KarlieRobinson.com

The good news – It’s official – RMS will be at RIT on Tuesday, February 23 from 10:30-12:30 am.

“Richard Stallman will speak about the goals and philosophy of the Free Software Movement, and the status and history of the GNU operating system, which in combination with the kernel Linux (sic) is now used by tens of millions of users world-wide.”

Click on the image to the right to see a larger version. You can also download a PDF version of the flier.

The bad news – his talk will be in the Innovations Center and it’s going to fill to capacity before 200 people get in the door.

I asked and was told that they will be setting up video in other rooms, but I’m going to suggest you contact RIT and ask them to find a bigger space and/or stream the talk live.

I would also suggest that you not let the space limitations and time of day stop you from making plans to attend or prevent you tweeting, forwarding, etc to anyone you think might want to attend.

~Karlie

SWAG, as it’s also known, is the story for me this week and it’s been one of those good news, bad news kind of situations.

The good news — Tuesday morning I received an email from Steve Jacobs saying he’s been granted a booth at NYSCATE 2009 and asking for SWAG and Volunteers.

It’s a big opportunity to show NY State Educators the monstrous amounts of work being done at RIT with OLPC, SugarLabs.org, the Fedora Project, and TeachingOpenSource.org. Especially since we won’t be “preaching to the choir.”

Now don’t get me wrong, I love FOSS conferences, and I know there are lots of like minded people who want the scoop on what we’ve been up to. It’s just that there’s something special about giving free software to someone who isn’t all that familiar with what we do.

The bad news — I had 5 days to scrounge up enough SWAG for our booth. If you consider shipping times, then yes, the phrase “oh crap!” would be appropriate.

So at this point I need to thank the flowing people for going above and beyond and getting boxes of goodies in the mail, simply because I asked.

• Brian Powell and his sweet wife for sending Fedora pens, conversation stickers and Tattoos
• Chris Neves for sending Fedora 11 discs, “Powered by Fedora” stickers, buttons and Tattoos.
• Adam Holt and SJ Klein for sending OLPC postcards.
• Joe “Zonker” Brockmeier for giving me permission to use the Free openSUSE 11.1 Quick Ship discs we had on hand and for suggesting openSUSE Edu Li-f-e disc for our booth.

I also need to give special thanks to my dear sweet husband, Todd, for spending his Saturday making openSUSE Edu Li-f-e and Sugar spins for us.

I do have to correct the fabulous Mel Chua when she said — “Short version: Karlie is Magical.”

No, Mel, the community is Magical. Without their quick action, we’d have a very poor presence at NYSCATE.