People

Feeding the meter for public space (audio slideshow)

As part of an urban-design movement that began in San Francisco in 2005, parking spaces around the world were reclaimed as public spaces yesterday, with artists and activists feeding meters to build temporary community spaces and small parks for Park(ing) Day. Across San Francisco, pop-up communities of restaurants, hair dressers, yoga classes, and gardens created new forms of temporary public space, re-envisioning the metered parking space as a public gathering space--a place for meeting people, cultural expression, teaching, playing, or just hanging out.

A break in the clouds at Web 2.0 Expo (photos)

It was a beautiful week in San Francisco, and while conversations about the future of the Web were happening inside Moscone West at the Web 2.0 Expo, some folks were taking advantage of the sunshine to work from the park, tinkering with the data cloud beneath a sunny, cloudless California sky on what turned out to be one of the first warm days of the year.

Here are a few of the cooler, springtime shots I found from in and around the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco this week. (Click here to see a slideshow of photos from the conference itself.)… Read more

Entrepreneurs get hands-on with ideas at TechShop

Apple, Google, and HP are just a few of the companies hatched in small garages--innovators surrounded by tools and machines, bringing ideas to life. San Francisco's TechShop, which had its grand opening Saturday, is a community that wants to offer anyone the chance to be a big thinker, by providing a start-up environment equipped with just about any tool you can think of, along with training, expertise, and other resources. The massive DIY workshop occupies a 15,000-square-foot space in San Francisco's South of Market neighboorhood, and it's already a thriving community oozing with ideas. With staff … Read more

CES: Counting the colors (photos)

The lights of Vegas shine on CES (photos)

Aircraft fire training at NASA Ames (audio slideshow)

MOFFETT FIELD, Calif.--Airport firefighter training has gone mobile, and this week it traveled to the San Francisco Bay Area--raging fire, billowing smoke, and all.

At the NASA Ames Research Center, near Mountain View, Calif., this week, Silicon Valley fire departments are cooperating on emergency training missions in order to get or renew their Federal Aviation Administration certification for airport first responders. Every airport fire department is required to receive this FAA-approved aviation firefighting certification annually. And while fire crews can travel to fixed training facilities, that can be costly. So this mobile unit, one of three like it in … Read more

So stupendous living in this YouTube

Thanks to users around the world watching hundreds of millions of videos each week, YouTube has taken self-produced video to another level. Sure, we still watch and rewatch silly cat videos, ranting diatribes, and painful accidents, but as the Google site grows, it is becoming an important distribution platform for more serious forms of films, news and music entrepreneurs.

Behind the scenes, the 300 employees at the San Bruno, Calif.-based company are seeking new ways to energize and monetize the medium. Engineers and product managers are integrating new elements into the YouTube platform every day, finding ways to build … Read more

The open-source world goes skiing

The name is a fortunate accident, but the fun of skiing with a group of open-source business executives is no accident at all.

The Open Source Goat Rodeo 2010 took place in Utah, February 4 through 6, and included great skiing, wonderful food, and exceptional people--including the first ever appearance by former MySQL CEO Marten Mickos.

As I do every year, I've created a video to highlight the activities and give a taste for the event. It's not a closed event: I hope you'll join us in 2011.

I probably should identify everyone by the color of … Read more

Oracle loses some MySQL mojo

Ever since Oracle closed on its acquisition of MySQL, the open-source world has been wondering where the code has gone. Many people searched, fruitlessly, for the formerly available MySQL source code.

They might have done better to search for Oracle's point person on MySQL, Ken Jacobs.

On Friday, Jacobs announced his resignation from Oracle to key members of the MySQL team via e-mail. Jacobs, a 28-year Oracle veteran and one of its first 20 hires, has been Oracle's liaison with the MySQL community for the past several years, ever since Oracle acquired the popular MySQL storage engine, InnoDB. … Read more

From Alfresco to Canonical

After more than four years at Alfresco, I have joined Canonical, the company behind the Ubuntu Linux distribution, as its chief operating officer.

You can read Canonical's announcement of my appointment here, as well Alfresco's here.

I am excited, humbled, and, candidly, torn by this opportunity.

In late 2005, John Powell and John Newton, the co-founders of Alfresco, took a chance on me, an open-source evangelist at Novell. I was the 13th employee and the company's first U.S. employee. My prior history had been with embedded Linux (Lineo) and semiconductors/silicon (Mitsui), but they gave me … Read more