[ad_1] The year was 2005: I was just out of high school and living on my own. My sister and her husband came to visit, and on my way out to work one morning while they were in town, my brother-in-law asked me if he could use my computer. I knew he was good with computers,…

[ad_1] Jason McIntosh had a problem: He’d gotten out of the habit of writing long-form blog posts. A decade before, he’d been a regular on LiveJournal, but that platform is getting a little long in the tooth, and he wanted something that was more in line with his current writing habits. As a fan of…

[ad_1] When contributing to open source projects and communities, one of the many benefits is that you can improve your tech skills. In this article, hear from three contributors on how their open source helped them get a job or improved their career. Alexander Yurchenko, a developer at Yandex By the time I found my first paying job, as an integrated…

[ad_1] 2015 was a big year for the Krita project. They had a successful crowdfunding campaign over the summer, which helped fund the development of an onslaught of features targeted for versions of 2.9 and beyond. With everything from big-time performance jumps when using large brushes, to the addition of support for animating, Krita’s growth has spiked…

[ad_1] Owen DeLong is a Senior Manager of Network Architecture at Akamai Technologies, a leader in content delivery network (CDN) services that help to make the Internet “fast, reliable, and secure.” He will be speaking at SCaLE 14x about IPv6 adoption (because we’re out of IPv4!). Owen is also a member of the ARIN Advisory Council—an advisory group to the Board…

[ad_1] Open organizations explicitly invite participation from external communities, because these organizations know their products and programs are world class only if they include a variety of perspectives at all phases of development. Liaising with and assisting those communities is critical. And community calls are my favorite method for interacting with stakeholders both inside and…

[ad_1] Optimized websites are better for the environment. Why? They are significantly faster, more usable, with content that’s optimized for SEO and user experience. This means that both computers and users spend less time waiting for the page to load.  Back when I first was creating websites, back in 1995, the Internet was considerably simpler. People…

[ad_1] Although some people think open source projects only need programmers—and experienced ones, at that— open source project needs go beyond the ability to write code. They also require testing, technical support, documentation, marketing, and more. And contributing to projects also is a great way to improve technical skills and connect with people who share…

[ad_1] Cory Doctorow is good with words. He just prefers stringing them into sentences, not subroutines. “I was a software developer,” he says. “I’m much better at writing science fiction novels. Like, seriously.” When Doctorow takes the stage at the 14th annual Southern California Linux Expo (SCaLE 14x) this week, he’ll demonstrate exactly why he’s…

[ad_1] Chief Architect for the central US at Red Hat, Thomas Cameron, has been in the information technology industry since 1993, and has worked with industries ranging from high tech manufacturing, multinational financial services, information technology services, education, energy production, transportation, and large scale retail services. Prior to his two presentations at 14th annual Southern Californian Linux…