LugRadio Live Blog

LugRadio Live and Unleashed UK 2008 live show now available

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 14:49:57 +0000

If you couldn’t make it to LugRadio Live UK 2008 this year, or if you could but want to relive some of the experience, you can now download the live LugRadio show as audio. Go get it! Video is coming: we*‘re trying quite hard to make the video look thoroughly brilliant.

Also, keep your eye on the LRL UK 2008 talks page; recorded video for each of the talks is being gradually added, one at a time, again thanks to Tony. There’s a few up now and more will come along as time goes on.

On Sincerity

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 15:45:37 +0000

Something struck me today and though I’ve always felt this way, I’ve never consciously been aware that it was anything more than another unlabelled facet of my set of morals and values. I prize sincerity in people almost as much as anything else. As much as I may be one of the most sarcastic people I know, I am also sickeningly honest and sincere and I demand this of the people around me. In almost all cases, honesty seems to be the best policy above all else. If you tell the truth, then you don’t have to lie further to maintain the original lie, you don’t have to remember that you lied in the first place and as much as they may not appreciate it initially, most people will come to value you for your honesty and trust you as a result. If you lie, it will probably come out eventually and in the worst possible way.

I like old people. I’m a pretty impatient guy these days and as much as I may foam with frustration when trapped behind somebody who consistently does 10 or 20 mph less than the speed limit when I have to be somewhere, so much so that I can almost feel my skin blister with irritation and despite the fact that I may rage inwardly, a la ‘Falling Down’, at our bewildered looking, slow moving, bestactacled, wheely-basket carrying, tortoise-necked, supermarket-aisle blocking elders, I do in fact like old people. I have met many that I didn’t know that were so sincere that it melted my heart. I remember an old lady on a tram-stop bench in the Prague suburbs, next to a supermarket that offered my friend Dan and I, on a hungover morning after, some strawberries she had picked herself, despite the fact that we were a pair of groggy looking youths and I had blue hair at the time, which most Czechs assumed meant I was a heroin addict (this was in the first post-communist years and looking ‘different’ marked you out). Only a year and half ago, I was offered a Hammond organ by someone whose father was due to come out of hospital and had to have a bed in their front room, which meant the Hammond had to go. When I collected it, I met his elderly mother who thanked me dearly for doing them a favour by coming to collect it at such short notice. I somewhat cheekily replied that I was there as there was something in for me too. While my tongue had been firmly in cheek and the assembled helpers laughed appreciatively, I still feel a hint of shame that this sweet old lady offered me such heartfelt, emotional sincerity for taking away a prized family possession to enable their ill patriarch to return home and I reflexively shrugged it off whith a cheap gag.

Today I decided that I liked the man who works in my local Chinese retaurant. While be-suited, managerial in position and of course obligated to be polite to the customers, he has a honest face and isn’t over-friendly with the farewells. The restaurant is in a pretty low-market part of town and only half an hour earlier we watched as one departing guest offered an entire table of 12 out for a fight. Although the man who works there only smiled and said goodbye as we left, I think he appreciated our good manners when we thanked him. I might be on a different planet here as it’s an everyday thing, but I liked his genuine smile and his sincerity.

So anyway, the point of all of this flowery word arranging is that, at LugRadio Live, it never fails to amaze me how many people travel from all over the UK to be there and to be part of it all. The atmosphere was great this year and so while it sounded cheesy even to me when I said during the closing segment that we wanted to thank you all for being there, that you’re the reason we hold the event and why we decided at the Friday night party that this couldn’t be the last year, I genuinely meant it. You’re an amazing bunch of people, all of you and I’m glad to know you.

To conclude this misguided, scrambled stream of things everybody else takes for granted anyway; in the most eloquent of way possible:

Be excellent to each other.

I’ll see you next year for LugRadio Live UK 2009.

LugRadio Live UK 2009 Confirmed

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 22:14:10 +0000

For those of you who were not at LugRadio Live UK 2008, I am pleased to announce that after a last-minute change of heart, there will be a LugRadio Live in the UK in 2009.

Now, some of you may be claiming this was all a big PR stunt, but I am afraid you credit us with too much intelligence. Basically Aq and I had a conversation on the Friday before LRL about whether we should do another year, largely fuelled by the excitement that was building. Then we went to the pre-LRL party and got inundated with requests for another year.

So, the following day, on the first day of LRL, the four presenters went to a Starbucks and we had a quick meeting to discuss it and decided that we thought it would be doable to do another show next year. Much of the reason for agreeing to organise another show is that LRL really is a unique atmosphere - there is simply nothing that matches it, and the idea of never having that atmosphere again was a sad prospect. We also had a huge amount of support and help - with nearly 30 crew and a core team of 5 or so organisers, it all came together nicely.

Oh, and to clarify, we are still final in our decision to stop doing the podcast - there won’t be any more normal LugRadio shows, but there will be a live recording at next year’s LugRadio Live UK 2009.

So…bring on LugRadio Live UK 2009!

LugRadio Live UK 2008 LAN Gaming Rig

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 19:40:40 +0000

Wooo, look at this. Bytemark have finished setting up the LAN gaming rig for LugRadio Live UK 2008. They are running twice daily fragging competitions with the winning teams getting prizes.

Come shoot other geeks in a team related frag-fest at LugRadio Live 2008. I will be joining you. Don’t forget that if you’ve never been to LugRadio Live before but you always meant to, then this is you last chance as there won’t be another one.

Many thanks to Matt Bloch of Bytemark Hosting.

LugRadio Live This Weekend!

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:00:08 +0000

This weekend is LugRadio Live UK 2008 at The Lighthouse Media Center in Wolverhampton. The weekend looks a little like this:

Friday - 8pm - LugRadio Party @ The Hogs Head, Stafford St
Saturday - 10.30am - LugRadio Live UK Day 1 doors open @ The Lighthouse Media Center, Fryer Street, Wovlerhampton
Saturday - 5pm - Recording of the last ever LugRadio show!
Saturday - 8pm - LugRadio Party @ The Lighthouse Media Center, Fryer Street, Wolverhampton
Sunday - 10.30am - LugRadio Live UK Day 2 doors open @ The Lighthouse Media Center, Fryer Street, Wolverhampton

25+ speakers. 20+ exhibitors. LAN gaming. Free swag. Great community atmosphere. £5.

Bring it on.

Gaming competition at LugRadio Live this weekend

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 23:12:02 +0000

Cool. We have confirmation that Matt Bloch and the gang at Bytemark have put together an uber-flashy gaming rig to bring to LugRadio Live this weekend.

They’ve written about this gaming server, and they’re going to be running a set of gaming competitions on it over the course of the weekend. Those of you who are gamers are going to enjoy this.

LugRadio Live UK 2008 Schedule Announced

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 15:15:17 +0000

In typical fashion I am clinging to others’ coat tails by not ever being first to announce something to do with LugRadio, however I am proud to announce that the LugRadio Live UK 2008 schedule has been published.

The event planning is almost complete, which is fortunate given that it’s about 11 days away. Certainly the speakers list is complete as is the exhibitor list, pending any late additions.

Go take a look at the schedule now.

Obviously I’m lacking in the boombasticity of others when it comes to announcing things, sadly today I’m a little deflated as my car was broken into, but one thing we haven’t mentioned a great deal so far is that we will be having LAN gaming tournaments at this years event, with a serious gaming rig supplied by Bytemark Hosting, one of our event sponsors. So, thanks to Matt Bloch of Bytemark, for sponsoring the event and also for putting the rig together. Not only will there be around 12 PCs clustered around the central gaming rig for attendees to walk up and frag each other on, but you will also be able to just rock up, plug in your laptop and join in at any time you choose.

There is no need to buy a ticket up front this year, the whole event is pay on the door, so show up with your 5 GBP and your laptop for some serious fragging, geeking, speaking, listening and drinking on the 19th and 20th July 2008 at the Light House Media Centre in Wolverhampton.

This show, as announced elsewhere, will be the last ever LugRadio episode and will include a pre-event pub meet-up on Friday 18th at around 8pm in the Hog’s Head pub in Wolverhampton city centre and a party at the LRL venue itself on the Saturday night. It’s the last ever LugRadio Live, so bring your drinking boots and your sense of humour. Sadly I don’t drink any more, so I’ll probably either be anxiously looking like I wished I still drank or will be so drunk I can only open one eye AGAIN. But come say hello in either case

See you there.

The End of LugRadio

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 14:55:12 +0000

Well I guess the cat has been out of the bag for over a week now but due to being to busy type that I am, I haven’t yet mentioned the fact that LugRadio will end after LugRadio Live UK 2008. It’s was a sad day when we took that decision but was one which we all agreed was the right choice. I always considered when I joined the show that at some point it would have to end and that I hoped it wouldn’t be on my watch, but unfortunately it is.

There were various factors which led us to this decision. Amongst them were the fact that it was getting pretty hard to sustain the show when we were all tied to being in Wolverhampton every 2 weeks and I personally found it hard to find the prep time in the days leading up to the recording. It was always a rush for me to get from work, then to the studio, record the show, get home late afterwards, then get up early for work the next day. I found myself struggling to get myself together for a day or so afterwards and I had been wondering how I was going to sustain that through another season or three. I had also been struggling to find the time to do anything other than my day job, LugRadio and real life, frequently one of those 3 suffered at any one time. I don’t know how Aq and Jono had managed to keep it up over the last 4 years.

Also in there was the fact that all of our jobs and private lives were becoming more demanding of our time and I think we all started to feel that we weren’t able to give LugRadio the amount of time it required to keep it fresh so we decided to call it a day at the end of the season rather than start another season and finish half way through, or string it out for another two or three seasons and have people notice the quality drop. I think a few people noticed that this last season contained more episodes released late than any other. I think one reference that has been made elsewhere was about Red Dwarf and how they should have quit after season V, because VI, VII and VIII were awful and the memory of an excellent show was tainted by the recollection of a decline in quality after they should have called it a day.

To quell some of the rumours, I will re-state what has been said elsewhere:

It is sadly not a hoax
We have not fallen out and in fact remain good friends
My business plans are not the reason for the show ending, in whole or in part. Frankly, as the show existed before I joined, I think it could probably survive my departure
Jono’s Severed Fifth project is not part of the reason for the show ending

Jono’s announcement is here and Aq’s is here. Theirs are both better written than mine.

Although I don’t personally pay for any of the hosting services used by LugRadio, I believe the website, forums, audio archive, IRC channel and so on will all remain up and running and I think a great deal of the forums and #lugradio IRC community are planning on staying around, as will I. While I don’t believe that I am the great draw that pehaps Aq and Jono might be, I plan on hanging around. As many have said, LugRadio was their LUG and my LUG, especially those who don’t have a local Linux User Group and so I hope to stay in touch with as many people as possible. The Linux community, in the UK, the USA, Australia and Serbia to name but a few I have been in contact with personally and through LugRadio and many other places around the world have some of the most friendly, intelligent and funny individuals I’ve come across in any field of endeavour. So, in the least condescending way I can muster, pat yourselves on the back, you’ve made every second worth it for all of us.

So that’s it really, bar the sweeping out of the room, which won’t actually ever happen in Jono’s house. All that remains is one further studio show, due out on 14th July 2008 and then on to LugRadio Live UK 2008 as the last ever show.

LugRadio Live UK 2008 schedule published!

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 20:42:23 +0000

After weeks of blood, sweat and tears trying to ~~get a talk title out of Rob McQueen~~nail down the schedule for LugRadio Live UK 2008, it’s finally available!

Go see the LRL UK schedule to see who’s speaking and when

I’m pretty damned proud of the list of people we’ve put together. There’s a good mixture of the same old faces (who speak a lot at conferences precisely because they have a lot to say and they say it well!) and people who’ve never spoken at LRL before. I can’t wait. Only 12 days to go.

Breaking news: we’re putting together a LAN gaming tournament as well as part of the event! If you like that sort of thing, come along and frag people* to your heart’s content. There are prizes.

Oh, and a brief reminder that it’s the last ever recording ever of LugRadio ever. See you there. July 19th and 20th, Wolverhampton, UK. No ticket sales in advance: just turn up on the day clutching your five pounds. You can’t afford to miss out.*

Thanks

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 02:02:59 +0000

Wow. That is the only way of describing how we all feel in the LugRadio team regarding the response to Monday’s news that we are wrapping up LugRadio. I have been, in a word, stunned at the incredibly generous and kind comments that we have been receiving. It was incredible to see so many comments on that blog entry, as well as Aq’s write-up, the LugRadio forums thread that announced the news, and the mountain of email to the show email address.

I have read every one of those comments, posts and emails and I am stunned at the incredibly kind things people have been saying. Some of the things that people have said have really made us all feel incredibly proud of the show. I love the fact that many of you said that LugRadio helped you get enthused about free software and the community, and many of you said that you feel part of something with LugRadio. A long time ago, Bruno, a LugRadio community regular said “LugRadio is my LUG“; it seems he is not alone in that sentiment based on many of the messages we have received.

So with all the thanks we have received and well-wishes for the future, I want to use this as an opportunity to say thanks to every one of you too. As some of you will know, I am rather fond of communities, and I am incredibly proud of the LugRadio community. It has demonstrated all the traits of a good community; it is a friendly, welcoming environment, and one that has never been short of people enthusiastic about getting involved. Heck, the foundation of LugRadio is a testament to this, with every single show being mirrored by a large number of contributors - this was a conscious decision that we made from day one to help make the show possible, and low-and-behold the community once again stood up and helped. Not only that, but had community contributions with sys-admin work, the planet, the facts database, the clan, the forums, the IRC channel, at LugRadio Live, with ideas for the show, emails and more.

There is though one little story though which I would like to share with you that really demonstrated to me what the LugRadio community is capable of. Back when we were organising LugRadio Live 2006, we spent months preparing for the event. It was twice the size of 2005, two days instead of one, three stages instead of two with more talk slots, had far more activities and events going on and involved a lot more coordination, sponsorship and more. We worked our respective arses off to get everything in shape, and the community was psyched up about it. People had booked flights from all over the world to attend, hotels were reserved and we were a few weeks away from the big weekend. Then, one evening while doing some recording, I logged onto the LugRadio Forums from my studio computer and noticed a comment that a rail strike was scheduled for the weekend of LugRadio Live. Crap. I can safely say that in 28 years of being on this planet, I have never been so angry as I was in that moment, and was fuming at not only the incompetence of the people who run the rail network but also the union deciding to throw their toys out the proverbial pram. Who the hell did they think they were? Did they not consider other people who rely on the rail network? Were they aware of how disruptive this was going to be? I stood there and envisaged all of our hard work slowly going down the drain as people could not get to LugRadio Live.

In all the commotion, the LugRadio community…unasked…and unprompted, jumped right into action and started organising car sharing, investigating alternatives and getting a plan in place. Discussions happened, wiki pages were created, capacity was developed. We even had someone volunteer to pay or a nationwide coach service out of his own pocket. When I went to work at OpenAdvantage the following day with a black cloud hovering over my head, I was touched by just how much the community had pulled together. In my mind, this is the definition of what this is all about - we are all coming together to not only do incredibly cool things with technology, culture and new perspectives, but there is a noticeable atmosphere of people looking out for each other. The greatest communities in the world are not just places where you feel empowered, they are places in which other people empower you.

…oh and for the curious, the conclusion of this tale was that when I got into OpenAdvantage that day I called the rail network officials and the union and gave them equal doses of my derision. Fortunately, said strike was called off and everyone lived happily ever after. I even shaved off that insane beard at that LugRadio Live. Retrospectively, that was a deeply wise move.

So in conclusion, thanks everyone for everything you have been saying to us, we really do appreciate it.

Come to LugRadio Live UK 2008 for one last shindig

So everyone, with the show wrapping up, you absolutely, utterly have to come along to LugRadio Live UK 2008 on the 19th and 20th July 2008 for our farewell LugRadio Live. Of course, its not just our last recording of a show - there will be three stages of speakers, a full exhibition, parties and other fun for the weekend. Its only a few weeks away, so get booked into a hotel and come and join us.

The end of LugRadio

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 11:23:21 +0000

LugRadio is ending.

Yep. After 106 shows, two million downloads, five thousand emails, 134 hours of recorded material, five conferences, and fourteen presenters*, LugRadio is coming to an end. I’ve just released “More on that later”, episode 21 of season 5, which is the antepenultimate (!) episode. We’ve got one more “ordinary” episode after this, and then the live show at LugRadio Live UK on the 19th and 20th July in Wolverhampton, and that’s it.

There’ll be a certain amount of reminiscence at LRL in a couple of weeks, but this might be a good place for me to talk a bit about everything that’s gone on. It’s been a pretty cool ride, I have to say. We talked to loads of people, shone a spotlight on loads of projects, won an award for marketing and been elected best podcast in a magazine, done LRL in America and four times in the UK, and basically had a great laugh doing it. I’m really proud of what we’ve done. And now it’s ending. A sad moment.

I probably ought to say: it isn’t because we’ve had a row or anything. We want the show to go out on a high — always leave ‘em wanting more, isn’t that the showbiz mantra? — and everyone can name programmes that have outstayed their welcome by stringing it out for just one more season. I would like to keep those people who don’t think that we jumped the shark 104 shows ago to be still thinking that the show was good even after it’s over.

So, this is it, kids. This show, one more show, and then the live show at LugRadio Live. That’s our chance to say thankyou to all the people who’ve made the show what it is, and your chance to see the last ever LugRadio recording live on stage. Drop us an email or post to the forums to tell us what you’ve liked and disliked about the last four years and what you want to see us talk about at LRL, and come and celebrate the end of an era with us. There’s going to be rather a few drinks that weekend: make sure some of them are yours. I’ll see you there.

Other comments around the place: Jono’s writeup, Adam’s writeup, digg the end of the show

The End Of LugRadio

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 11:21:27 +0000

DIGG THIS!

Today we announced that we have decided to call it a day with LugRadio. Our last show will be LugRadio Live UK 2008 on the 19th and 20th July 2008 at The Lighthouse in Wolverhampton. We announced this in the latest episode of LugRadio, Season 5 Episode 21 - go and have a listen to the show to hear more.

In a nutshell, we have decided that LugRadio has had a good run for the last four years and five seasons, and a show such as ours has always faced the risk of getting old and tired unless the formula is changed to keep it fresh. This growth and evolution has happened to a decent degree over the seasons as we introduced interviews, musical comedy skits, points based segments, competitions, focusing on different types of content etc, but as we near the end of Season 5 we came to the conclusion that the show was nearing its natural conclusion. From the beginning, when we have discussed if and when LugRadio was to finish we were always determined to take it out on a high, and this is part of the reason we feel now is a good time. The last thing we would want people to say is “yeah LugRadio was fantastic, well apart from that dire sixth season“. We feel we have had five good solid seasons under our belt, so now is probably a good time to wrap things up.

Now, as with when Matt left, some people are bound to jump to conclusions why we are calling it a day. To clarify:

We have not fallen out. We are all still best friends.
Severed Fifth is not why I am leaving.
Adam’s business dreams is not why he is leaving.
Aq has not decided to join a travelling circus.
Chris has not set up a cult around the Network Block Driver. Actually, that’s a lie. He has.
We have not been acquired by the Linux Action Show and Jupiter Enterprises.

A am massively proud of what we have managed to achieve. Over 100 shows, 7 full-time presenters and countless guest presenters, 200+ hours of audio, 100+ guests, 2million+ downloads, 1000+ forums members, 40000+ forums posts, 5 live events in two countries, 5000+ emails to the show and an incredible community of people who have surrounded the show, discussed it, got involved in some way, and otherwise given us all an immense enthusiasm to keep doing LugRadio. I am also proud of every one of my co-presenters over the years - Steve “Sparkes” Parkes, Matt Revell, Ade Bradshaw and the current roster of Adam Sweet, Chris Procter and Stuart “Aq” Langridge. I am particularly proud of Aq, my best mate and someone who has been my partner in crime in LugRadio since Season 1 Episode 1.

The thing I am most proud of about LugRadio is that it shook things up. It has always been raw, unexpected and at times uncomfortable to listen to. We always set out to do a show on our terms, knowing full well it would not be everyone’s cup of tea, but we forged ahead and I am proud of how the history looks.

Everyone has their favorite moments, and I just wanted to highlight just a few of mine:

Our many incredible guests - Nat Friedman, Jeff Waugh, Eric Raymond, Miguel de Icaza, Mark Shuttleworth, Matthew Garrett, Rob McQueen, Sacha “Sago” Goedegebure, Alexandre Juillard, Havoc Pennington, Colin Walters, Quim Gil, Greg Kroah-Hartman and many more.
The many strong debates Aq and I have launched into on the show. We have a somewhat unusual style of debating and some people have been worried we were on the verge of falling out, which has never happened. I know, its odd, and something that started back in 2001 at LUG meetings. It never stops being fun.
The Gong-a-thong was an idea that Aq and I concocted late one night while on the phone. The first time we did it in Wolverhampton, we both stood at the side of the stage and it was a very surreal, proud and frankly hilarious moment. We replicated such insanity in San Francisco with Aaron Bockover and it was another comedy gem. The final gong-a-thong will happen at LugRadio Live UK 2008 in a few weeks.
Ade’s random stories, and strange expectations of life. Who can forget Ade asking if any of us looked at our arses in the mirror, expecting a fully reasoned and learned discussion about said activity. Oh, and Ade’s perspectives on women in technical roles and his idea of compliments to a lady in a nightclub (”You sit well for an old girl…“). Bonkers.
The booting of Matt Lee and GNU/FSF on the show and his admirable efforts at retort. Oh, and RMS refusing to come on the show as we use the words “Open Source” in the description of the show.
Theatrics and comedy skits - The National Lottery segment, musical efforts (Pigeon Street, Lion Sleeps Tonight), Mrs Mudchild appearing because Matt was late for the show, Stallman only wanting a kipper, the What The F**k Book Truck, Filthy Gamble and more.
LugRadio Live USA 2008. Wow, what an experience - a lot of fun, and a lot of work, but well worth it.
LugRadio Live And Unleashed - there is nothing like doing a show in front of hundreds of people. It is a lot of fun and a real buzz.
Sparkes availing us of his many stories, particularly the girl taking the piss out of his shoes in Wolverhampton. When I was editing his best bits segment I had tears streaming down my face laughing.
Filming the LugRadio Live 2007 promo videos. It was a lot of fun making them. Actors, we are not.
The emails. Our emails were always eclectic. Sometimes random, sometimes wise, sometimes hilarious, sometimes deeply offensive, but always inspiring. We loved every one of them, even the ones we thought were crap.
The competitions - Stupid Hat For Corporate Tat, Look Queer In The New Year, Pimp My LugRadio, Asa Raskin’s Hat Dilemma and more.
Bruno’s talk at LugRadio Live 2006 about how much we all swear in LugRadio and his rather amusing delivery and graphs.
Matt’s impressions, particularly his Irish leprechaun impression. Specifically, Matt’s leprechaun impression that he used to impersonate Lucky Charms when at Skycon in Limerick.
The Finger Of God.

It is certainly going to be unusual not having my mates around to my house every two weeks to record a show, drinking endless amounts of tea, taking an average of 15 takes to record an intro (really), regularly ribbing each other about everything under the sun, and then releasing a show and hearing about how it was received by our community.

So, the last episode of LugRadio will be recorded in front of a live audience at LugRadio Live UK 2008 on the 19th July 2008 in Wolverhampton. Why not come and share it with us, and the Saturday night we will be toasting to four years surrounded by our friends from the community; I can’t think of a better way to get off the roller-coaster.

Also see Aq’s write-up.

LugRadio Live UK 2008 is coming

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 19:47:01 +0000

I’ve just released episode 20 of season 5 of LugRadio, which is always a fun process (remind me to write about the actual release process for these things at some point; after over a hundred shows I’m starting to nail down precisely how to publish a show in four formats and to ten mirrors with the minimum of effort!). It was a pretty fun show to record, and recording it reminded me that I haven’t written much about this year’s LugRadio Live UK. Now, there are going to be some of you reading this who already listen to LugRadio and who therefore know about it: this post is for the rest of you (well, mainly those of you in the UK or in close-ish parts of Europe). If you do know about LugRadio Live UK already, then you should go and digg it and post one of the LRL UK buttons to your blog. If not…read on!

Basically, it’s gonna be brilliant. This is the fourth year of LugRadio Live in the UK — we did the live event in the US as well for the first time in April this year, and it was pretty damned cool — and we’re really looking forward to it. It’s always a jolly good laugh putting together LRL; looking through people’s speaker submissions (if you submitted a paper, I’ll be sending you details of when you’re speaking or whether you weren’t accepted in the next few days, I promise), thinking up cool stuff to do, and planning the live show.

This year, I’m really looking forward to seeing the speaker lineup — we’ve got some ultra-cool people talking about technology and culture and open source, and we’ve got some ultra-cool people exhibiting their projects and their products and their companies as well. The thing that really gets me about LRL every year is the vibe — we got described as a “rock conference” a couple of years ago, and it really summed up the feel of the whole event for me. It’s about having a laugh. We originally set up LugRadio Live because the fun bit at all the other conferences was the evening when you hung out with a bunch of cool people and had a beer and chatted about everything — our thought was, why can’t we just take that feeling, that experience, and make a whole weekend out of it? And lo and behold, that’s what we’ve done for four years now, which I’m really quite proud of!

Enough of why you should come and of back-slapping. How can you be part of LRL? It’s in Wolverhampton on Saturday the 19th and Sunday 20th July (see the travel info for how to get to the venue). We’ve got deals with local hotels, too — LRL is a true grassroots event (that’s why it’s five quid for a two day conference), so we don’t want to make it expensive, because people pay themselves. Your company probably won’t send you to LugRadio Live…but they should. You’ll find out more there than in a month of listening to people in suits. :)

Anyway, come to LRL and be part of it. You can digg it, but more importantly tell your friends that you’re coming and get them to come too! You can pick one of the I’m coming to LugRadio Live buttons to put on your site, or design your own custom button if you don’t like ours! So…get involved! See you in July!

LugRadio Live is Gonna Rock

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 11:53:58 +0000

UPDATE: Go and Digg this story!

So, we’re starting to beat the drums about LugRadio Live UK 2008 and I thought I would do my bit by telling you all about the event banner images for your website:

There are others images which may suit your tastes better, there are one specifically for exhibitors, crew, speaker and kind of one for O’Reilly You can get them from Jono’s blog here, so go get one if you’re attending and if you’re not going to be there, then you can still do your bit to spread the word by putting one on your site to let everyone know.

You can also make you’re own banner image or name badge here thanks to Oojah.

The speaker list is about to be confirmed and the exhibition is filling up fast, though if you want to take part in the exhibition there are still some spaces left so send us an email to show at lugradio dot org. Putting the word exhibitor or exhibition in the subject lines makes it easier to pick out of the thousands of emails that pour in. We’re also still looking for prizes and cool things we can put in our attendees’ goody bags so let is know if you can send us something.

I’m started to get excited about the event and we’re working on some quite cool things, like a large LAN gaming rig and a collaborative art project along with the talks, the exhibition, the BOFs, the nutsacks, the prizes, the rock music, the people in thongs, the Mass Debate and all of the other cool stuff you won’t find at any other conference.

I’m sure most people get it by now, but LugRadio Live really is a ‘rock conference’, where having a great time and meeting people are the highest priorities. It’s also a great place to tell people about your project, find intelligent people to work on your code and let people play with what you’re working on.

If you want to take part, then email us on the address above, or otherwise just get yourself to the event and take it all in, the enthusiastic atmosphere is incredible. If you’re not coming, maybe you should think about what you’re going to miss out on and re-evaluate your decision because we’re going to miss you

LugRadio Live UK 2008

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 20:19:48 +0000

UPDATE: Go and Digg this story!

Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls, I am pleased to announce the first collection of confirmed speakers for the legendary LugRadio Live UK 2008 that is happening on the 19th and 20th July 2008 at The Lighthouse Media Center, Chubb Buildings, Fryer Street, Wolverhampton, WV1 1HT - astute readers may have noticed the venue has changed - thats right, we are now back at The Lighthouse.

If you are unfamiliar with LugRadio Live, where have you been living? LugRadio Live is the leading open source, free software and free culture event in the UK, and every year brings together three stages full of incredible speakers, a raft of exhibitors and a lot of fun. LugRadio Live is a very different event, and something often described as a “rock conference” - it presents an incredibly social and fun event where the focus is on meeting cool and interesting people and having a great time. And all of this costs just £5 for the full weekend to get in.

First Confirmed Speakers and Exhibitors

So, lets get started with the first batch of confirmed speakers and exhibitors. Work is progressing apace to continue, but we can announce the following so far:

Speakers:

Chris DiBona (Google)
Max Spevack (Red Hat) - The Fedora Project
Christian Schaller (Collabora Multimedia) - GStreamer
Steve Lamb (Microsoft) - Green IT
Robert Collins (Canonical) - Bazaar
Benjamin Otte (GNOME) - swfdec
Rob McQueen (Collabora)
Edward Hervey (Collabora Multimedia) - PiTiVi
James Hooker - Taming the Dragons
Kevin Sandom - Grouphug – Clustering with an evil twist!
Barbie (MessageLabs) - Understanding Malware
Daniel James - Mobile multimedia production with Free Software
Emma Jane Hogbin - Form an orderly queue, ladies
Bruno Bord - Baguette on Snails
Ben Thorp - Supporting World Domination
Rufus Pollock - FFFI
Sam Birchall - Philosophy and AI: Modelling Human Cognition
John Carr - Laying Down the Pipes: connecting your desktop with Conduit
William J Giddings - Tcl/GTK bindings, using the GNOCL extensions for Tcl
Agostino Russo - Wubi, the Windows Ubuntu Installer
Martin Meredith - Keysigning Party
…and another 10 or so to confirm…

Exhibitors:

Bytemark
Icculus
Ubuntu UK
Open Rights Group
www.tinker.it
KDE
Linux Outlaws
64 Studio
Linux Emporium
Chris Hayes
…and many more…

Call for speakers and exhibitors is still open - contact us at show AT lugradio DOT org if you would like to speak or exhibit, but get in quick, space is filling up. Oh, and exhibiting is completely free, just in case you wondered.

Other Fun Stuff

Not only do we have a rip-roaring schedule of speakers and a juicy collection of exhibitors packed into the venue, but we have lots of other fun stuff too such as:

Lightbulb Talk Gong-a-thong Extravaganza - following in the fine footsteps of Adam Sweet and Aaron Bockover, we have another Open Source celebrity MCing a collection of short lightning talks while stood in front of a large gong in a very small pair of underpants.
The Mass Debate - again we will put together some leading lights in the free software world to bang heads and debate the important topics that you can ask about.
LugRadio Live and Unleashed - the LugRadio team will again present a live show in front of the LugRadio Live UK 2008 audience, and in this show…anything can happen!
Nutsacks - becoming something of a staple part of LugRadio Live, we will again provide bags of incredible swag that you get for free when you enter the venue. We are working on some excellent nutsack fun and games.
Partaaaay! - on the Friday and Saturday evenings there will be parties in which you can have a few drinks, talk to other attendees and get to know the speakers, the LugRadio presenters and the crew.
LAN Gaming - we will have a large LAN gaming setup where you can go and blow the crap out of other geeks…
Much, much more - we have lots of things up our sleeves, rest assured…you will have a great time…

Travel and Hotels

If all of this is sounding like a lot of fun to you and you want to come along, thankfully Wolverhampton is a pretty easy place to get to. It is very well connected by trains and has an airport (Birmingham International) 30 minutes away. There is also a large car park opposite the LugRadio Live UK venue which makes parking very convenient too.

in terms of accommodation, we have a raft of hotels, most of which have special deals for LugRadio Live UK 2008 visitors. Go and see this page for more details.

Spread The Word!

LugRadio Live UK 2008 is very much a community event, and we are looking for as much help as possible to spread the word about it - if you are planning on coming along, put one of these rather nice buttons on your website and link it to http://lugradio.org/live/UK2008/:

More information as we get it…

LugRadio Live UK 2008 - Call For Exhibitors Open

Thu, 29 May 2008 12:54:42 +0000

The build up to LRL UK 2008 has been a bit quiet so far, partly due to feeling burnt out after the US event and partly due to Jono’s insane travel schedule since LRL USA but now we’re cooking on full heat and the build up starts here.

This means that the call for exhibitors is open and I’m looking for people to represent their projects and organisations. If you are part of a cool project, you just have something cool that you’re working on and you’d like to get the word out there or if you’re part of one of the staples of the Linux, Free Software and Open Source world like Debian, Ubuntu, Red Hat, Novell/OpenSUSE, Gnome, KDE, OpenOffice.org and so on, then the LugRadio Live UK 2008 exhibition is just what you need.

There is no fee to exhibit and corporate exhibitors are welcome provided they are relevant to Linux, Free Software, Open Source, digital rights, hardware hacking and so on. We’d like you to bring something cool to show off, which will dazzle and amaze our attendees, but frankly if you’re interesting that’s enough

We’re always on the look out for prizes we can give away or stuff you can give us in quantities of 500 or so which we can put in our attendees’ goody bags - the LugRadio Nutsacks.

Of course the call for papers is also open so you should get in touch if you’d like to speak at the event. You could even be the thong wearer in host of this year’s Gong-a-Thong-Lightbulb-Talk-Extravaganza, following in the sweaty underclackers of myself and the fantastic Aaron Bockover of Banshee fame. Of course you may choose your own thong.

If you’d like to exhibit, even if you don’t think you probably ought to, drop us an email at show at lugradio dot org and tell us what you’d like to exhibit. For me personally, it would help if you could put the word ‘exhibitor’ or ‘exhibition’ in the subject line as the show address gets a lot of mail

See you there you crazy monkeys.

Videoed for Your Viewing Pleasure

Sun, 18 May 2008 13:15:47 +0000

I’m a little late with this as I’ve been pre-occupied with real-life and a number of side-projects, but I am proud to be second or third to announce the release of the videos of the LugRadio Live USA 2008 talks, including the recording of LugRadradio Live and Unleashed, The Mass Debate and Aaron Bockover’s Gong-a-Thong Lightbulb Talk Extravaganza.

Never one to suffer sleep pattern disturbance well, yes I’m feeble, I was falling asleep by 4pm most days and I never really pulled myself together until the last day and so I feel bad that nobody met me at my best, but I had a great time and I hope to meet everybody again to show them my better side.

Hopefully we’ll see you in the US again next year.

LugRadio Live USA videos

Thu, 08 May 2008 09:47:11 +0000

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.)

LugRadio Live and Hardy Time!

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 21:30:57 +0000

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!

Not Well but Grateful

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 11:42:25 +0000

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 Evening Social Events

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 09:45:28 +0000

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!

Coming to America

Sat, 05 Apr 2008 19:08:07 +0000

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.

Quickies

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 09:56:13 +0000

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.

Rambling Brit in TV Shocker!

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 21:40:01 +0000

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.

LugRadio Live USA 2008 Flyer - spread the word

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 09:21:17 +0000

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!

LugRadio Live USA 2008 Gong-a-thong Host Announced!

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 18:20:19 +0000

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.

LugRadio Live USA 2008: Oh yes.

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 21:14:03 +0000

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!

Stunning

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 20:05:30 +0000

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.

LugRadio Live USA 2008 - win some swag

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 23:14:07 +0000

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!

LugRadio Live USA 2008

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 15:28:36 +0000

More exhibitors, prizes available, banners…oh my

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 10:48:25 +0000

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:

Spread the good love about LugRadio Live USA 2008.

Get people to LugRadio Live USA 2008 and win awesome prizes

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 01:12:08 +0000

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.

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.

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

Microsoft Interoperability debated in LugRadio S5E13

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 11:12:42 +0000

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

LugRadio Live USA schedule now available

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 01:20:33 +0000

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

Better than Lego?

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 13:13:26 +0000

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 more beers

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 10:43:16 +0000

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.

LugRadio - Four Years Old Today

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 10:39:17 +0000

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.

Open Music Required

Sun, 24 Feb 2008 13:51:46 +0000

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!

Creative Commons coming to LRL

Sun, 24 Feb 2008 00:36:30 +0000

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!