[squeak-dev] [Election] But what have I done for Squeak *lately*? :)

Randal L. Schwartz merlyn at stonehenge.com
Thu Feb 19 21:43:09 UTC 2009


In trying to recap this past year, my first year of being *back* into
the Smalltalk world, I googled "randal schwartz squeak", and saw:

 Results 1 - 10 of about 5,910 for (randal OR randall) schwartz squeak.

I think about 5700 of those pages didn't exist a year ago.  Here's the
highlights:

* Created my blog methodsandmessages.vox.com to publish squeak news
  and observations

* Demonstrated Squeak and Scratch on the "Lab with Leo" show, hosted by Leo
  Laporte and distributed in Canada and Australia

* Had both Avi Bryant and Dan Ingalls on FLOSS Weekly, my weekly podcast
  with an audience of about 25,000 or so.  Squeak was mentioned once
  or twice. :)

* Managed to sneak a mention of Smalltalk and Squeak into just about
  every other episode of FLOSS Weekly

* Got Leo Laporte thinking about a weekly Seaside tutorial video
  podcast, in which we would run through my courseware to teach him
  (and the audience, by proxy) how Seaside and Squeak works

* Provided the weekly Squeak News segment for James Robertson's
  Industry Misinterpretations podcast, broading the continued presence
  and currency of Squeak throughout the Smalltalk community

* In my role as Leadership Team member, coordinated the cutover
  of the squeak.org to Aida, and am currently sheparding the
  Squeak 4.0 relicense effort

* Established the meme "the year of Smalltalk" in my blog, which has
  been used as a unifying rallying cry to help the resurgence in 2008

* Got the Brazillian FISL conference interested enough in Smalltalk from my
  2008 presentation that they created an entire Smalltalk/Squeak miniconf for
  2009 (which I'm just now putting out the CFP for, by the way)

* Got interviewed by InfoQ about the Smalltalk Comeback, where
  I mentioned Squeak prominently

* Got interviewed by WebDevRadio about Seaside, mentioning Squeak
  at least a few times

* Got interviewed by Reflective Surface, a blog about Ruby-ish things
  about Seaside and Squeak

* Produced a keynote talk at STIC's Smalltalk Solutions 2008, which
  included my Seaside talk and a Persistence talk, both incorporating
  many mentions of Squeak

* Gave a three-hour lecture at OSCON 2008 on Smalltalk and Seaside,
  using Squeak as the primary demonstration tool

* Produced a few videos for Vimeo on how to use Squeak, and got
  a few other people using Vimeo for hosting, including creating
  a Squeak group there

* Created a "Seaside Bootcamp" class, to be delivered by BigNerdRanch
  in Germany in a few months

* Promoted Squeak via watching various twitter and blog messages for
  mentions of Smalltalk, Seaside, and Squeak

* Answered many questions on squeak-dev, beginners, and seaside mailing
  lists.

* Hung out in the #squeak, #seaside, and ##smalltalk channels on freenode,
  and the #smalltalk channel on Parcplace, answering questions and
  occasionally annoying the other locals

* Gave the "Seaside: your next web framework" advocacy presentation at
  many companies and conferences, which features Squeak as one of
  the many Smalltalk implementations that runs Seaside

* Presented a talk on Squeak GLORP at the PostgreSQL day in Portland

* Got interviewed by GeekCred podcast for a general biography, but
  managed to get Squeak mentioned in there once or twice

* Answered Smalltalk and Squeak-related questions on Stack Overflow

Ok, I'll stop there.  I'm sure there's three important things I'm
leaving out, and 20 trivial things.

Looking back at this list, all I can say is... "oops, I set the
bar too high for my second year". :)

But seriously, I have dedicated, and continue to dedicate, my time and energy
and attention and skills to promoting Squeak as the basis for a sane
programming environment to make it easier for all of us to get things done,
and cooperate and collaborate in an open-source way to avoid repeating
ourselves.

I would be honored to serve a second term on the Leadership Team, to help
complete the relicensing effort, and work with all parties to figure out what
Squeak 5.0 needs to be.  We're at an interesting point in Squeak's development
(think: "the teenage years"), and continuity with the past and a vision for
the future are cruicial.

Please consider me as you cast your ballot.

-- 
Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095
<merlyn at stonehenge.com> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>
Smalltalk/Perl/Unix consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc.
See http://methodsandmessages.vox.com/ for Smalltalk and Seaside discussion



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