A week and a half ago, I was approached by two members of the package owners network in Nokia and asked whether we wanted to organize an event for package owners. May 25th was floated as a date, at which point I was wholly unaware of the significance of the date. Probably many of you are as well – but let me come to the significance of the date later. Time was very short, and it was questionable how many people we could get to attend and convince to travel on such short notice. We discussed internally, had a couple of conference calls and decided to go ahead while changing the emphasis a little. We really wanted to bring foundation staff, package owners and potential contributors together. This will help build personal relationships and ultimaterly help build a vibrant contributor community. Life has been very hectic for me in the last few days, but was also very rewarding.
So why Towels and Jedi? May the 25th is a worldwide celebration of Towel Day (also see [1]) and the Universal Day of the Jedi.
Towel day was created to celebrate Douglas Adams and the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Did you know that the Hitchhikers Guide (HG2G) was one of the first true open source projects mentioned in popular literature? The HG2G is the Wikipedia of the Galaxy! The guide was written and published before the free software movement was conceived, and possibly even inspired it.
Incidentially the Universal Day of the Jedi is also on May 25th. This is significant, because this year we celebrate the 10th Anniversary of Episode I of Star Wars. A good time for kill Jar Jar Binks jokes and to bring out your lightsabres and lightsabre apps. I also happen to know that many of our package owners are Star Wars fans and some even use Jedi names as nicknames. So why not celebrate that, too
As the Symbian Foundation is getting closer to launching the web site, package owners will finally become the public figureheads of their open source packages. They could be forgiven feeling a hint of panic. DON’T PANIC! The job of the Symbian Foundation is to help.
So what is happening? We have hired a steamboat in Turku, Finland for May 25th and sent invites to member companies. Within a day quite a number of package owners and Foundation member companies let me know that they want to attend. There is still a little bit of space for prospective members or app developers. If you do want to join and have not received an invite, drop us a line on rsvp@symbian.org. Promising to come in costume may increase your chances of getting on board though!
In the current economic climate not everybody will be able to to travel. So we thought of helping the contributor and package owner community to organize local events. These should be in the week of May 25th, be open to potential contributors and do innovative things with towels or Jedi paraphernalia. There is still some planning to do and I may not find volunteers to help organise these local events. Please watch this space.
Excellent Idea! I am in.
Great idea! Have fun in Turku, and in all other locations. As you said, not everyone can travel or have a local event. However, DON’T PANIC. All of us who will not be there will put tremendous pressure on Lars and others to shoot and upload lots of videos and other testimonials
@Petra: Thanks for the encouragement. The other idea which was floated, was that somebody will throw me over board into the ice-cold Finnish water. The idea would be that the towels can be put to good use. However, I must say I DO PANIC at that thought!
Don’t want to sound too nerdy here (FAIL), but if you read the Hitchhiker’s novel it’s quite clear that the Guide really isn’t open source in any way.
@puterman: I have read it, but it was 10 years ago. Now as you point out, I realize that I was too enthusiastic and should have done more homework. Had no time to read the books again.
I missed the fact that the book was actually sold and outsold all other books. And didn’t it turn out later Zaphod B actually owned the publisher and made all the money? Anyway, got carried away by the fact that users of the book everywhere contributed for free. Or is this another trick my memory is playing? I do remember that the HG2G web site was based on contributions before Wikipedia emerged.
So I sincerely apologize. Nice idea though! Too nice to resist. Maybe I do deserve a swim in ice water.
[...] – Lars Kurth discusses Towel Day, which is also the Universal Day of the Jedi. No hokey religions or blasters here, today we prefer babel fish in our [...]
Lars, please type up a Towel Day report. We want pictures!
@mrmr – we are in the process of putting together a video. We have 1 hour + material, which is being edited right now. I did want to give attendee’s to write on the blog before I do.
But for now, have a look at the towels: http://bit.ly/HxH0X