Embarking on a New Adventure

Today I am starting a new job and embarking on a new adventure.  As most of you probably already know, I’ve spent the last couple of years working for Red Hat as the Fedora Project Leader.  I passed the FPL baton on to Robyn Bergeron a few weeks ago, and have spent the time since doing a bit of technical writing for Red Hat and trying to figure out my next role.  I looked for positions both inside and outside of Red Hat where I could exercise my talents and abilities. As much as I loved working for Red Hat, I found another opportunity that is best role for me at this point in my career.

Starting today, I’ll be working for Bluehost — one of the largest web hosting companies in North America.  (Or, more specifically, I’ll be working for Bluehost’s parent company, Endurance International Group.)  My job will be focused on open source outreach and community building, and helping Bluehost build better relationships with open source developers.  I’ll be taking the lessons I’ve learned from the Asterisk community and the Fedora community and applying them to other open source communities.  Don’t worry — I’ll still be actively involved in most of the same open source communities that I’ve been participating in over the past several years, and I’ll be participating in a few new ones as well.  I’ll still be working remotely from Virginia, so that I don’t have to uproot my family and move across the country.

I’ll share more details of my job over the coming weeks and months.  In the meantime, you know where to find me — trying to make the world a better place, one conversation at a time.

Documentation (or the lack thereof)

Check out the yellow labels -- what do the rest of the buttons do?I’m in Seoul, Korea this week teaching one of the ever-popular Asterisk Bootcamp classes.  As luck would have it, my hotel room has the most amazing remote control in the world!  Not only does it control the big ol’ LCD TV and the DVD player, but it also controls the air conditioner and all the lights in the room (including both lights in the bathroom!)

In trying to actually use the remote control, however, I was given a stark reminder of how important documentation can be.  As you probably already know, I try to take an active role in the documentation teams for both Asterisk and the Fedora Project, but never seem to make the time to write as much as I’d like.  As such, I can only hope our documentation efforts are more effective than the yellow labels on my remote control — just documenting the bare minimum and forcing the user to experiment to do anything useful (and very likely getting lost in the process).

(It’s my own personal opinion that this is one of the ways that free/open source software often fails to keep up with it’s commercial rivals; Many open source projects can’t afford to hire technical writers, and if they’re lucky enough to have volunteers do the work, there often isn’t much praise for the hard work and effort that goes into it.)

If this reminder has you feeling the same way I am, why not step up to the plate and help out on the documentation front?  After all, the fearless leader and the rest of the docs crew needs your help!  As the old adage goes… many hands makes light work!  We’d be glad to have you join our ranks.