Hi. I'm a graduate student in the Geography Department at the University of Southern California and my dissertation research is about Ubuntu. My research explores fun, commons, gift economies, divisions of labor and the places of ubuntu work (like conventions, LoCo install fests, offices and where ever people sit down, stand up or run around and do some work on Ubuntu). The first question is usually this: eh, geography? Well, it turns out a lot of scholars write about FOSS and GNU/Linux as "Internet communities," which certainly has some merit, but just because people communicate and collaborate with Internet-based tools doesn't mean they aren't somewhere, the people don't meet face-to-face or that the Ubuntu community is evenly spread out on the globe. My research focuses on LoCos (specifically the California LoCo), the role of conventions (so far I've been to SCaLE, OSCON, and LinuxWorld and am looking forward to the next UDS) and also Canonical's offices. I'm most exciting about researching fun (surprise) because in my limited experience fun plays some interesting and sometimes contradictory roles in F/OSS.

I've been using GNU/Linux on and off since I first tried (and mostly failed) to build a Mythtv box using Debian in 2001 (yea Mythbuntu!). I've never contributed more than an occasional bug report or forum comment, so I'm looking forward to getting involved with the Ubuntu community as I do my research, especially with the California LoCo. And I've been trying to learn python, but not certain where that will take me yet.