Just a quick note to say that I’ll be in North America starting next week, for about two weeks: San Francisco April 6th-10th (meetings, coworking, jetlag recovery, tacos, etc) Montreal April 10th-15th (AdaCamp Montreal — I’m fully booked up from the afternoon of the 12th onward, I’m afraid, but have some time before that) Ottawa April 15th-19th (friends, maybe meetings, coworking, etc) San Francisco, again April 19th-21st If you’re in any of those places and you’d like to catch up, ping me! I’ve got a Continue reading → I haven’t mentioned this on here yet so I thought I’d better do so before I actually, you know, board the plane. I’m heading over to Europe next week and the week after. The main reason I’m going is AdaCamp in Berlin, which I will be helping run, but before and after that I’ll also be spending some time in the UK and running this Growstuff event, to get stuck into some serious code with some of our UK-based developers, in London on Oct 18-19. Continue reading → This holiday season I’ve had a few Australian friends travelling in the US, and something I’ve seen repeatedly on Twitter is, basically, this: America, Y U NO HAVE POSTOFFICES?! — lianaskewes (@lianasmooz) January 2, 2014 So, here is a guide for US post offices, aimed at Australians. I’m qualified to write this because I had exactly this experience when I moved there. It went something like this. Me, to office manager: “Hey, where’s the nearest post office?” Office manager: “Uh… I think there might be Continue reading → Hey, I am massively disorganised this week, but I figured I should probably mention that I’m going to be travelling and would like to catch up with people. Saturday 15th to Monday 17th June, I will be in San Francisco, mostly in the Castro/Mission/ish area. Social activities planned so far include: Saturday afternoon: hanging out on Liz Henry’s patio in Bernal Heights, with laptops and snacks and generally socialising. Likely to be a hackerish/feminist crowd. If you know Liz and where she lives, just show Continue reading → 3) I’ve been sitting on this for a little while, but it’s been announced now, so: I’ll be keynoting Open Source Bridge in Portland, Oregon (USA) in June. I know a bunch of my people will be there and I can’t wait to see you all. If you have never been to Open Source Bridge before, it’s one my my favourite conferences, bridging (get it!) software and social responsibility in a way that you don’t see many other places. I’m pretty sure I’ll be talking Continue reading → Well, I’m home. Have been for a few days, actually, but in between jetlag, flaky internet, and nesting, I haven’t gotten around to posting. The flight home was ghastly and let’s never talk about it, okay? I am still processing my thoughts on the trip overall but I guess the quick version is: 2.5 months is a long time to be city-hopping, it was more expensive than I expected, it was great to meet people everywhere (hi! thanks!), and I really want to spend more Continue reading → It’s almost a month to the day since I posted my last travel update. Since then I’ve been to Paris, then to Calais and across the channel to Dover, along the south coast to Brighton and Portsmouth, up to London, stayed a week and a half, then north to York, brief visits to Durham and Newcastle, a few days in Edinburgh, then over to Liverpool, Manchester, Bristol, and five days in Cornwall. Tonight I was meant to have taken the ferry from Plymouth to Roscoff Continue reading → I’m halfway through my 10-week-long trip and I haven’t updated in a month. The only excuse I can offer is that I wanted to include pictures, but my relationship with Flickr has turned out to be strangely complicated lately, and the whole process of uploading them (often via dodgy hotel wifi) has just seemed too hard. Actually, I’m noticing something new in my picture-taking this trip. Just as, a few years ago, I purged any book from my shelves that was effectively obsoleted by Wikipedia Continue reading → Yesterday I took the train from Madrid to A Coruña, a six hour trip that caused a fair bit of consternation among the GNOME people who brought me here. I’ve been telling anyone who asks that I’m not in a hurry, I like to see the countryside, that I’d rather not have the environmental guilt of an unnecessary flight, and that I just like trains. All this is true, but people seem incredulous til I tell them that after this conference I’ll be spending another Continue reading → So, here I am in Madrid, after about 30 hours in transit. I flew Emirates for the first time, and Emily was right — they’re pretty good. Went via Changi where I didn’t have time to do any of the fun stuff you can do there if you have a long layover, a brief pitstop at Colombo which is notable only because it afforded us a Sri Lankan curry for breakfast (yay! I would eat curry for breakfast all the time if I could), and Continue reading →