ZenLinux Blog

In a kind of interesting mix between unconferences and programming contests like the Rails Rumble, Portland is holding a Startup Weekend event the first weekend in March. The idea is to bring together people of different backgrounds – including software developers, marketers, attorneys, and so on – and see what kind of product ideas they can start developing over a focused weekend of effort. With a bit of luck and a lot of elbow grease, some of these ideas and teams are likely to blossom into full-fledged technology startup businesses.

When I first read about this event I felt a kind of nervous energy as the realization crept in that yes, this was going to be one hell of an effort, and I would have very deep regrets if I didn’t give it a shot. So I registered for the event and look forward to some high-intensity growth experiences.

For the most part I expect the product ideas to be web application or web service-related. However given my background in embedded Linux systems, I’m planning to bring a couple of embedded boards with me and see if anyone is interested in developing an idea based on a physical product that could be sold. I’ve been becoming a big fan of the gumstix platform, but am also quite excited about the Sheeva Plug.

If anyone else in the Portland area is reading this and is even remotely considering attending, I urge you to go for it! Even if a viable business doesn’t come out of the weekend, there’s no doubt it’s going to be an incredible way of networking with other startuppy people and learning a lot about yourself.

I am extremely grateful for all of the people who showed up to hear my OpenEmbedded talk this evening at Roots. Michael Dexter noted that we had one of the best turnouts for a PLUG Advanced Topics meeting in a long time.

Here are the slides from the presentation. Unfortunately a lot of the good, interactive stuff happened during the live demo portion of the talk, but the slides do give a good overview of what the rest of the talk was about.

Enjoy!

Next week I’ll be giving a presentation on OpenEmbedded at the Portland Linux User Group’s Advanced Topics meeting:

Getting started in embedded Linux development can be intimidating. Every hardware device vendor seems to have its own embedded Linux distribution and way of developing for it. OpenEmbedded (OE) is a framework for creating highly customizable embedded Linux distributions. It provides a well-designed build system and cross-compilation environment to developers, and a robust package management system for setting up and maintaining your embedded Linux system.

Find out why OpenEmbedded is taking the embedded world by storm and improving the lives of embedded Linux developers.

Feel free to join us at Roots Organic Brewing, 1520 SE 7th Ave in Portland, at 7pm on Wednesday, Feb. 17. We meet in a room toward the back of the building. I’ve noticed the acoustics of the place are pretty poor, so I’ll be borrowing a sound system to help improve the presentation.