the executive summary:
Nutshell: if you’re a law firm considering hiring me, and you stumble across this blog, please don’t get nervous. Instead, talk to me, and/or read the rest of this post. I’m eager to explain why I blog, and why I think it may make me a better lawyer and a good addition to your firm.
[Image by Hugh Macleod of Gaping Void fame; used with permission under the Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 1.0 license. For more on why Hugh licenses his images this way, see here.]
the full story:
Great time; great conference; even pretty good board meetings. Came into the week convinced that hiring Stormy was a good idea; exited believing that hiring Stormy was an excellent idea.
Krissa and I on the pillows in the restaurant in the alley behind our hotel.
Answered exactly 100% of posed legal questions with ‘not sure; you should ask a real lawyer; but it sounds like a really interesting question and I’ll look into it when I have some free time.’ Perhaps coincidentally that was the true and correct answer in every case.
I’m excited to announce that, after a long search, the GNOME board has decided to hire Stormy Peters as executive director. Formal language press release, for those of you interested in such things, is here. If you want to discuss the Stormy hire (or just say ‘welcome’ :), take it to foundation-list. And she’s of course on planet.
The rest of this post is my informal, personal opinion, and should be taken as such. :)
I first met Stormy at the GUADEC Dublin (Norway?) Advisory Board meeting. I was impressed then that she was someone who had very sharp questions and really seemed to be paying attention to what was going on, both in GNOME and in the broader industry, and seemed to be really trying to come to grips with the interaction between the two. Several years on, in talking with her through the hiring process, I continue to be impressed- she’s still got a great understanding of what we do and where GNOME is (and could be) going, a deep understanding of the software industry, lots of energy, and an ability to communicate. This combination was something that was really difficult to find, so when it became clear that Stormy was available, we jumped all over it.
This is obviously a big commitment for GNOME. It has been a while since we’ve had a full-time employee, and we’ve clearly been doing pretty OK without one- we continue to have good relationships with our advisory board, we still have a strong community, and we continue to develop very strong, relevant software. So there is an obvious question of ‘why now?’ My answer is that this a time of opportunity for GNOME- we have a ton of opportunities in the mobile space; we’re starting to see Linux desktop uptake at places like Dell and Asus; and we serve an important role as a critical infrastructure provider for exciting, dynamic projects like Mozilla and OLPC. But in each of these areas (and others) we are far from the clear leader- we face lots of challenges, on many levels. I feel (and I think the board agrees, but remember that this is my personal post) that we need to have someone in place to aggressively pursue these opportunities, and turn them from opportunities into solid, stable, ongoing relationships. Of course, we can’t neglect our existing relationships with the usual suspects- as they seek to navigate a mobile and web-integrated world, we need to work with them to make sure that we are responsive to their needs as well.
Stormy obviously is not a solution in and of herself- she will need community and organizational support. But I think she’ll be in great shape to really help GNOME take advantage of the opportunities we have in front of us.
During my istanbul stay, the best way to reliably reach me in a timely manner will be text message at +16172307951. Please include your name so i know who i am texting with :)
My email access is spotty so far, and voice mail is hard/expensive to check. I am also staying at the golden horn sirkeci if you want to try to ambush me in the lobby. :)
For some reason she volunteered to continue putting up with me… :)
I have to say it is pretty easy to fall in love with this place, especially on days like yesterday when it is clear and not too hot but not too cold- spent most of the day in a park relaxing at the birthday party of a friend of a friend.
dolores park by Beth Rankin. License: 
There were people in the park collecting petition signatures for (1) prostitution legalization and (2) naming the sewage treatment plant after George Bush. (Big Sort indeed.)
I am still having problems getting used to the transportation thing- I’m just not used to getting in a car to go places when I’m in a city. When I’m home in Miami, or in North Carolina, cars come naturally- but somehow it seems different and wrong here. And that is even before you have to deal with parking. I think an old beater for train<->office commute + zipcar for in the city might be the best compromise, not sure.
Work itself remains equal parts interesting and educational; difficult to say more about it than that at the moment- still too much to take in and make sense of, especially in a public forum like this one. Suffice to say that I really like the people at the firm, and much of the work is interesting and stimulating. Both of these things would have surprised me two years ago. :)
Oh, and singing ‘Creep‘ in Rock Band is quite a bit of fun, it turns out. No real danger of me buying an xbox, but if you need a singer for your next Rock Band party, I’m available…
things I would not have believed if you told me ten years ago: that the most influential TV show for my demographic would be a Comedy Central news show parodying a Fox News anchor; that my old boss would be on this show; and that while doing it he’d quintuple the downloads of Netscape.
Assuming friendly wireless, power, etc., I’ll be microblogging (not at twitter) today’s Creative Commons Technology Summit. We’ll see how that goes.
Given that virtually all journal articles are published on SSRN, and read and discussed, before they hit actual journals, could journals seek to substantially shorten the amount of time between submission and publication, so that authors feel that journals are active contributors while the article is ‘hot’, rather than feeling that they are the finishing polishers of an already-cooling project? In particular, is journal work ‘parallelizable’? In other words, if you put four times as many people on it, would it get done four times as fast? Columbia Law Review publishes on the order of 40 pieces a year, and takes around 12 weeks off for summer break. So it averages out to a piece a week, but it is lumped together into eight issues. Could they be publishing one piece a week, and turning pieces around in 1-2 weeks, instead of every 5 weeks or so, turning them around in longer than that? I think that might be a bit ambitious- some parts of the publishing process do not get faster the more people you put on them- but it might not be. I’m curious if any journal is trying this model.
Speed by José Juan Figueroa. License:
I also have some thoughts on journaling at internet attention span (which pre-date, but are similar to, Berkman’s Publius Project) but they aren’t quite ready for prime time yet. (Caveat: they aren’t really my thoughts; something a friend shared with me instead, but I love them.)
