The Open Road

Remember that one day when I had fewer than 20 posts? You know, the day when you actually had something less than a novel to read on The Open Road?

Well, here's where (and how) I was slacking that day:

Asays - Grand Targhee 2009

Man doth not live by blog alone. There must also be skiing.

Note: Vimeo seems to be having some problems serving up the video here. If you're interested in watching my Napoleon Dynamite ski moves, follow the link.

Sorry. Posting will be a bit light today as I'm in Grand Targhee, Wyoming, skiing with my family. I'll be online periodically to keep up on the blog, which I view as leisure time as much as anything, but with all this powder, I'm spending most of the day on the slopes.

I had worried that the "family ski trip" would involve too much family and not enough skiing, but I've been pleasantly surprised. All those lessons seem to have paid off...big time. I haven't had to wait for my kids and my eldest daughter and wife, Jen, have been absolutely shredding through the two feet of powder.

That's her to the right.

I've got some stories to write, including one about a big enterprise software vendor that pulled out of competing on a bid because "We can't compete with open source." Yeah, that one felt good. It's going to be like a vacation to write that one up. Stay tuned.

With the Open Source Goat Rodeo looming large, I couldn't help but note that Snowbird is opening this Friday. We've had roughly three feet of snow in the past week, which should mean great (but rocky in places) skiing now, and exceptional skiing by OSGR.

Why don't you live here, again? :-)

Driving through Provo Canyon with my family today, I saw ski season peeking through the clouds. It's hard to tell from this picture, but everything above 7,000 feet got drenched in snow this past week.

Early October and Mother Nature is already preparing for a season of the greatest snow on the planet. The Open Source Goat Rodeo may end up riding earlier than expected....If you're into open source, or you simply want to talk shop, I hope to see you out here this year for the OSGR or simply to ski.

I'd love to have some meaty open-source discussions in anticipation of the Open Source Business Conference 2009, which will be held March 10-11 in San Francisco. The Call for Papers just went live. I've already filled up a range of sessions, though they're not yet showing on the website, so get yours in soon. Some areas of particular interest, going off this next year's theme of "Open Sourcing the Enterprise":

• How do we make it safe, comfortable, and worthwhile for enterprise IT buyers - which develop most of the world's software - to contribute back into the open-source code community?
• How do we evolve open-source business models to ensure vendors get paid without resorting to the same lock-in tactics that the proprietary world has used?
• And how do we hedge against patent trolls and other parasites on the open-source community?

And so on. In sum, how do we grow the open-source contributor population, while simultaneously making it more viable and useful to the world? It should be a great show, as well as a great ski season in Utah. I'm not sure which I'm looking most forward to enjoying....

(OK, it's the snow I like best.)

I have skied since I was 12-years old, and over the years have cycled through just about every make of boot available: San Marco, Dalbello, Tecnica, Lange, Dolomite, Rossignol, etc. Over the past few months, however, I have fallen in love with the Tecnica Dragon 120 HiPerFit ski boot. It is by far the best boot I have ever worn.

Though Tecnica was kind enough to let me use its Dragon 120 ski boot for the second half of the 2008 ski season, it wasn't until I put the boot through its paces in Las Lenas, Argentina, that I fully discovered just how pliant and powerful the boot is. The Tecnica Dragon 120 HiPerFit ski boot is flexible when you need to flex, and stiff when you need it stiff. By simply rolling my ankles into a turn, the Dragons seemed to fuse with my skis (both Volkl AC4s and K2 Apache Recons).

I've never found it as easy to ski blistering hard with my boots catering to my whims, rather than fighting them. Such are the Tecnica Dragon 120 ski boots. They are amazing.

It wasn't always this way. I've skied Tecnicas before (including the Diablos last year) and, while I found them enjoyable, they weren't nearly as comfortable and high performance as the Dragons. This is the best boot Tecnica has made in many years, and puts the company ahead of Lange, Salomon, and other boot manufacturers that had surpassed Tecnica in recent years.

The secret? It's in the technology, as Tecnica boasts:

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I've noted before that when it comes to my hands, I'm a wuss. Last year I found the first pair of gloves that actually kept my hands warm: The North Face Patrol glove.

While I still consider that glove the gold standard (among Mountain Hardwear and other brands I've evaluated), I really liked the North Face Vortex II and North Face S.T.H. gloves that I evaluated this year, as well, though for entirely different reasons.

Skiing last month in Las Lenas, Argentina, the weather was perfectly suited to The North Face S.T.H. glove for the first day: relatively warm, spring-skiing conditions. The North Face S.T.H. glove is the glove you'll want to have when shoveling snow, but also the one for spring skiing or simply when loading up the car at the end of the day.

The North Face S.T.H. glove is water-resistant with a highly breathable Apex ClimateBlock stretch shell. This means it will keep you warm and dry in milder conditions, but not for much of the rest of the season.

The S.T.H. is also a super-supple, contoured glove, which means you can actually do things like dial a number on your mobile while wearing it.

The North Face Vortex II glove, on the other hand, will keep you warm on much harsher conditions, like my second day at Las Lenas where the resort received roughly nine feet of new powder (plus a fair amount of wind to keep things cool). I found that the HyVent two-layer shell kept my hands dry despite swimming through a heck of a lot of powder, and I never felt cold.

Given how wimpy my hands are in the cold, this says a lot.

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Last week Ubuntu's Mark Shuttleworth and I hit the slopes of Las Lenas, Argentina. The North Face kept us warm for the trip with The North Face Explosivo and Hetch Stretchy jackets. In seriously rough weather (fierce winds part of the time, around nine feet of new powder the rest of the time), The North Face Explosivo and Hetch Stretchy jackets rocked.

Verdict? Two thumbs way up.

Both the 2008/09 Explosivo and Hetch Stretchy jackets are heavier than The North Face jackets I reviewed last year. You won't need to layer with either the Explosivo or Hetch Stretchy jackets, except perhaps in extreme cold weather conditions. I suspect both jackets would serve particularly well for many reading this blog, i.e., people who hit the slopes once or twice in the season and so don't want to have to buy multiple layers of snow clothes, but want zero chance of getting cold when they do go.

Either the North Face Explosivo or Hetch Stretchy jacket will keep you warm around town, but then outperform on the slopes.

How well? The second day in Las Lenas, it snowed hard all day long, as shown below. I heard some reports that Las Lenas received up to nine feet (!!!). While we only skied in three feet of that, it was more than enough to suggest that both the Explosivo and Hetch Stretchy jackets are excellent ski jackets.

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Let's get this straight. It's May 2. Springtime, right?

Sort of. Snowbird, Utah got hit on May 1 by 18 inches of new snow, and Bryce Roberts (O'Reilly Alpha Tech Ventures), Fabrizio Capobianco (Funambol), and I just had to try it out.

Verdict? Heaven. Check out some shots from the day below.

You don't live here...why?

Let's face it. Utah rocks.

Snowbird with 12 inches of new powder in the morning (Bryce Roberts of O'Reilly Alpha Tech Ventures and Fabrizio Capobianco of Funambol joined me for a half-day of wicked snow). Pie in the afternoon while doing the weekly Alfresco team reviews. Maybe a little biking in the evening?

You don't live here...why? I mean, the software sells itself, right? :-)

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