It was an excellent final day of the UK LUG Tour.
Oxford-Brookes University
Jono and I presented at Oxford-Brookes University to a bunch of students and staff. There were maybe 35-40 people in the room The cool surprise was the guys who came down from 
Oxford University because they had heard that Novell was speaking there. One of them used to be the NetWare administrator at Oxford-Brookes, but fled to Oxford when OBU moved away from Novell. So, naturally he tossed out several set-up questions about Novell’s impressive technology history. They invited us to hit Oxford U. if we do another tour. We said that it would be a lock-in if they could get us a meeting with Richard Dawkins.
Gloucester
We had a big turn-out in Gloucester as well. Great gang of folks there. Based on the questions they asked, I’d say that they were probably the most technically savvy LUG we hit. That could have been because the event was hosted by Message Labs, and the crowd was suspiciously stacked with their people. They were cool enough to tell me to put on their SUSE caps for the photo, though.
The presentation went a little bit long, and I missed the train out of Gloucester. So Barbie and Andy from Message Labs look us to the pub. (BTW: When you’re going to meet someone called “Barbie,” you expect a bit more of the “female, blonde, and buxom” rather than a mellow dude named is Paul.) Jono and I ravaged a plate of cheese, Jono dodging the bleu as if it were a salad.
The Return: Trains, Planes and Automobiles
Jono dropped me at New Street Station in Birmingham at around 1 a.m. I stayed in a tiny, cold hotel room–the kind of place sometimes referred to as a “stepover hotel.” The next morning, I was up at 6, but not awake. I caught a train back to Manchester and made the airport with comfortable spare time before the flight. I stayed awake working the whole 15+ hours. When I got home, I posted a couple emails and approved a couple blog comments, then made for the Land of Nod.
Filed under: Free Software |
Reverend Ted's Blog 
Thanks for coming Ted, you are welcome to give talks at Brookes in the future!
Daniel Lewis.
* Founder & President of the Brookes Computing Society
* http://www.brookescomputingsociety.org/
It was great to see you, and thanks for making the effort to come to Gloucester.
I think you’ve finally made me overcome my commandline purity and I will be attempting a Linux desktop with OpenSUSE just as soon as I get time. I think a lot of my Linux GUI Fear was down to the stress of sorting out drivers for multimedia (both hardware and codecs), and certainly your SUSE demo illustrated that this was much less of an issue.
Also I was impresed by the work Novell had done in making the desktop much more intuitive for vanilla users and those less familiar with desktops in general. I felt that my missus or my mum would actually be able to use SUSE to do the typical things they want to do without bugging me all the time.
I’m glad that you felt that your Oxford visit was rewarding. The concensus from the Oxford University crowd (of 3) was overwhelmingly positive, as judged by a straw poll on the way back to town! Hope you can make a return visit when we can introduce you to more of the Oxford University IT staff.
Andrew
Andrew F.:
Just remember, a visit to Oxford during UK LUG Tour 2 (tentatively named “Northern Exposure,” as we’re considering going up to Scotland) comes with the price of one visit with Richard Dawkins. In a pinch, I’ll take Dr. Susan Blackmoore, though. 🙂
–Rev
(Could not post to your blog, Andrew.)