First thing I have to mention is, quite a few topics at FSOSS really didn't grab my attention. There's only two topics at FSOSS that interested me, so I'll suppose I'll talk about those. For “Open Source Designe” we got some bits and pieces about gimp, inkspace, blender3d, and how designers use CSS, PHP, and JS. I found the talk very interesting and I’m glad that I went.
The "Open Source Design" presentation was held by two speakers, Brendan Sera-Shriar and Geoff Palini. Now forgive me if my memory is off, but I believe Geoff was the main speaker. With the entire conference not really being about design put aside, the man did quite a good job trying to get his point across. He introduced us to quite a few open source art software packages. Gave us a demonstration of how well they could compete against closed source software packages, and gave us a little 3d demo at the end. He also informed us about Red5, an alternative flash resource to the conventional, "Pay $1 for every user that uses our flash server." Now this is useful information because flash is expensive. This seems to be a very nice way for companies to save money when they run a flash based website.
Geoff mentioned something during his presentation that caught my attention. He said that he believes that design and programming shouldn't be treated like separate entities. Instead they should be treated as one or at the very least combined in some way. Now keep in mind, this isn't his exact wording, just my interpretation of what he said. Well, I've felt this way ever since I started learning to become a programmer. You can have the best code in the world, but if your application looks like crap, it's not going to go anywhere (unless your program is pure functionality only of course). On the other side, you can have the most beautifully designed program in the world, but if it doesn't do anything it's practically worthless (unless your users like looking at pretty things and will sit there for hours on end staring at it and mindlessly send you money). I'm glad there's more people out there that feel the same way about this that I do. Reason being, I personally suck horribly when it comes to design. I couldn't design my way out of a paper bag and I feel that's a really big handicap. A handicap that I'd like to get rid of.
Over all I'd say that the "Open Source Design" was a good talk and they did a great job presenting it. I was expecting something a little different... more along the lines of a complete look at all of the design aspects behind Open Source using these tools. It was still a good presentation that kept me interested. Most importantly, it kept me awake, which is a tough task to manage in itself. Oh yes... and for those of you that went to this presentation... you will join PHUG.... you will join PHUG.... you WILL join PHUG....
The other talk that interested me was the, "The Most Important Thing - How Mozilla Does Security." Now this talk was about exactly what the title says. It's about Mozilla security. Too bad I didn't really understand everything he was talking about. I got the basic idea, but not much beyond that.
So, did I learn anything going to FSOSS? Yep. Would I have gone if I wasn't forced to? Maybe not. After experiencing FSOSS, would I go to another one if I wasn't forced to? Maybe, as long as there's food again. Oh yeah... those raisin cookies were amazingly good. I only had one, and when I went back for more they were all GONE. GONE!!! I think that was the most depressing moment of the day. It wasn't sitting through a seminar that I felt SHOULD interest me but didn't, it was the disappearance of some of the most beautiful, and delicious raisin cookies I've had this year. Whoever baked those, I seriously love you and would love to attend your seminar next FSOSS.
For anyone that actually reads my blog posts, hope to see you when I have something to write about again.
2 comments:
Wow. Congratulations on posting one of the least inspired blog posts I've seen from a student in the course.
I meant for a large portion of the post to be a joke. Guess it didn't come off that way over the internet, no real way to express emotion.
Sorry if it offended you, I was just having a little fun exaggerating some things. I think the whole seminar description thing was talked about in a few other blog posts.
Suppose I went a bit over board with the whole thing, and I apologize. I really did like the Open Source Design seminar, despite it not being exactly what I thought it would be. And yes, the cookies were indeed damned good.
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