Back on the market

Nearly 10 months to the day since the last time this happened, I was informed yesterday that my position has been eliminated. As before, it’s unrelated to my performance, but the end result is the same: I am looking for a new job.

So what am I looking for? The ideal role would involve leadership in open source strategy or other high-level work. I’m excited by the opportunities to connect open source development to business goals in a way that makes it a mutually-beneficial relationship between company and community. In addition to my open source work, I have experience in program management, marketing, HPC, systems administration, and meteorology. You know, in case you’re thinking about clouds. My full resume (also in PDF) is available on my website.

If you have something that you think might be a good mutual fit, let me know. In the meantime, you can buy Program Management for Open Source Projects for all of your friends and enemies. I’m also available to give talks to communities (for free) and companies (ask about my reasonable prices!) on any subject where I have expertise. My website has a list of talks I’ve given, with video when available.

Other writing: December 2023

What have I been writing when I haven’t been writing here?

Stuff I wrote

Duck Alignment Academy

Indiana COVID-19 final update

Oh hey, it’s been almost two years since my last update. Chalk it up to a busy life and a national lack of interest that resulted in less to talk about. The data I used to create my Indiana COVID-19 dashboard is no longer updated, so the dashboard is also no longer updated. I’ll leave it up for historical reference.

By the end of the third year of the pandemic, we’ve still not managed to keep people from dying of COVID-19 in Indiana. July 2023 was consistently at or near zero, but the daily deaths have been rising since. We’ve had, on average, about four per day in the last 2–3 months. But the state no longer feels the need to track that data.

Graph of daily COVID-19 deaths in Indiana on a logarithmic scale
Daily COVID-19 deaths in Indiana on a logarithmic scale

Still, our death toll has been far lower than in years past.

Line graph of daily COVID-19 deaths in Indiana compared year-to-year.
Daily COVID-19 deaths in Indiana compared year-to-year.

The same can’t be said for hospitalizations. When the state stopped taking a daily census on May 24 of this year, we had consistently been higher in 2023 than at the same time in 2022.

Line graph of daily COVID-19 hospital census in Indiana compared year-to-year.
Daily COVID-19 hospital census in Indiana compared year-to-year.

But I guess COVID is over now. Or at least we’re pretending like it is. Just this morning, my wife and one of our kids tested positive. It’s the 1,375th day of March 2020.

Other writing: October 2023

What have I been writing when I haven’t been writing here?

Stuff I wrote

Fedora

Duck Alignment Academy

Technically We Write

Other writing: September 2023

What have I been writing when I haven’t been writing here?

Stuff I wrote

Duck Alignment Academy

  • One approach to AI contributions — All communities will need an AI contribution policy at some point, and the Apache Software Foundation’s example is a good one to follow.
  • What are you optimizing? — If you start optimizing for a process and then discover you’re optimizing for the wrong thing, you’ve wasted time.
  • For companies, community should be “us” not “them” — Referring to the community as “them” as if there’s no overlap encourages treating company & community interests as separate, harming long-term sustainability.
  • New logo! — Almost two years after I meant to get around to it, Duck Alignment Academy has a logo.
  • Preparing for Hacktoberfest contributors — If your project is participating In Hacktoberfest, you’ll want to make sure you’re ready for an influx of new contributors.

Fedora

Hurricane Lee forecast game

Update: we have a winner!

It took longer than I’d have liked to publish the results of this contest. I was traveling out of the country. But I’d like to congratulate KP on winning the Lee forecast contest.

One thing that I realized after the fact: my changes below made it so only whole numbers could be used for latitude and longitude. I’ve fixed that for next time!

Original post

The prodigal game returns! A technical glitch ruined the Dorian contest in 2019, so we haven’t seen a Funnel Fiasco tropical forecast game since Hurricane Matthew in 2016. But I’m pleased to announce that we’re up and running for Hurricane Lee. You can submit your landfall forecast by 2100 UTC on Wednesday 13 September.

In keeping with tradition, we’re still using the same crappy Perl script I wrote in 2005. Despite the fact that I’ve been putting off a total rewrite for over a decade, I did make a few improvements recently:

  • Numerical fields now require numeric input. If you were hoping to submit “butts” as your wind speed, I’m sorry to disappoint you.
  • Coordinates are constrained to reasonable ranges. I refuse to give in to Kevin’s whining about west being negative numbers. (I believe my exact words to him were “take it up with the Prime Meridian.”) But I was feeling magnanimous so I’ve constrained the latitude to 0–90 degrees north and the longitude to 180 degrees west to 10 degrees east.
  • Similarly, wind speed is now constrained to realistic values. You can’t submit a wind speed less than zero or above 200 miles per hour.
  • Furtherly similar, the time segments can’t be negative or overflow.

So go ahead and submit your forecast by 2100 UTC on Wednesday so you can join in the grand tradition.

Other writing: August 2023

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Stuff I wrote

Duck Alignment Academy

Docker

  • Protecting secrets with Docker — Keeping your secrets secret is an ongoing process, but it’s worth the effort. Learn about Docker features you can use to help prevent leaking secrets.

Other writing: July 2023

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Stuff I wrote

Duck Alignment academy

Fedora

Buy autographed copies of my book for Flock to Fedora

Note: this commercial post was approved by the Fedora Council

If you’ll be attending Flock to Fedora — Fedora’s annual contributor conference — in Cork, Ireland this August then I want to sign a copy of Program Management for Open Source Projects for you. Use the online order form before 22 June (and use promo code FLOCK2023 for a $5 discount).

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Other writing: April 2023

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Stuff I wrote

Fedora

Duck Alignment Academy

Stuff I curated

Fedora