Surviving large mailing lists in 2024
It'll soon be 25 years since I started collaborating via mailing lists in open source communities.
Distributed teams that actually work - Devoxx UK 2023
Here are the slides and recording of my "Distributed teams that _actually_ work" talk at Devoxx UK today.
From one Devoxx to the next: async decisions & distributed teams
I don't know about you but I've been having a hard time getting accepted for speaking at Devoxx conferences.
VanillaJS & the Web Platform, a match made in heaven?
Speaking (in French) at the Very Tech Trip conference in Paris in February was nice!
Any custom HTML elements on this page?
Speaking of Web Components, this script lists the [custom elements](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Web_Components/Using_custom_elements) registered on a browser's current page.
Teaching programming: Sonic Pi for the win!
Youngsters who might be interested in doing an apprenticeship with us were in the office this week, and I spent an afternoon teaching them the basics of programming.
Moved, again!
Moving this blog to a platform where I have more (as in _complete_) control has been on my mind for a while.
WW;SW : Well Written, Subtly Wrong !
Generative AI is great - but we shouldn't believe everything it tells us.
SSL/TLS certificates with Let's Encrypt
This is mostly a _notes to self_ post, about something that I rarely do and that has become much easier than what I remembered.
How to record decent conference videos - without breaking the bank!
This being the year of COVID-19, many of us are recording videos for online conferences. While I cannot claim to be a professional video producer, by far, I _did_ work for a video studio during my studies (a long time ago - Betacam days, yes)
Rules For Revolutionaries (2000 edition)
The below message is from 2000 but I think it still applies to open source collaboration in the 21st century. I wasn't part of the Apache Jakarta story myself but have heard of that a few times over the years...
It's pretty quiet here these days...
I haven't published here in a while, but I've been writing and presenting elsewhere:
Would you hire an open source developer?
As open source comes of age and becomes mainstream, more and more job postings include "open source skills" in their requirements. But do you really want to hire someone who spends their time exchanging flames with members of their own community in public forums? Someone who greets newcomers with "I have forwarded your question to /dev/null, thanks" and other RTFM answers?
Great software is like a great music teacher
I'm amazed at how many so-called "enterprise software systems" do not embrace the Web model in 2010, making them way much harder and much less fun to use than they should be. I have recently started making parallels between this and music teachers, and the analogy seems to work. Don't ask where the parallel comes from...weird connections in my brain I guess.
Open source is done. Welcome to Open Development!
I originally published this article on SD Times, republishing it to keep it around for posterity... If you’re looking at embracing open source today, you might be a bit late to the game. Using open-source software is mainstream now, and being involved in open-source projects is nothing to write home about either. Everybody does it, we know how it works, its value is proven.
Status meetings are a waste of time and money
> How would you feel if you had to regularly expense $1200 so you could “tell a few teammates something”. Think that would go over well? (Jason Fried)
Large Mailing Lists Survival Guide
Here’s a “survival guide” that we use at Adobe to help our colleagues make sense of our busy Open Development mailing lists.
Apache: lean and mean, durable, fun!
My current Fiat Punto Sport is the second Diesel car that I own, and I love those engines. Very smooth yet quite powerful acceleration, good fuel savings, a discount on state taxes thanks to low pollution, and it's very reliable and durable. And fun to drive. How often does Grandma go "wow" when you put the throttle down in your car? That happens here, and that Grandma is not usually a car freak.
Shared neurons and the Shadok's First Law of Failure
French-speaking fortysomethings might remember the Shadoks, a two-minute TV comics show that aired on ORTF when I was a kid.
Merry Christmas avec la Soupe a la Bière a Roger!
While waiting for the soup to be ready and for the guests to arrive, let me wish all of my readership (yes, both of you guys) a Merry Christmas!
Day wins CH Open Source business Award 2008
[Day](http://www.day.com) has won the CH Open Source Award 2008 in the business category. We got a Golden Keyboard!
Clustering for the masses, courtesy of Logic Pro
With so much networked CPU power available in many homes and most offices today, it's not hard to predict that clustering computers will become mainstream soon.
Dirty Punk Anarchy Machine
I don't like everything about punk music but I sure like the energy!