The biggest news of 2011 for me was MJ surprising me on July 1st with an absolutely amazing marriage proposal in Sonoma. I still grin ridiculously when I think about what a perfect night and weekend it was.
Details and more photos are on our site here: http://www.mjandlyz.com/engagement.shtml
But it wasn’t the only exciting thing I did in 2011. I logged almost 50,000 miles in the air, gave six talks, one of which was a keynote, participated in one panel and went to two Ubuntu Developer Summits.
Travel:
- February: LAX for SCALE9x
- April: San Juan, Puerto Rico for vacation
- May: Budapest, Hungary for UDS
- May: Fort Lauderdale, FL for a family event
- May: Edmonton, Alberta to visit my sister
- July: Philadelphia, PA for FOSSCON
- September: Phoenix, AZ to visit family
- October: Philadelphia for work and fun
- October: Orlando, FL for UDS
We also did a couple of mini-trips, heading up to Sonoma for our engagement over the 4th of July weekend and down to Monterey over Thanksgiving.
Talks and panels:
- February 25, 2011: Southern California Linux Expo Ubucon: Finding Help in Ubuntu presentation (slides, video on SCaLE9x website)
- March 31, 2011: SDForum Tech Womens Program: Women of Open Source panel, video on Google Open Source Blog
- July 23, 2011: Fosscon: Keynote: Making a Difference for Millions: Getting Involved with FOSS (video, slides)
- September 20 & 21, 2011: “Introduction to Ubuntu” at ITT Tech in Oakland and Concord for Intro to Linux classes (slides)
- October 11, 2011: “Introducing Ubuntu ‘Oneiric Ocelot’ 11.10” talk at Philadelphia Linux Users Group North (slides: odp, pdf)
- December 15, 2011: “Introduction to Ubuntu” at ITT Tech in Oakland for Intro to Linux classes (slides)
It was an amazing year, just as 2010 was. I have thoroughly enjoyed the flexibility and opportunities we’ve had to travel these past couple years.
2012 is shaping up to be a different kind of year. Work travel will be more limited for both of us, we’re saving up and planning for a wedding in 2013 and now with Simcoe’s health problems we’ll be tied a bit closer to home. This isn’t a difference that disappoints though, we live in a beautiful city that I love where there is never a shortage of things to do. I’m very much looking forward to time I spent traveling last year to be spent focused on projects, learning and spending more quality time exploring our city. Bring it on, 2012!