Last week I took the train to Atlanta to speak at the Great Wide Open conference, which I'd never visited before. I particularly appreciated the chance to share my lessons learned with an audience that was diverse on gender, ethnic, speciality, and other dimensions, the cozy and delightful speakers' dinner, and the organizing team's consistent approachability and helpfulness. If Atlanta is an easy trip for you, and if you're interested in growing your skills in free and open source software, I suggest you consider attending next year.

I spoke on underappreciated features in HTTP, and my slides are available as a PDF. If you're going to be at PyCon North America in Portland, Oregon this year, I'll be presenting a more Python-specific version of this talk there on May 31st. If neither of those works for you, check out the video of the very similar "HTTP Can Do That?!" presentation I delivered at Open Source Bridge last year.

Then I rode the train north to Boston; along the way I got to converse with a neat seatmate, a military veteran who loves taking family walks after dinner to play Ingress with his kids. Awww. His son loves Minecraft so I got to recommend the NYPL historical-map Minecraft worlds to him.

Then, this past weekend, I attended my first LibrePlanet. What a lovely time I had! I saw rockin' talks by people whose thoughts I was already eager to hear, and I met dozens of people who are working on promising projects like a nonprofit, transparent search for the web and a browser extension that lets users share their internet connections with people whose connections are censored. I especially commend the organizers for running the conference, including the video streaming, using entirely free and open source software! Since we knew that all of us are dedicated to software freedom as a goal in itself and towards a more just and a freer world, we could have complex conversations that advanced beyond first-contact advocacy and into details and long-term planning.

I spoke on "Inessential Weirdnesses in Free Software"; the written remarks I spoke from are now available as a text file. It is not the most legible page in the world, because I will be further revising this talk before presenting it at OSCON in Austin, Texas, on May 18th.

I also delivered a somewhat impromptu five-minute lightning talk, "What is maintainership? Or, approaches to filling management skill gaps in free software". I've now posted the textual version of that talk.

LibrePlanet participants told me they really liked both my talks; the latter especially spurred some to talk with me about potential contracts with my firm, Changeset Consulting, which was a big morale injection since I'm definitely seeking leads and referrals right now.

Thanks to both LibrePlanet and Great Wide Open for having me speak! I've also updated my Talks webpage with links to my upcoming appearances. My calendar's open after August, in case you know anyone looking for a speaker who makes a lot of jokes and gestures.