pounds for it”. I know lots of people who have bought an Eee, precisely because it’s two hundred pounds, and it’s actually a really nice machine. We were keen on it on LugRadio, too (and don’t forget that we’re giving an Eee away; go enter the competition. Good work Asus, I say.

Yes. I am going to San Francisco with my 3 fat LugRadio friends to spread to good word. That’s right, LugRadio Live is happening in the USA this year and nobody is going to be able to understand my accent or any of my jokes.

This season of joy will take place on the 12th and 13th April 2008 at the Metreon in SF. This means all you Americans should be thinking of pre-registering as there are limited tickets, see here for details as they emerge. We’re lining up some fantastic big-name speakers but we also want to hear from the little guys on the street doing cool stuff for BOFs, the exhibition and the 3 minute lightbulb talks. If you want to lead a BOF, promote your cool (ideally interactive) project or do a quick lightbulb talk, let us know by emailing show at lugradio dot org.

I look forward to seeing you there.

LugRadio Live USA 2008 is now confirmed to be happening on the 12th and 13th April 2008 at The Metreon, 101 4th St, San Francisco.

More details about the event will be announced soon, but I just wanted to get the dates out so people can book plane tickets. We are looking for speakers and exhibitors. Feel free to get in touch with us at show AT lugradio DOT org - we will be announcing a formal Call For Papers soon when we launch the website.

All of us are hugely excited about LugRadio Live USA 2008, and it is going to rock a very, very, large one. Our American friends don’t know what is coming…

After a long-ish break over the summer, LugRadio returns for season 5! With an all-new pretty website, interview with Miguel de Icaza about Moonlight, the Linux implementation of Silverlight, and lots of the usual stuff. We’re planning to shake things up a bit this season; people have been asking us to come and do live shows around the country, and you can now get in touch to ask us about that. Let us know what you want to hear by mailing show@lugradio.org or going to lugradio.org/contact. If you’re in the USA (or can get there), then LugRadio Live USA is also now definitely confirmed! We’ll see you Easter weekend in San Francisco. Go get the first episode of Season 5 to find out more!

A kind chap in the audience at LUGRadio Live 2007 filmed LUGRadio Live And Unleashed 2007 (our live show at LUGRadio Live) in its entirety and has uploaded it to blip.tv. It is great fun, and filled to the brim with discussion and amusing bits.

Go and watch it here.

Well, we had the two days. LugRadio Live 2007 happened last weekend, and it was super-duper-superb, yes indeed. There are lots of reports you can read about what it was like (including one chap who didn’t like the show at all and called it an endless stream of sub-par nob-gags, which will be appearing on t-shirts in due course).

My personal favourite bit, I think, was Adam walking out with his hooded robe to the Rocky music, but the whole thing was just unutterably great. If you want to see more of Adam, and you’re aware of meatspin.com, then you might like lugradio.org/sweetspin (really, really, really NSFW, though).

Now it’s all over, I’d like to say thanks to people!

Firstly, thanks to our crew.

All the crew in one place

They did a magnificent job. There’s no way we could have got everything done without them. If you want to know how much work they did, take a look at Xalior’s timelapse video of the first day. Special thanks to Chris Procter and Dave Morley for being crew heads, Kat for making cakes, Ron’s wife for the morning bacon sandwiches, Ron for taking millions of photos (which will be available soon), and Rev. Tig for being the audio flunky and putting up with all Jono’s shit on the second day. You’re all heroes.

Speaking of videos, a special thanks to Tony Whitmore and his video crew, who recorded a great deal of the event. We’re hoping to have videos available shortly of the talks — yes, I know we always say this, but this year we let Tony deal with it instead of us and so it might actually happen!

Next, I want to say thankyou to the people who gave us money and things. That’s everyone coming in the door, of course, but also Bytemark Hosting, Sun, Google, O’Reilly, Red Hat, Yahoo, and Canonical. Bytemark and Sun and Google gave us the money we needed to put the event on, O’Reilly gave us lanyards and books to give as prizes, and everyone gave us stuff to go in the goodie bags (which were charmingly named the Lugradio Live Nutsacks).

Ade was particularly pleased with the Red Hat stuff, shameless Fedora whore that he is

Next, the speakers. They all did a great job, some travelling from hugely far afield (America, Indonesia, across Europe), and people seem to have enjoyed the talks they went to. Special mention goes to Ted Haaeeeaaeaeeeeagaeeaer for using every swear-word he could think of now that he doesn’t work for Novell any more, Bruno and MrBen for the Great LugRadio Quiz, Steve Lamb, Chris diBona, and Becky Hogge from the Open Rights Group for what I thought was the most interesting talk of the day. Des Burley from my law firm, Mills and Reeve, gets an extra mention for not only doing a talk but ably coping with me putting him on the spot by asking questions about patents during LugRadio Live and Unleashed. Extra-special bonus thanks go to a chap called Chris Hallam (or something similar), who’s responsible for the BBC iPlayer, and who I pulled up on stage with no preparation to receive a booting from Becky and the audience about the iPlayer only working on Windows. Chris, I don’t know how your last name is spelled and so I’m having difficulty getting hold of you to say thankyou: if you read this, or if anyone reads this who knows who Chris is, can they contact me?

Chris and Becky on stage

Our exhibitors come next, and I want to say thanks to them too. The exhibition this year was a little smaller than last year, and a couple of people have said it was rather noisy for the talks (or that the talks were rather noisy for the exhibition!) — this year we put the exhibition in the same room as the atrium stage precisely because exhibitors complained last year that they were stuck off in a room on their own and it was boring. So…not sure what to do, there. Suggestions invited. Special thanks go to the exhibitors who came through when I walked around the expo at the end and hassled them for prizes that we could give away from the stage, particularly Josette from O’Reilly for giving us loads of t-shirts, Jon and the gang from Red Hat for giving us a shitload of stuff, and the GP2X people for giving us a GP2X to give away! Wish I’d got it. Of course, we ended up giving the GP2X for the best LugRadio story to a woman who suggested that I should look like someone from Shaun of the Dead, for which she gets all of my no love. Hmph. Extra special thanks to John Leach, who designed all of our t-shirts (the special ones for the four large gents and the crew t-shirts), despite the crippling burden of his ridiculous new afro haircut.

Don’t blame it on sunshine, don’t blame it on moonlight, don’t blame it on the good times, blame it on the boogie

Finally, there were two pieces of news that we announced at the end of LugRadio Live and Unleashed.

The first, the bad news, is that Ade’s decided to leave the show. No more bald man. We tried to talk him out of it, but apparently he wants to spend more time with his razor or something. Ade, here’s the bit where I say: thanks for everything over the last few years. The show won’t be the same without you, it really won’t. We’ll miss ya, especially when it comes time to look into Ade’s Crystal Bald to see what’s coming up for the next year in Linux and we don’t have it any more.

However, Chris Procter, who’s been a stand-in presenter on the show before, is bravely stepping into the void left by El Baldo de Maximo. Chris has the same sysadmin leanings as Ade (although more hair, but not by much), and I’m really looking forward to the next season — as you know, Adam has also recently replaced Matt, so there could be an entirely new vibe for the new season! Goodbye to Ade, and hello to Chris: season 5 of LugRadio will rock harder than anything ever has. Chris will be part of the show during this coming week, when we’ll be recording a series of special shows at Guadec, the Gnome User and Developer Conference in Birmingham. Look out for them!

The Lord of the Rings, as Chris is affectionately known

The second piece of news is, after much questioning and requests, LugRadio is coming to America! Yes, yes indeed, LugRadio Live USA will be happening in the San Francisco Bay Area in March 2008!

More details as we have them; we’ll be putting up a site soon where you can see what’s going on and buy tickets. Big thanks to Google for making this possible. We’ve talked a lot about how we wanted LugRadio Live USA to have the same feel, the same vibe about it that LRL has here, and we’ve been convinced that that’s possible. So, we’re coming to the land of the free. Prepare yourselves. Next year there will be two LugRadio Lives. I can’t wait.

(thanks to schwuk for the image and blog post title)

LUGRadio Live USA has been something that has been discussed for the last few years in the LUGRadio community. Some of the American fans have been banging on about it for quite some time, but we have been very protective of doing it as we want to maintain the pretty unique atmosphere of the UK event. Typically barred by not having enough time, we agreed to accept proposals for people to run it, but never had anything that completely won us over. I am not surprised though - we needed confidence on so many levels to even consider it. The last thing we want is the promise of LRLUSA and it not having the same vibe as the UK event.

Well, recently we have been in discussions with a team of people who are exceptionally keen to run LUGRadio Live USA, and will be taking care of the major areas we were concerned about. After some meetings and conference calls, we felt happy with their commitment to the event, and are happy to announce LUGRadio Live 2008 in the USA. It will take place in Silicon Valley in California in March 2008. More news as we get it.

To be completely clear, LUGRadio Live UK will still be happening like normal, and so there will be two events to mark into your calendar. We look forward to bringing LRL to the USA and our American friends. Rock a bollock.

Well, its over. This weekend LUGRadio Live 2007 happened, and after 8 months of planning, over 20 crew, a stack of exhibitors and a bunch of speakers, everyone seemed to have a blast. There are a bunch of excellent write-ups of the event listed here, so you can get a flavour of what happened if you could not make it.

This year we made the crew a much more integral part of the event, and this bunch of people were incredible:

Over 20 people dug in and helped out and they didn’t ‘arf work their arses off. They were there ready and waiting when needed, always keen to help the presenters, exhibitors, speakers and visitors, and it was heartening to see them working so hard. Stunning, absolutely stunning.

The key to grading the success of LUGRadio is in defining a specific kind of atmosphere. Our aim is a very loose, social, friendly, amusing atmosphere, and we worked to have lots of little flourishes to try gain this atmosphere. It seems that things pretty much worked out and a number of people commented on how social and accessible the atmosphere was. We still have lots of room for improvement, but I am pleased people were getting the aim and intention of LRL. One of the upsides of developing an event like LRL is that it attracts a certain kind of personality, and as such you have a room full of similar personalities (read cool people) who are pretty cool.

Also, sadly the LUGRadio Live And Unleashed show was Ade’s last ever LUGRadio. We are all saddened to see him leave, but he is exceptionally busy jet-setting around Europe as a VoIP expert and is looking to move on. Ade is an incredible guy, very genuine and one of the first things you notice when you meet him is how warm a personality he has. He brought an awful lot to the show with his experience, his dry humor and a viewpoint that balanced out the show. He will be missed hugely both as a presenter and as a friend who we had the privilege of being around every two weeks.

Stepping into Ade’s seat is Chris Proctor, who’s nickname on the show is The Proctologist or The Lord Of The Rings. Chris comes from a technical background, has a dry sense of humour and was one of the co-leaders of the crew at LUGRadio Live 2007. With Adam and Chris newly wedged into the studio, you can be assured that Season 5 of LUGRadio will bring some fresh ideas and viewpoints. We have lots planned for Season 5, it really is gonna kick some arse and take some names. Expect some surprises. We should kick it off around September time.

I’m now leaving work and going to set up LugRadio Live! If you’re coming, I’ll see you tomorrow; if you’re not coming, you’re missing out. Be there!

Have a good weekend: I certainly will.

Just seen on #jokosher:

<laszlok> i gotta head out to the airport
<laszlok> cya tomorrow guys  

Laszlo flies from Canada to LUGRadio Live 2007 this weekend.

It is exciting when the world’s single greatest event, ever, in the history of man and womankind is happening at the weekend.

Holy crap, this weekend is LUGRadio Live 2007. This week is a busy week with every evening being dedicated to last minute preparations for the event. My house is slowly filling up with content for the event, we are making plans for last minute bits and pieces yet to be done, and the community is gearing up for the big weekend. We are also firming up a few special announcements. We have big news, people. Its kind of odd that six months of work is coming to a conclusion.

Running a community event is hard work. This year, LUGRadio Live has involved a hell of a lot more work, and we have over 15 crew members, two designers, AV contributors and much more. Much of the fun has been in discovering how we work and optimising how we can get the most out of our time. Before LRL2005, none of us had done anything like this before, so it has been a learning process, and each event has required progressively more and more work as it has grown. Organising it is not just organising over 40 speakers and a room full of exhibitors, but sorting out the venue, projectors, PA systems, hotels, hotel discounts, transport links, special events, scheduling, social events, posters, equipment, BOF sessions, venue facilities, printing and more. Well, in a week or so we can see the result of our efforts.

LUGRadio Live 2007 is uniquely community. We can’t wait to see the lot of you there. If you are still unsure about whether to come, you would be nuts to miss out. 7th and 8th July, Wolverhampton. Be there.

A while back we released the Freedom March promo video for LUGRadio Live 2007. Well, the ever amusing Roger Light of Bruce Campbell looklike fame has produced a spoof version which is utterly, utterly excellent:

(If you can’t see the vid, click here)

All of the hair growth appears to be real, and it must have taken him ages to do it. He will be there at LUGRadio Live 2007 on the 7th and 8th July (a week today!!) to receive your adoration. Nice work Rog.

Roger Light produces a spoof of the LugRadio Live Freedom March video, calling it the one-man Freedom March. Nice. He grew and shaved beards especially for the video, apparently. I’m finding a way to show this at LugRadio Live next weekend.

As LUGRadio Live 2007 grows closer (one week! - 7th and 8th July 2007), I just wanted to fill you all in on some of the social events that are happening. So, below is the schedule of LUGRadio Live 2007 from start to end:

• Friday 6th July 2007 - 7.30pm - Pre-LRL07 drinks at The Hogs Head in central Wolverhampton. This takes part in the beer garden at the back of the pub. Kicks off at 7.30pm.
• Saturday 7th July 2006 - Daytime - LUGRadio Live 2007 Day 1 at The Lighthouse, Wolverhampton.
• Saturday 7th July 2006 - 8pm - LUGRadio Live Party the main LUGRadio Live venue at The Lighthouse, Wolverhampton. Music, drinks and good company make the official party the place to be after the first day.
• Sunday 8th July 2006 - Daytime - LUGRadio Live 2007 Day 2 at The Lighthouse, Wolverhampton.
• Sunday 8th July 2006 - 7.30pm - Unofficial post-show meet up at The Quality Hotel, Penn Road, Wolverhampton. This loose, informal meet-up is a great way to wind-down and talk about the weekend. A number of members of the LUGRadio community come along to this evening.

For a map of where the venue, travel links, hotels and other places are, click here.

Yet more excitement about LUGRadio Live 2007 on the 7th and 8th July 2007in Wolverhampton, UK.

We have some incredible prizes to give away at LUGRadio Live 2007 donated by our good friends at O’Reilly, Nokia and Defective By Design. Not only will O’Reilly be giving bundles of books away and Make magazines, but Nokia are giving us five Nokia N800 Internet Tablets to give away. Finally, Defective By Design have donated one of the excellent hazmat suits they used in their Anti-DRM campaign, as modelled below:

Each of these incredible prizes will be available in competitions throughout LUGRadio Live 2007, and we expect even more prizes to be available on the big weekend.

Get more info on LUGRadio Live 2007 and go and REGISTER!

Welcome to the second LugRadio Live 2007 promotional video, Don’t Listen Alone. See the perils of listening to LugRadio without coming to LugRadio Live!

LugRadio Live 2007: be there!

You can watch and download the video in various formats, including Theora, from the Don’t Listen Alone site.

Oh, and in case you haven’t got the message yet: LugRadio Live 2007 registration is open! Go and register! If you’re coming but paying on the door, go and register on that page anyway so we know you’re coming! You know it makes sense! Too many exclamation marks! Help! It’ll be great!

(if you can’t see the above video, click here)

The LUGRadio team are proud to release our second promo video. It is available in many different formats so share it and spread the word about LUGRadio Live 2007, which is less than a month away!

…oh and if you are coming to the big event, go and REGISTER!

UPDATE: Go and Digg it! - thanks to mrben for digging it.

I am pleased to announce the initial BOF schedule for LUGRadio Live 2007 on the 7th and 8th July 2007. We will have two BOF tracks, one of which is scheduled and another which can be organised freeform on the weekend. Below is the schedule for the scheduled BOF track:

Saturday 7th July 2007:

• 11.00 - 12.00 lug.org.uk
• 12.00 - 13.00 Ubuntu UK
• 13.00 - 14.00 Lunch: Keysigning
• 14.00 - 15.00 Cheaper alternatives to vista
• 15.00 - 16.00 KDE
• 16.00 - 17.00 Perl Mongers

Sunday 8th July 2007:

• 11.00 - 12.00 Jokosher
• 12.00 - 13.00 hashlugradio
• 13.00 - 14.00 Lunch: Keysigning
• 14.00 - 15.00 Power Management
• 15.00 - 16.00 Bongo

LUGRadio Live 2007 is shaping up to be an incredible event! Go and REGISTER NOW!!

Last week I did an interview with the fellas from the Linux Action Show. We chatted about a bunch of things including LUGRadio Live 2007, Ubuntu, Ubuntu Live, LUGRadio, Jokosher, KDE4, GStreamer and more.

The show is Episode 50 (congrats reaching the big 5-0 chaps) and you can click here to download the Ogg.

LugRadio Live 2007, the greatest open source event in the history of the universe, is four weeks from now, and…

Registration is now open!

You can register! You can come! Pay your fiver!

We’ve got forty speakers in three talk tracks, Birds of a feather discussion sessions, an exhibition, and the most intelligent, best connected, most freedom-loving six hundred people in the world all in one venue for one weekend!

The video above is called The Freedom March: if you can’t see it, or you want to download it, or you want to put it on your blog and tell people about LugRadio Live, you can get it in Ogg Theora, mpeg, and mp4 formats from the Freedom March site. Go post it on your site; go digg it; go link to it; go tell it on the mountain. LugRadio Live is coming. Be there.

(if you can’t see the above video, click here to view it)

With LUGRadio Live 2007 only one month away and the action hotting up, we are proud to present the above Freedom March video. Spread the word about LUGRadio Live by linking to the video page with its many formats and the script from the video. Blog it, stick it in forums, tell your gran about it…whatever, just spread the word.

With 40 speakers, a full exhibition, special events, social events, the gong-a-thon, the mass debate, the hour of power and much more, it is the hottest event of the year.

…and now…REGISTRATION IS OPEN!! Go and register for the legendary weekend.

UPDATE: Digg the video.

This year at LugRadio Live we’re having The Hour Of Power again, like last year. It’s a one-hour main-stage session where people demonstrate cool visual things. Last time there was Justin Hornsby demoing MythTV, dotwaffle demoing, well, demos, Malcolm “pepsiman” Parsons demoing Linux on the Nintendo DS, msemtd demoing his home-built MAME arcade cabinet, and Mirco “MacSlow” Muller demoing Lowfat. This year we’re looking for more things in that vein. So, if you want to show off your media centre software or something you’ve built into an Altoids tin or some exciting pretty web technology or something else, contact us to volunteer!