POSSCON!

Well good news at last! I have my Ubuntu system back up and running; the project is even all setup. This is great news because now I can get to playing with some code. I believe all other members of our group have the project setup as well so our project should start moving forward again. Most had a slight hang up setting up the Banshee extensions project.

POSSCON is coming up shortly, tomorrow actually. I am excited to go to this conference. This should be a cool experience. I have found two workshops that I am interested in on Friday, the 3D printing and cheap business startup workshops. I am also interested in meeting David Trask. Below are some questions I have to start off our conversation.

Jim McCracken - 3D printing
I read an article the other day regarding 3D printing. The article was about a 3D printer that could replicate itself, a fully functional copy. I thought this was amazing! I had no idea there were printers out there that could manufacture electronics. The article went on to say that in the future they predict each household will have a 3D printer. If a part breaks on one of your household goods, just print out a replacement, a fully functional replacement! Wow! So I plan to ask Jim about his familiarity with such hardware, because I am really interested to learn more. If he is, how far off does he believe this technology is from being available for household use?

David Duggins - Starting a business for cheap
My father owns a networking and computer repair business. This is where I had some of my first experiences with computers and that is what got me interested. I wanted to give some back. He does strictly networking and repair, he used to program but has lost it because of not using it nor keeping up with the changing technologies. Therefore he does all his ticketing by hand. Tickets are very expensive and the process of manually entering tickets is time consuming. So I began programming a ticketing system for his business. I have the database built and am working on the interface and functionality. I am able to add and remove info from the DB through decent looking web pages. I have also begun to incorporate some reports but I still need to do much more before it can replace his current system. Unfortunately I do not have a lot of time to dedicate to this task right now and I have been working on it here and there. I would like to know if there is some sort of open source framework for something like this out there available for modification. If so, can he recommend one or several to look into?

David Trask - Open Source tools for teaching
I have a nine year old daughter who loves to play around on her laptop and catches on to things I show her very quickly. I would like to get interested in programming. Just to introduce her to the field of computer science at an early age. I would like to ask what open source software he would recommend for this situation?

Well, off to bed now. I must get up early to make it downtown by 7:15, it is a 45 minute drive. I’m picking up Brittany in the morning and we are riding to the conference together. Should be a fun and informative trip!!! Night all!