Everyone

Would you like to see more female authors online or in the printed pages of your favorite tech magazine? Whether you want to write for fun, to impress your parents, or to rev up your resume, you'll learn some practical tips for intriguing editors, ironing out your writing wrinkles, and polishing your prose for print.

Developers write documentation. Technical authors write manuals. But in a perfect world, your users read software self-help guides. Consumers expect documentation to reflect the sophistication of the software they are using, and will abandon an application if they cannot easily find the answer to their problems. If we really want world domination of free and open source software, we need to have the self-help guides worthy of our code. In "Writing Self Help Guides for World Domination" we'll take a look at the strategies and tools needed for really awesome documentation.

Imagine a world where documentation actually helped you to find an answer, or solved one of your problems. If that sounds like a pipe dream, it's because you've had to struggle with too much crap documentation. Technical writing can be fun and accessible, but more importantly, it can be truly useful. By analysing how people use software, and where they stumble, we can drastically improve the experience our users have with our software documentation. Creating relevant documentation needs a little more than just a scraping of code comments though--and this talk will show you how it should be done.

Open source tools for writing documentation are very sophisticated, but generally our mastery of them quite simply sucks. Whether they are using DocBook, Mallard or DITA, many projects have opted for very powerful markup languages for their documentation, but often use only a fraction of what the tools can do. Other projects have opted to go with Web-based content management systems and have failed to create a cohesive self-help experience for users. You will learn how to effectively use these common tools for creating and maintaining collaborative documentation. Real examples will be pulled from open source projects.

If you've been wanting to help make the user experience better for your project, this talk is a must-see.

The Xen.org community develops the leading open source virtualization solution; the Xen Hypervisor. This session will present an overview of the community, its products and future directions. Learn how you can become an active participant in Xen.org as a developer, tester, or user and see demonstrations of state of the art virtualization products based on Xen.

Puppet is an open source model-driven configuration language that can be used to automate and scale sysadmin operations.

This session is targeted towards system administrators who would like to learn more about configuration management with Puppet.

This session will cover:

* How the Resource Abstraction Layer provides a consistent model across supported platforms.
* Syntax and parameters for commonly used resources.
* Puppet language syntax overview.
* Encapsulation, organization, and re-use with classes and modules.
* Managing nodes with the Puppet Dashboard.

How to get started in the Ubuntu Community or other communities and go over the things I've done in 1 year in the Ubuntu Community and FLOSS and how to encourage other NTEU (pro-nounced IN-TO) - non
technical end user in the Open Source world.

Slow is the new black! The "netbook" craze, with machines like the Asus Eee, has raised a lot of interest in small and relatively slow hardware. Even if you don't have a shiny new netbook, what about that older laptop sitting in your closet ... that one that you stopped using because it was too slow? Maybe you've wondered if there's a way to bring that old hardware back to life?

This talk will cover ways of configuring a modern Linux distribution such as Ubuntu to run efficiently on slow CPU, low memory machines. You'll see how you can get big performance gains from areas such as:

* speeding up the boot process

* options for lightweight window managers

* performance tools that can help you find bottlenecks

* tuning your kernel

* Finding lightweight alternatives to big applications

Past: Brief examination of the state of Linux Pro Audio in 2005 discussing available distros, open projects, state of the kernel, and state of real time RT.

Present: Where Linux Pro Audio is at now including maturing projects, what is happening today. Linux Pro Audio as a serious contender to consider as compared to legacy based platforms and recording studio solutions including bleeding edge developments.
Topics include Ardour, LV2, VST's, real time RT, cross platform integration, Linux Pro Audio competing and succeeding in the commercial marketplace and how?

Future: What's missing in Linux Pro Audio that will give the most compelling argument that the Linux platform provides the most complete audio production solution from roll your own distros to enterprise class products.
Topics include: More VST's written in Linux and porting to Linux , Ardour 3.0, ported to Linux application such as Renoise and energy XT, better integration, where Linux finally has a foothold in the market (ie: netbooks), and finally, the 'killer app'?

How to's:
Hot Rodding your netbook and make it your mobile recording studio.

I will have free copies of our distro on CD for those who attend my session. The distro is an Audio OS called Transmission 3.0.

Taking on a large-scale web project without the support of a full-time team is not for the faint of heart, but (especially in this economy) there are many scenarios where a woman might find herself doing just that. This talk will cover tackling such a project with open source software, and without losing your mind. Here's a hint: behind every woman there should be several other women offering mentorship, guidance and support.

We'll discuss the importance of knowing when and how to ask for help, and why sometimes it really is best to ask another woman. We'll look at opportunities for both technical and moral support from the community, and also opportunities to potentially contribute back to the communities of which you are a part. Additionally, we'll cover the ways in which we can draw on our diverse backgrounds and experiences to accomplish great things on the web, and why the most valuable contributors to the web of tomorrow may be women who are currently studying Economics or Art. Finally, we'll touch on some useful strategies for maximizing your time, honing your skills, achieving balance, and avoiding pitfalls.

Topics covered:
*open source web platforms for your project (Drupal, etc)
*Developing your plan of attack
*Identifying your strengths and weaknesses
*Community Resources and mentorship
*Organizing your project (a.k.a. "help others help you!")
*Drawing inspiration from non-technical disciplines
*Avoiding common time-wasters and learning from your own and others' mistakes

Writing a technical document is hard. Reading a poorly written technical document is harder, and probably more painful than writing one. It takes a lot of work to create a clear, accurate, engaging piece of technical writing. Thus, in order to make life a little easier for all parties involved, I am going to share with you the 7 Rules that I follow when creating a piece of technical documentation.

The 7 Rules are:

1. Dry sucks
2. Before you start, be clear about what you want your reader to do after you end
3. Write to a well formed outline, always
4. Avoid ambiguous pronouns
5. clarity = illustrations + words
6. When dealing with concepts... logical illustration and example
7. Embrace revision

Color Management has long been perceived as a niche area, of interest mainly to professional graphic designers and the like, however it has come to be important to a much wider audience. At the same time it is also becoming more and more accessible to much larger groups of people. What used to be reserved for high-end service bureaus and professional publishers has now come to be usable in areas such as 1 hour prints at a local drugstore, web sharing and emailing of family photos, and output of graphics and photos on home printers.

This talk will first focus on color management in general, and many of the different types of end users who can benefit from it. Photographers, digital painters, illustrators, website creators, graphic designers and different home users can all gain in many different ways from adopting at least a bit of a color managed workflow. Aside from the obvious graphics professionals, potential users include anyone who might email a photo from a cell phone to their home computer, or who might edit a website on an OS that might be different from that used by some people viewing it. Also developers themselves can benefit from adding at least minimal color management support to projects they work on.

After the general information of color management and who might benefit from it, the focus will then move on to the history and current state of color management in Open Source software. In just the last few years large advancements have been made, with GIMP and Inkscape among those joining the projects supporting color management and a color managed workflow. Tools including Argyll CMS, LProf, xicc and others will be covered.

Specific examples and cases will then be drilled down to, with a focus on illustration and SVG. The speaker's experience in adding color management to Inkscape will be leveraged to show concrete examples for workflows before and after color management. Issues such as printing output, spot colors, CMYK printing, mobile devices, and integration with raster paint programs will be covered.

Finally, pending improvements in Open Source software will be highlighted with an eye to inspiring both end users and developers. End users can look forward to the improvements to come, and can help ensure their individual needs will be covered. Developers can see that adding color management to their project is not difficult to start, and can lead to even wider acceptance of their software and of color management itself.