Puppet Camp Ghent was amazing. I saw a few old friends and connected in person with quite a few community members that I had not yet met in person. Overall, I was very happy with the event, and the people at HoGent were great hosts. There were so many amazing presentations, and we’re getting them uploaded to the Puppet Camp page as soon as we get the slides from the speakers. Here is the presentation that I delivered on the State of the Puppet Community.

I had an amazing time at FOSDEM, too. I helped facilitate the Configuration / Systems Management DevRoom on Saturday along with a DevRoom dinner that evening. I love working in such a collaborative industry. The DevRoom and the dinner were organized collaboratively with our primary competitors, but we all worked together to pull it off in a way that benefited the industry. Aside from the DevRoom, I got to see a lot of old friends and had a great time!

At FOSDEM, I also gave a short version of my Open Source Community Metrics talk. If you are interested in open source metrics, you might rather look at the longer version that I presented at LinuxCon Barcelona in November. I also had a great conversation from Jesus at Bitgeria, and they are doing some awesome stuff with open source community metrics that you should look at if you are interested in metrics.

Next on my agenda are trips to Stockholm, Sweden and Oslo, Norway for two more Puppet Camps in the next two weeks before heading back home to Portland.

I’ve seen too many over-eager new community managers jump into the community early and make mistakes by violating community norms, talking about things that aren’t relevant, making people unnecessarily upset, and just generally making a mess of things. Every community manager makes mistakes at some point, but here I’m talking about the issues that could have been avoided by knowing more about the community before jumping in with both feet.

Don’t be afraid to let other people do most of the responding while you learn from them. By taking the time to observe and lurk for a bit, you can learn about how people behave and get a feel for how people typically respond.

This doesn’t mean that I spent my first month sitting on my butt. As part of the learning process, I spent a lot of time talking to other employees about what works well in the community and about what isn’t working. As a part of talking about the things that weren’t working, I focused on what was causing the most pain for our engineers and started thinking about how we could make things better. I came up with a big list of things to tackle and started talking to people about plans for improving some of the community processes that were the most painful. I’ve started working on a few of these already, and others are in my 2013 plans.

I also worked on a lot of documentation and improvements to website content during this first month. We really didn’t have community guidelines or other standard documentation. Since community guidelines are relatively similar for many open source projects, I got a good start on those in the first month. I also focused on getting monthly community metrics published. I actually got a ton of work done during my first months. It just wasn’t publicly visible work.

Don’t be afraid to work behind the scenes for your first month or two while you learn about the community. If you make sure that your manager and colleagues know why you aren’t publicly visible while making sure that your work behind the scenes benefits the company, people are more likely to see it as an important and necessary part of the process of starting this new job.

Additional Reading:

• Community Manager Tip: Make Time for Strategy and Planning
• Community Manager Tip: Role Model Good Behavior
• Maintaining a Successful Corporate Community

*If you were hired out of a community where you have already been participating or are hired to work on a newly launched community, this advice probably doesn’t apply to you.

Photo by Stephen Jones used under a Creative Commons license.

2012 in Review

This year, I spent more time doing things that I enjoyed: reading, running, working in a job that makes me happier and much more!

• The single biggest change I made in 2012 was leaving Intel and taking some time off before joining Puppet Labs. I had been at Intel for 2.5 years (along with an earlier stint from 2000 – 2006). While I loved the people I worked with (and miss them), the job left me drained of energy, and I just wasn’t passionate about it anymore. I left without a real plan other than to take a month (or a few) off before starting anything new. I used this little sabbatical (aka funemployment) to read, run and hang out with friends. I started at Puppet Labs 7 weeks later feeling relaxed and recharged. I’m loving the work and enjoying being back in a startup!
• I read over 70 books last year! Most of them were science fiction / fantasy, and I keep a list of everything that I read here on my blog.
• I also ran … a lot. In 2012, I ran over 470 miles, and just over 100 of those miles were in August during my funemployment. My longest run of the year, also the longest run of my entire life, was 11.3 miles (just 1.7 miles short of a half-marathon distance). I also did some weight lifting and other workouts. Aside from falling off the wagon over the past month due to a couple of back-to-back colds, I’m feeling pretty good on the fitness side.
• Like last year, I did a fair bit of travel. For work, I went to Brussels, Belgium; Seoul, South Korea; Berlin and Nuremberg, Germany; and Barcelona, Spain. For fun, I took trips to Hawaii, Seattle, Las Vegas, and Ohio to visit family. I even have pictures from many of the trips posted on Flickr.
• As part of this travel, I presented at a few conferences. I did a few Tizen presentations earlier in the year, but recently, I’ve been speaking about open source metrics at LinuxCon in Barcelona and the LibreOffice Conference in Berlin.
• I’ve also been dabbling with programming again, mostly in Ruby, since that’s what everyone at Puppet Labs uses. I’m pretty terrible at it, since I haven’t done any real programming since the mid-90′s, but it’s enough to accomplish a few simple things and be more self-sufficient. And, I enjoy doing it
• I am still selling my vegan cookbook: What Dawn Eats: Vegan Food That Isn’t Weird. It was published last year and is available in paperback, Kindle edition and PDF format.

If I look back to what I wanted to accomplish in 2012 from last year’s year in review, I did pretty well!

• I continued to travel and visit new places (South Korea, Spain and maybe Belgium were new last year).
• I wanted to do runs in the 8-13 mile range and more regularly hit the gym to lift weights. I made it just over 11 miles, which is pretty good, and I did quite a bit of weightlifting, so I feel good about this one, too.
• For several years, I’ve been wanting to do some light programming, and this is the year that I finally started real work on that one!
• I also said that I wanted to get to a point where I can actually carry on a conversation in French that goes beyond basic greetings and travel phrases in 2012. With one lesson a week, it’s taking a while, but I’m finally getting to the point where I can carry on very simple conversations … as long as you speak very slowly, repeat yourself a few times and use mostly words that I already know
• I failed miserably at my goal to keep my blog updated.

What I Want to Accomplish in 2013

• Yet again, I’m going to make an effort to blog here more often.
• I want to travel to even more new places. I’m off to a good start on this one, since I’ve already scheduled a work trip for February in Belgium, Norway and Sweden along with a fun trip with mom to Aruba in May!
• I plan to continue meeting my fitness goals from last year with regular running, weight lifting and other activities. This will be a little more challenging because I expect to be doing quite a bit of travel this year, and working out is a lot harder when you are jet-lagged and busy working in another time zone. While I was happy with my general fitness in 2012, I still tend to eat too much, so I’ll work on that a bit.
• I also want to continue to work on my French. I’d love to be more conversational next year and ideally, be able to read simple books and watch movies in French without relying entirely on the subtitles.
• I hope to spend more time writing code. In addition to being more self-sufficient, I would also like to learn how to not suck at it by spending the time to learn how to do things properly rather than just doing whatever gets the job done the fastest.
• While I want to continue to read, I actually need to pull back on that a bit. I love reading, but it’s taking too much time away from other activities, so I’m going to try to read a bit less to free up more time to actually do the things mentioned above!

Here are a few posts that I’ve written over the past couple of months for work as part of my Community Manager gig at Puppet Labs:

• New Q&A Site to Ask Puppet Questions
• Can You Start a Puppet User Group?
• Puppet Camp Ghent: Register or Submit a Talk
• Videos from Puppet Camp Nuremberg 2012
• Introducing Dawn Foster as the Puppet Labs Community Manager
• Puppet Community Metrics: September, October, November and December blog posts.
• Puppet Labs Podcasts: DevOps Culture and Razor

I also wrote a few posts on my cookbook site, What Dawn Eats. Don’t forget that you can buy the cookbook (available in paperback, kindle edition or PDF)!

• Yellow Curried Tofu
• Grilled Vegetable and Tofu Dagwood
• Lentil Soup with Tomato and Basil

You can download the presentation from SlideShare.

Talk Abstract:

Do you know what people are really doing in your open source project? Having good community data and metrics for your open source project is a great way to understand what works and what needs improvement over time, and metrics can also be a nice way to highlight contributions from key project members. This session will focus on tips and techniques for collecting and analyzing metrics from tools commonly used by open source projects. It’s like people watching, but with data.

The best thing about open source projects is that you have all of your community data in the public at your fingertips. You just need to know how to gather the data about your open source community so that you can hack it all together to get something interesting that you can really use. This session will be useful for anyone wanting to learn more about the communities they manage or participate in.

If you are interested in watching the presentation, it will be on the LibreOffice Conference live stream starting at 18:00 CEST in Berlin or 9am Pacific time.

You can also download a copy of the presentation from SlideShare.

Talk Abstract

Do you know what people are really doing in your open source project? Having good community data and metrics for your open source project is a great way to understand what works and what needs improvement over time, and metrics can also be a nice way to highlight contributions from key project members. This session will focus on tips and techniques for collecting and analyzing metrics from tools commonly used by open source projects. It’s like people watching, but with data.

The best thing about open source projects is that you have all of your community data in the public at your fingertips. You just need to know how to gather the data about your open source community so that you can hack it all together to get something interesting that you can really use. We’ll start with some general guidance for coming up with a set of metrics that makes sense for your project and talk about the LibreOffice community metrics. The focus of the session will be on tips and techniques for collecting metrics from tools commonly used by open source projects: Bugzilla, MediaWiki, Mailman, IRC and more. It will include both general approaches and technical details about using various data collection tools, like mlstats. The final section of the presentation will talk about techniques for sharing this data with your community and highlighting contributions from key community members. For anyone who loves playing with data as much as I do, metrics can be a fun way to see what your community members are really doing in your open source project.

I am super excited to be working at Puppet Labs. It’s a great team of people, and I’m looking forward to working at a startup in downtown Portland again!

I’ll be starting at Puppet Labs on Thursday during PuppetConf in San Francisco. James will have a session on the State of the Community at Friday at 10:45 (you can watch the live stream) if you want to learn more about the Puppet community.

If you’ll be at PuppetConf on Thursday or Friday, find me and say hello!

But, it was more than just the job. I’ve worked in large companies and startups, and I’ve realized that I really want to get back into a startup again. I miss the energy of working in a startup where everything moves faster than in a large corporation.

I’ll be taking the rest of August mostly off to relax and work on a few geeky personal projects. Starting in September, I’ll either take a full-time job or do some consulting while I continue to look for the right opportunity. I’ve already starting talking to a few people, and I would like to eventually land at a startup in a Director / VP level community, evangelist or open source position. I’m willing to take my time to find the right fit, and that includes finding a job where I can live in Portland, but travel to other places as needed.

I feel very fortunate to have some flexibility and other options that allow me to make this move now. As a result, my last day at Intel will be August 7. While I will miss many of the friends and smart people I’ve worked with at Intel, I feel like this is the right decision for me at this time.

Photo by Patrick McGarvey used under a Creative Commons license. A side note: this is one of my favorite roller coasters, The Maverick, at Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio, and I plan to ride it on vacation next week!

When was the last time you really looked at your primary landing page for your community? Take the time to really look at everything on that page, and remember that your landing pages are primarily for new and prospective community members, since active community members will just dive right into the heart of the community. Is everything still relevant? Does it focus on the right things for your community to help new community members easily find what they need?

When was the last time you looked at every page on your website or your wiki to see what information was out of date or irrelevant? This may not be practical for a very large community, but you can use your analytics programs to help you at least find the most frequently used pages to review.

Are the discussions in your community productive and appropriate? Take a hard look at what people are discussing and the tone of those discussions. If it doesn’t feel right for your community (and this varies for each community), then spend some time thinking about what you can do to make it better.

Additional Reading

• Community Manager Tip: Have Great Documentation
• Community Manager Tip: Make Time for Strategy and Planning
• Community Manager Tip: Role Model Good Behavior

Photo by Mars Infomage used under a Creative Commons license.

4 cups cooked brown rice
1 14-ounce can coconut milk
1 tablespoon palm sugar (or brown sugar)
1 to 2 tablespoons Thai yellow curry paste
1/4 cup chopped mint
1/2 lime
2 cups broccoli florets
1/2 cup sliced carrots
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 12-ounce package firm or extra firm tofu
2 to 3 kaffir lime leaves chopped (optional)

Stir-fry the broccoli and carrots in oil for 3 to 4 minutes, but make sure they stay firm, since they will continue to cook in the sauce later. Set aside.

Combine coconut milk, sugar, yellow curry paste and lime leaves in a wok or large skillet over medium heat. Cook for 5 minutes or until the coconut milk begins to thicken.

Add chopped mint, juice of 1/2 lime, broccoli, carrots and tofu. Cook at a low simmer for 5 to 10 minutes to let the flavors blend together.

Serve with brown rice and additional lime wedges.

Buy the What Dawn Eats: Vegan food that isn’t weird cookbook for more recipes like this one.

Variations

• Add 1/2 cup chopped pineapple when you add the tofu. If you use pineapple, you might want to reduce or eliminate the sugar.
• Experiment with other vegetables.
• Pre-bake the tofu if you want it to be a little more firm.
• Can easily be made gluten-free.

More information for Yellow Curried Tofu recipe:

• Prep time: 20 min
• Cook time: 20 min
• Total time: 40 min

1 hearty sandwich sized ciabatta roll sliced in half (or any other thick, hearty bread)
1 slice grilled tofu (about the size of the roll or 2 small slices)
1 slice grilled eggplant
2 slices grilled zucchini
1 slice grilled bell pepper
3 – 4 sun-dried tomato slices (reconstituted)
4 – 5 whole basil leaves
olive oil for brushing the bread
salt and pepper to taste

Brush the cut side of the bread with olive oil and briefly grill or place it under the broiler for a couple of minutes to lightly toast the bread.

If you aren’t making this with freshly grilled vegetables, heat the grilled tofu, eggplant, bell pepper and sun-dried tomato in the microwave or oven until warm.

Pile all of the ingredients in layers in between the roll for a huge Dagwood sandwich.

Buy the What Dawn Eats: Vegan food that isn’t weird cookbook for more recipes like this one.

Variations

• For a regular sandwich that can be consumed by mere mortals without unhinging your jaw to bite into it, limit the sandwich to tofu, 1 grilled vegetable, sun-dried tomato and basil.
• Experiment with any variety of grilled vegetables or tempeh instead of tofu.
• If your grilled vegetables seem a little dry, you might want to brush the bread with a little extra olive oil and balsamic vinegar.
• Make a low-sodium or gluten-free version by choosing an appropriate type of bread.

More information for Grilled Vegetable and Tofu Dagwood recipe (reduce total time to 5 minutes if using leftover grilled vegetables):

• Prep time: 30 min
• Cook time: 15 min
• Total time: 45 min

People often ask me for a list of the “best” communities that they can use as a model when building their own community, but this is fundamentally the wrong question. Each community has a different audience, different goals, and a different purpose. Building your community based on what works for another successful community can fail very quickly if that community doesn’t have the same needs as your community.

A better question is, “what type of communities are my competitors building and what does or doesn’t work for them?” Your top competitors are likely to be more similar to you than other companies, and this gives you a place to start. Spend some time lurking in your competitors communities to see how they work and try to get a feel for what works and doesn’t work for them. Look for common complaints, and come up with interesting ways to solve them in your community. Pay attention to what people enjoy or get excited about, and think about how you might get people excited about your community. You shouldn’t model your community on a competitor’s community, but this analysis along with some basic best practices will probably give you a start for how you want to build your community or improve an existing one.

Don’t copy other companies. Build something unique that will work well for your audience while also meeting your goals.

Additional Reading

• Custom Corporate Communities: Planning and Getting Started
• Maintaining a Successful Corporate Community
• How To Write A Practical Online Community Plan

Part of a series of community manager tips blog posts.

Photo by Juliancolton2 used under a Creative Commons license.

1 cup lentils (rinsed)
2 cups vegetable broth
3 cups water
1 peeled and chopped carrot
1/2 cup reconstituted, chopped sun-dried tomatoes.
1 6-ounce can tomato paste
1 tablespoon olive oil
3 cloves minced garlic
1/2 chopped medium onion
1/4 cup freshly chopped basil
freshly ground black pepper to taste

Heat oil over medium heat. Add onions and sauté for 2 to 3 minutes.

Add all other ingredients and bring to boil.

Reduce heat to low and simmer for 35 to 40 minutes or until the lentils are tender.

Buy the What Dawn Eats: Vegan food that isn’t weird cookbook for more recipes like this one.

Variations

• Add 1/2 cup rice and an additional 1 cup water.
• Experiment with additional spices. Oregano and thyme would make good choices.
• Make a spicy soup by adding some crushed red pepper or chopped chili peppers.
• Add a few mushrooms, broccoli or other vegetables.
• Naturally gluten-free and can be easily made low-sodium by substituting water from reconstituting the sun-dried tomatoes in place of the vegetable broth.

More information for Lentil Soup with Tomato and Basil recipe:

• Prep time: 10 min
• Cook time: 40 min
• Total time: 50 min

12 small red potatoes cut into quarters
1/4 cup olive oil
1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon fresh rosemary
2 cloves minced garlic
dash cayenne pepper to taste
1/2 teaspoon red chili pepper flakes
freshly ground black pepper and salt to taste

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Mix all ingredients (except for the potatoes) in a large mixing bowl and set aside while you wash and prepare the potatoes.

Add potatoes to the olive oil mixture and toss to coat. Spread evenly on a baking sheet or pan in single layer with no overlap.

Bake uncovered for 50-60 minutes stirring every 15 minutes.

Buy the What Dawn Eats: Vegan food that isn’t weird cookbook for more recipes like this one.

Variations

• Add a handful of garlic cloves 15 minutes before the end.
• Add a few slices of onion.
• Experiment with other spices. Basil and oregano or sage would be good choices.
• Naturally low-sodium and gluten-free.

More information for **TITLE** recipe:

• Prep time: 10 min
• Cook time: 50 min
• Total time: 60 min

I took the time to do a bit of reformatting and build a proper table of contents with links to most sections of the cookbook, so it should be fairly easy to use on the Kindle. The nice thing about having a cookbook in an electronic format, like the Kindle, is that you can easily search for a specific recipe or favorite ingredient.

You can also get What Dawn Eats in other formats:

• Amazon Kindle edition for $9.99
• Printed Paperback copy for $12.99
• Electronic PDF version for $12.99

I know you have some Amazon gift certificates that you are dying to spend on books for that new Kindle that you got over the holidays

1 14-ounce can unsweetened coconut milk
1 teaspoon chili paste for mild or more for spicy sauce
2 tablespoons brown sugar or palm sugar (omit if using sweetened peanut butter)
1/4 cup freshly ground peanuts (or peanut butter)
1/2 teaspoon salt

Warm the coconut milk in a saucepan over medium heat for 2 to 3 minutes while you assemble the rest of the ingredients. Add the chili paste and sugar. Stir to dissolve. Add the ground peanuts or peanut butter. Stir frequently until the peanut butter has melted and the sauce has started to thicken.

If the peanut sauce is too thick, you can thin it with a little bit of water or coconut milk.

Buy the What Dawn Eats: Vegan food that isn’t weird cookbook for more recipes like this one.

Variations

• Omit salt for a low-sodium sauce.
• Omit or reduce the sugar for a less sweet sauce. When using a sweetened peanut butter, I always leave out the sugar.
• Add more peanut butter for a little extra peanutty goodness.
• Naturally gluten-free.

More information for Thai Peanut Sauce recipe:

• Prep time: 5 min
• Cook time: 10 min
• Total time: 15 min

Slaw Ingredients

1/2 head of shredded cabbage
1/2 cup shredded carrot

Sauce Ingredients

1/2 teaspoon celery salt
1 teaspoon dried minced onions
1/2 cup vegan mayo
1/4 cup non-dairy milk
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
1 tablespoon agave nectar
2 teaspoons dijon or spicy mustard
1 clove minced garlic
freshly ground pepper to taste

Combine all of the sauce ingredients in a small mixing bowl. Stir briskly or whisk until the sauce is smooth and creamy. Add more or less vegan mayo to taste.

Shred the cabbage and carrot and place in a large mixing bowl. Stir in the sauce and toss together to combine. Refrigerate for a couple of hours before serving.

Buy the What Dawn Eats: Vegan food that isn’t weird cookbook for more recipes like this one.

Variations

• Use a mix of green and purple cabbage for a little color.
• Add a few other vegetables for more variety.
• Omit the mustard and replace the celery salt with ground celery seed for a low-sodium version.
• Can be easily made gluten-free.

More information for Traditional Vegan Coleslaw recipe:

• Prep time: 15 min
• Cook time: 0 min
• Total time: 15 min

4 cups chopped kale, chard or collard greens
1 15-ounce can white beans (great northern or others)
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 cloves minced garlic
1 small diced shallot
1 teaspoon tamari
2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar
1/2 teaspoon chili paste
3 strips tempeh bacon
freshly ground pepper to taste

Drain and rinse the can of white beans and set aside.

Heat olive oil over medium heat and add shallots. Sauté for 3 minutes until the shallots have softened. Add tempeh and sauté for another 3 to 5 minutes until the tempeh begins to brown. Add garlic, greens and beans. Add remaining ingredients and cook for 2 to 4 minutes or until the greens are wilted, but still firm.

Pictured with mixed salad beans, instead of white beans.

Buy the What Dawn Eats: Vegan food that isn’t weird cookbook for more recipes like this one.

Variations

• Main Meal: Serve as-is or over a bed of your favorite grain.
• Experiment with a variety of mixtures of different types of greens and different spices. This is great with rosemary or basil, for example.
• You can make a very simple version of this with just a little balsamic vinegar and some spices.
• Instead of the vinegar, serve with lemon wedges or add lemon juice for added flavor.
• For a low-sodium version, eliminate the tamari and tempeh bacon and use a low-sodium can of beans.
• This can easily be made gluten-free.

More information for Beans and Greens recipe:

• Prep time: 10 min
• Cook time: 10 min
• Total time: 20 min

This is a great fall and winter meal when you can find a wide variety of fresh and interesting root vegetables at the local market. This recipe is really flexible and forgiving on both ingredients and cooking times, which makes it a great side dish since you don’t have to worry about having it done at exactly the same time as everything else. Makes 4 servings.

2 lbs root vegetables, peeled and cut into 1-2 inch pieces (potatoes, carrots, parsnips, turnips, celeriac, beets*, etc.)
1 medium onion, peeled and cut into 1/3 inch wedges
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon rosemary
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar (more or less to taste)
salt & pepper to taste
1 head garlic, separated into cloves and peeled

Heat oven to 400 degrees.

Combine the olive oil, balsamic, rosemary, salt and pepper in a large mixing bowl.

Toss the vegetables and onion (but not the garlic) with the oil and spices in the large mixing bowl. Remove from the bowl and place the root vegetables and onion in a roasting pan or cookie sheet, but do not crowd or stack the vegetables. Try to get everything in a single layer if possible, which might require an extra sheet or pan.

Roast the mixture for a total of 45-50 minutes, stirring every 15 minutes. After the first 15 minutes, scatter the garlic cloves in with the vegetables. Continue stirring every 15 minutes until the vegetables are tender and evenly browned.

Pictured with carrots, red potato, garnet yam, parsnip, rutabaga, golden beet and turnip.

Buy the What Dawn Eats: Vegan food that isn’t weird cookbook for more recipes like this one.

Variations

• Dinner: To make this into a main meal, serve over a bed of grains or with a side of cooked tofu or tempeh.
• Try different combinations of vegetables and spices.
• Add some crushed red pepper to make it a little spicy.
• Can be easily made gluten-free and low-sodium.

* Note: if you are using red beets, you might want to put them on a separate tray for cooking unless you like having all of the vegetables turn pink.

More information for Roasted Root Vegetables recipe:

• Prep time: 15 min
• Cook time: 45 min
• Total time: 60 min

Salad Ingredients

1 small shredded cabbage
1 cup shredded or thinly sliced carrots
1 medium thinly sliced red bell pepper
4 thinly sliced scallions (also called green onions)
1/2 cup chopped cilantro
1/4 cup chopped sun-dried tomatoes

Dressing

1/2 teaspoon adobo sauce (or other smoky hot sauce).
2 cloves minced garlic
1/4 cup freshly squeezed lime juice
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
2 tablespoons agave nectar
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 teaspoon cumin
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
Combine salad ingredients in a bowl.

Combine dressing ingredients in a small container and whisk for 1 minute to combine.

Drizzle sauce over veggies and toss to coat evenly. You might want to add a little more lime juice or vinegar to taste.

Let stand at least 10 minutes or refrigerate until you are ready to serve. Toss again before serving.

Buy the What Dawn Eats: Vegan food that isn’t weird cookbook for more recipes like this one.

Variations

• Replace carrots and red bell pepper with other colorful vegetables.
• Add some jicama for additional crunch.
• Can be easily made low-sodium and gluten-free.

More information for Mexican Coleslaw recipe:

• Prep time: 20 min
• Cook time: 0 min
• Total time: 20 min

Seriously, it’s November 8.  Note the murky color of the water that has not been treated since mid-July.

Location: Ohio

Contributed by: E. Lee

My crazy upstairs neighbor taped this to my sliding glass door the morning after I had some friends over to pregame for my birthday party later that night. There was one (1) beer can left on MY patio…

Location: Ft Lauderdale, FL

Contributed by: ogryanlee

This is what happens when your neighbor is jealous!

Location: Oxford, CT

Contributed by: anonymous

Location: Portland, Oregon, USA

Contributed by: Chris Harris

With the appearance of the fake spring we had recently here in Portland, this flock of pink flamingos landed in my neighbor’s yard. They were strangely still and unmoving, almost like those little plastic pink flamingos that live mostly in retirement villages in the south. I prefer to think that no one would do this to their yard intentionally, so I choose to believe that it must have been a wild flock posing as the crappy plastic variety.

Location: Portland, OR

Contributed by: Dawn Foster

Has that old copy machine worn out its welcome? Then it’s time to kick it to the curb, perhaps literally. Who cares if it’s a dreary, drizzly day? Slap a free sticker on it and someone will certainly pick up your busted, soaked copier. Right?

Location: Portland, OR

Contributed by: Adam DuVander

My favorite part is the sweet disco ball!

Location: Portland, OR

Contributed by: Todd K.

I occasionally walk by this house, which is just bristling with gargoyles. Not pictured are the video game cabinets. They usually have a moving van parked out front and a rotating collection of a dozen tarp-covered classic video game cabinets stowed in the side yard.

Location: SE Portland, OR

Contributed by: Brian Enigma

Location: Portland, Oregon

Contributed by: Steven

The gargoyle is an interesting choice for a porch decoration. Maybe they bought it with plans to upgrade their house to a castle someday?

Location: Portland, OR

Contributed by: Dawn Foster

And it’s really fun to say. Try it three times fast: Pubsubhubbub, Pubsubhubbub, Pubsubhubbub. Marcus Estes has kindly offered to put together a demo for us. I hope to see everyone at the pdpug meeting to learn more about it!

Agenda
6:00 - 6:30: Networking and introductions
6:30 - 7:15: Marcus Estes on Pubsubhubbub
7:15 - 7:30: Wrap up and suggestions for next month’s topic

Logistics
Tuesday September 22, 2009 from 6:00pm - 7:30pm
Oracle 1211 SW 5th Avenue, Suite 800, Portland, Oregon
RSVP on Upcoming

Please use the tag #pdpug for Twitter messages, blog posts, pictures, etc.

About pdpug

The Portland Data Plumbing Group (aka pdpug) gives us a place to talk about RSS feed hacking, Yahoo Pipes, Dapper, and other related technologies. We have monthly meetings on the 4th Tuesday of every month at the Oracle office in downtown Portland from 6pm-7:30pm.

You can also join our discussions about Yahoo Pipes and other plumbing topics on our Google Group.

Logistics
Tuesday July 28, 2009 from 6:00pm - 7:30pm
Oracle 1211 SW 5th Avenue, Suite 800
RSVP on Upcoming

Agenda for July
6:00 - 6:15: Introductions
6:15 - 7:00: YQL Overview with Uncle Nate DiNiro
7:00 - 7:30: Another topic??

Please use the tag #pdpug for Twitter messages, blog posts, pictures, etc.

About pdpug

The Portland Data Plumbing Group (aka pdpug) gives us a place to talk about RSS feed hacking, Yahoo Pipes, Dapper, and other related technologies. We have monthly meetings on the 4th Tuesday of every month at the Oracle office in downtown Portland from 6pm-7:30pm.

You can also join our discussions about Yahoo Pipes and other plumbing topics on our Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/portland-data-plumbing

Ken Baer, Taplister’s iPhone App Guru, is a Portland native and long time Tech, Trek, and Beer Geek. He spent about 20 years writing 3D animation software (Hash Inc’s Animation:Master) on the Amiga, Mac, and PC, and worked on OMSI’s Star Trek Federation Science exhibit in the early 90’s. He is actively involved in the local animation scene through ASIFA-Portland, and spent some time doing scuba and fencing. Ken is an active Mac developer, and has jumped into iPhone development with both feet. He is excited about his work on iPhone apps for Taplister, and is committed to making very cool apps for craft beer fans everywhere.

Dawn: Can you start by telling us a little bit about Taplister and Beer Signal?

Ken: Taplister is a web site dedicated to providing up to date information about what craft beers are on tap around Portland. The site has a bot that gathers information via Twitter using our #ontappdx hash tag. So, the data is provided by not only the pubs around town, but also the patrons. Anyone that visits some of the websites for these pubs knows that if they list what beers they have on tap, that information is often out of date. That’s because pubs often don’t have time to update their web sites as often as would like. By getting patrons and beer fans into the act, we can have a database that is a lot more helpful.

So, on Taplister.com, you can search for a beer and see who’s serving it in Portland. You can also see what’s on tap at your favorite bar or pub. Pubs that sign up with us also have the option of having a “PubCam” installed, which shows a live image of their on tap board. It doesn’t get more up to date than that!

Beer Signal is an iPhone app that uses the Taplister engine. The app helps you find a pub, see what they have on tap, and invite your friends to join you. You start by selecting a pub from the Taplister database. You can see their active beer list, the live pubcam (if they have one), and information like their location (with a map), hours, happy hours, and how many taps they have. Then choose what friends you want to invite. You build a list of local, beer drinking friends and enter their Twitter names. The app keeps this list and allows you to select who you want to invite. If you are at the pub now, you can send the invite with Shizzow or Twitter. If you are planning a meetup, you can set the time and date, and send the invites out all once as Twitter direct messages. The app also allows you to tweet what beer you are drinking and if it is off tap. And finally, you have full access to the mobile Taplister site in the app, including searching for a specific beer.

Dawn: How did you get the idea to start this project?

Ken: I met Kerry Finsand at my first Beer and Blog. I literally walked into East Burn (coincidentally our first client), sat down in the last empty chair, introduced myself to the guy next to me, who was Kerry, and started talking about beer and the iPhone. Kerry and Scott Wray had been working on the idea for the web site for a couple months I think. They also hooked up with Kevin Scaldeferri who’s doing the web server and the bot. Scott worked with Joe Mendonca on designing the web site. Ezra Johnson-Greenough a.k.a Samurai Artist has been doing a series of interviews with brewers that’s on the site. And recently, we’ve been working with Derek Arent on logos and branding. All of us are big craft beer fans. This project is all about the beer. I wanted to make an iPhone app for it that really leveraged some of the power of the device. I thought it would be cool to make it easy to invite your friends out for beer.

Dawn: Why did you decide to integrate with Shizzow?

Ken: It was such a natural connection. I’d heard about Shizzow at a Lunch 2.0 I went to early in the year, but didn’t really hear the details of what it was about. So, while I was writing code for Beer Signal, I took a break and did a quick search to satisfy my curiosity about what Shizzow was. It was exactly what I wanted to do. Beer Signal is about finding pubs, discovering great beer, and getting together with friends so you can enjoy it together. We want people to spend more time socializing in person, and not just online. We also want to support our local drinking spots, and bring them the business they need in this tough economy. It seems to me that Shizzow is all about that. It also didn’t hurt meeting the people behind Shizzow and being in the same city. If we can help them succeed in our own little way, all the better.

Dawn: Where can people go to learn more about Taplister and Beer Signal and what plans do you have for future improvements?

Ken: Taplister.com is the place to be for the latest on what’s pouring in Portland. There’s a search right on the front page to search for beers using our exclusive beer search engine. Also, the Taplister.com site will autodetect if are on a mobile device and bring up the mobile version of the site.

You can go to BeerSignal.com to learn more about the app, and read the documentation. Beer Signal is currently available on Apple’s iTunes App Store.

There’s a lot we want to do in the future. This is just phase 1. Down the road we want to incorporate beer descriptions, reviews, and user ratings. We also want to work more with brewers and distributors, and be able to collect valuable information for them about what people are drinking and what kinds of beers people are asking about. We also want to expand to other cities. Portland has an amazing craft beer culture. But, it seems to be spreading to other cities, and we want to be there too. One thing I’m interested in developing is more visual ways brewers and users can define a beer’s flavor profile, and then be able to search on that so users can discover new beers that they would likely enjoy.

But, this all begins with everyone using the #ontappdx hash tag, and helping us maintain the best beer list anywhere!

• Mapping party at Multnomah Central Library from 11am - 4pm on Saturday.
• Forest park trail mapping from 9am - 2pm on Sunday.

You can find many more details in the Silicon Florist post on the topic. Have fun!

Brady also has an interesting take on this issue over on the O’Reilly Radar blog.

“I am personally looking forward to these services becoming ubiquitous so that I can track my location and aspects of my life, but as they currently stand these services are not poised for mainstream adoption. They need to do more to prevent people from embarrassing or endangering themselves.”

Quoted from XKCD on the Future Self.

Remember to shout responsibly, people. There are some things that I just don’t want to know about you!

Tuesday June 23, 2009 from 6:00pm - 7:30pm
Oracle 1211 SW 5th Avenue, Suite 800
RSVP on Upcoming

Agenda for June

• 6:00 - 6:15 Introductions
• 6:15 - 6:40 YQL (Yahoo Pipes on Steroids) by Uncle Nate DiNiro
• 6:40 - 7:00 Gnip by Ed Borasky
• 7:00 - 7:30 Other interesting discoveries and future agenda topics (all)
• We will also be talking about whether or not we want to skip the July / August meetings and pick back up in September.

Please use the tag #pdpug for Twitter, blog posts, pictures, etc.

About pdpug

The Portland Data Plumbing Group (aka pdpug) gives us a place to talk about RSS feed hacking, Yahoo Pipes, Dapper, and other related technologies. We have monthly meetings on the 4th Tuesday of every month at the Oracle office in downtown Portland from 6pm-7:30pm.

You can also join our discussions about Yahoo Pipes and other plumbing topics on our Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/portland-data-plumbing

Here are the details about the meeting - don’t forget to RSVP on Upcoming if you plan to attend.

When: Tuesday April 28, 2009 from 6:00pm - 7:30pm
Where: Oracle 1211 SW 5th Avenue, Suite 800

Agenda:

• 6:00 Introductions
• 6:15 Tarpipe discussion led by Uncle Nate DiNiro
• 6:45 Workshop: Have a problem? Want to talk about a specific tool? Break into small groups to help each other

As always, feel free to discuss various RSS feed hacking, Yahoo Pipes, Dapper, and other related technologies on the pdpug Google Group in between meetings.

Top Shouters

• stephaniewagner: Stephanie Wagner - Graphics + Web Design + Marketing + Promotions and Music | Event Promoter. design graphic marketing promotions sxsw web
• donpdonp: Don Park - biker. hacker. bicycle burrito cafe
• gjlutz: G. Lutz
• wajiii: Bill Jackson - Meh. ajax apple baconsnob geek java linux mac unix

Top Places

• Green Dragon Bistro & Brewpub: absinthe beer finetapselection
• CubeSpace: cubespace meetingrooms officeforrent
• SW DESIGNS

Trailblazers (People who go to new places)

• rich: Rich Vigorito
• stephaniewagner: Stephanie Wagner - Graphics + Web Design + Marketing + Promotions and Music | Event Promoter. design graphic marketing promotions sxsw web
• fred: Fred Sobotka - Another consultant who lurks around SE Portland when he’s not lurking elsewhere. db2 portland sql stumptown

People who tag places (and make Shizzow better)

• cedr: coffee croquet scooter secretagent
• stephaniewagner: Stephanie Wagner - Graphics + Web Design + Marketing + Promotions and Music | Event Promoter. design graphic marketing promotions sxsw web

How to use the Twitter friend import:

• Go to your preferences page
• Click the Twitter link in the sidebar
• Activate the service by allowing Shizzow to access your Twitter information
• Click the Import your Twitter friends link
• For friends who are already on Shizzow, you can choose which ones you want to listen to.
• For friends who aren’t on Shizzow, you can invite them, which sends them a Twitter direct message with a request from you to join Shizzow.

What we do or do not do with your Twitter account:

• You never need to give us your Twitter password, we use oAuth to give you control over whether we can access your account.
• Shizzow will not automatically tweet from your account.
• Shizzow will not import all of your Twitter friends; you will need to manually select individual Twitter friends.
• For your Twitter friends who do not already have Shizzow accounts, Shizzow will allow you to send a direct message through Twitter to individually selected friends that you would like to invite to join Shizzow.
• After the friend import process, your account will be setup to automatically tweet your shouts through Twitter, but you can disable this at anytime by visiting the Twitter Preferences page. If you never want us to post your shouts from Twitter, simply disable your Twitter access after importing your Twitter friends.

We’re hoping this makes it easier for you to find your friends and use Shizzow. We would love to hear more about your experiences using the Twitter import on Get Satisfaction.

We also made a few other cool improvements in this latest release:

• Added favorites as a drop down menu on our mobile version (m.shizzow.com) without an extra refresh, and we added the search box to the bottom of the mobile page to make it even easier to shout from your web enabled phone.
• We made some other improvements to the signup process for new users to make it easier to get started on Shizzow.

As always, please let us know what improvements you would like to see in Shizzow. Most of our new features and bug reports come from you, so keep posting them to Get Satisfaction!

Top Shouters

• easterbunny: The Easter Bunny - Bringing baskets filled with colored eggs, candy and toys to the homes of children on Easter.
• b3gl: Jerry
• stephaniewagner: Stephanie Wagner - Graphics + Web Design + Marketing + Promotions and Music | Event Promoter

Top Places

• Green Dragon Bistro & Brewpub
• Urban Grind Coffeehouse NW
• CubeSpace

Trailblazers (People who go to new places)

• fred: Fred Sobotka - Another consultant who lurks around SE Portland when he’s not lurking elsewhere.
• rich: Rich Vigorito
• stephaniewagner: Stephanie Wagner - Graphics + Web Design + Marketing + Promotions and Music | Event Promoter

People who tag places (and make Shizzow better)

• dougie: Doug Coleman - A freak for the web
• dswiese: Sean Wiese
• sechrest: John Sechrest
• hollyblackman: Holly Blackman - getting into as much social networking as possible for work.

New and Improved Tagging

We changed our tagging system for places to show only the most popular tags on the place page, and when you click the link for more, you get a nice tag cloud with big text for the popular tags. This is one way to push obsolete tags down the page. If a place without wifi is tagged with wifi, you can push it down the list by tagging it with something like no-wifi, which would become more popular as more people begin to use the tag.

Add New Places and Edit Places via m.shizzow.com

Quite a few of us were frustrated that m.shizzow.com didn’t have a way to add a new place. We heard you loud and clear, and you can now add places from your mobile device using m.shizzow.com. As a bonus, you can also edit places to update an address or correct other information on the place page.

IM Notification - Now with More Links

We’ve improved the experience for those of us who get our notifications via XMPP instant messaging by adding links to the shout within the message. Gone are the days of wondering exactly which Stumptown my friend just shouted from and having to log into the web interface to find out. Now you can click on the link to go directly to the shout to find out more information.

Support for Mexico, Central America, South America and South Africa

We’re continuing to add support for new countries as time permits. Mexico, Central America, South America and South Africa were the latest additions, but you will continue to see support for more countries trickle out.

We also fixed a few other bugs. Remember, we are not skilled in mind-reading or ESP, so we can’t change things that we don’t know you want, so keep those bug reports and feature requests coming at us by posting them on Get Satisfaction!

Thursday April 16, 2009 at 5:00pm
Green Dragon Bistro & Brewpub
928 SE 9th Ave, Portland, Oregon

RSVP on Upcoming.

Top Shouters

• maestrojed: Jed Herzog - Livin in Portland OR. @betheoutlier’s my passionate venture | Most used Skillz: webDev & video prod. | Interests: music/Jazz, the web, art/street art/graffiti.
• donpdonp: Don Park - biker. hacker.
• mattg: Matthew Gifford - Really needs to add his bio to Shizzow

Top Locations

• Green Dragon Bistro & Brewpub
• Urban Grind Coffeehouse NW
• OCP

Thursday April 2, 2009 at 5:00pm
Green Dragon Bistro & Brewpub
928 SE 9th Ave
RSVP on Upcoming

Content Roadmap

Most companies should create and maintain some type of content roadmap. The content roadmap will usually map out the next 4 weeks of blog posts with an author identified for each post. This helps to ensure that the blog topics are strategically aligned with corporate goals, varied across topics and types of content, and frequent enough to keep the blog active. The person responsible for the blog can work with authors to help identify topics and then make sure that the author has access to everything needed to complete the post (data, technical assistance, etc.)

Spontaneous Posts

Now that you have a content roadmap, you should also diverge from it frequently to allow for serendipitous blogging on hot topics or new ideas that people are passionate enough about to want to talk about them immediately. Monitor popular blogs, news sources, and events in your industry and respond to what others are saying. Join the conversation without waiting for the topic to come up on the content roadmap.

Thought Leadership

The best blogs have content that focuses on thought leadership. Blog about the things in your industry where your employees have expertise that can be shared with the world. Don’t just talk about your products; focus on your entire industry. Get people to discuss a variety of topics and new ideas. Don’t get stuck in a rut where all of your posts have essentially the same or similar content. You are not a thought leader if all of your posts are simply variations on a single idea. Chime in with your thoughts on a variety of topics across your industry.

Conversations

Always monitor and respond to comments on your blog. People get frustrated with blogs where people ask questions or provide feedback in the comments without any response or acknowledgment. Even worse are those companies that moderate every comment and delete anything that they do not agree with. Let people comment and disagree with your ideas. Some of the most interesting conversations happen in the comments of a blog post. You should also monitor what people are saying about you on other blogs, forums, Twitter, etc. and respond where appropriate.

Blogs are Fun

Have fun with your blog, and don’t be so serious all of the time. You can include interesting things that are happening within your company that aren’t necessarily work related (photos from a company ski trip). Admit it; you would rather read a blog post with great content and some humor mixed in, instead of something with great content that drones on and on like an old, boring college lecture. Make the content interesting and fun enough that people will look forward to reading your posts.

Guiding Principles

At this point, I suggest reading my Social Media and Social Networking Best Practices for Business post. Specifically, I covered these guiding principles, which apply not just to blogging, but to other forms of social media as well:

• Be sincere
• Focus on the individuals
• Not all about you
• Be part of the community
• Everyone’s a peer

Each of these 5 guiding principles has already been described in detail in my other post, so I won’t spend much more time on them here, but they are important for corporate bloggers to keep in mind.

Strategy and Vision

Blogs are still just another piece of the corporate communications puzzle (although an increasingly important piece), so spending some quality time thinking about what you want to achieve with your overall communication strategy and how blogging fits into that strategy is a good place for companies to start. You don’t want to use your blog to just pimp your products or talk about press releases. A blog can be used for so much more. Think about the areas where you want to lead the industry and the topics that you want people to think about when they think of your company. Use your blog to become a thought leader in the industry by sharing your expertise on those broad topics that are important and relevant to your company.

Think about who should be blogging on your corporate blog. It is easy to pick your top 5 executives, and give them access to the blog. In some cases, they might be the perfect people, but they aren’t always the best choice when it comes to accomplishing your goals for the blog. Go back to your discussion about your strategy for the blog and the topics that you want people to think about when they think of your company or your products. Who in your company has expertise in those areas? Do you have someone with great ideas? Are there any evangelists or other employees passionate about those topics? If so, recruit those people to contribute to your blogs. Someone passionate and smart, but outside of the senior management ranks probably has more time to spend on the blog and might just come up with some innovative and interesting ideas.

You should also branch out a little into the realm of unofficial / personal blogs. Encourage your employees to have their own blogs where they talk about their areas of expertise. I have blogged on various corporate blogs for companies and non-profit organizations that I am associated with, but I also continue to blog at Fast Wonder on various topics related to social media, online communities, and other technology topics. Having a personal blog has a number of benefits, including giving us an excuse to learn and research new ideas. Quite a few employees have similar blogs, and I like to believe that some people think that we have interesting things to say, and our companies benefit from having smart people discussing their expertise outside of official work channels. There is also a caution to go along with this. You don’t want to create a personal blog that is too focused on your company. If all you talk about is your company and you cover all of the same topics as your official blog, it just looks forced and insincere. You need to branch out and cover additional topics; show that you are a real person and not just a corporate shill.

Making it Happen

After the initial excitement wears off, it is easy for companies to neglect the corporate blog. We just forget to blog, and before long, no one has posted in a month (or two or three …) In some companies this isn’t a problem. If you already have a bunch of prolific bloggers neglect may not be an issue, but for the rest of you, and you know who you are, it really helps to have someone “in charge” of the blog. This person isn’t responsible for writing all of the content, but they can responsible for herding and nagging in addition to making sure that some specific strategic topics are being addressed on the blog. The role is part strategist and part mother hen (it isn’t all that different from managing communities), so you have to find someone who can think strategically about your industry and the right topics while they follow up obsessively to make sure people are actually posting to the blog.

Corporate blogging is a complex topic, and there will never be one magic formula that applies to all companies. Hopefully, these tips will help a few people make their corporate blogs even better. Keep in mind that you will make mistakes along the way. Learn from them, keep writing, and continue to make incremental improvements.

Thursday February 26, 2009 at 5:30pm
Green Dragon Bistro & Brewpub
928 SE 9th Ave, Portland, Oregon 97214
RSVP on Upcoming

These meetups are for people currently developing applications using the Shizzow beta API or for people interested in starting to use the API. This is an opportunity for you to show off your apps, ask questions, get feedback, or just kick back and listen over a beer. We hope you will come out and join us!

Portland Data Plumbing User Group (pdpug)
Tuesday February 24, 2009 from 6:00pm - 7:30pm
Oracle 1211 SW 5th Avenue, Suite 800
Please RSVP on Upcoming if you plan to attend

Agenda:

• 6:00 Intros
• 6:15 Jerry (aka @b3gl) leading a discussion about open source alternatives to Pipes.
• 6:50 Work session. Bring your issues with Yahoo Pipes or other RSS feed hackery & we’ll pair up to help each other.

As always, feel free to discuss topics between our meetings on the pdpug Google Group.

Marshall also did a post with more information about his talk on his blog. He was also gracious enough to include a link to the slide show of links that he covered. If you don’t want to watch the video and would prefer a quick intro, he’s written extensively on this topic in this post, this post and this one.

Details:
Jan 27th
6:00pm - 7:30pm
Oracle: 1211 SW 5th Avenue, Suite 800
RSVP on Upcoming

We hope to see you there!