Over Christmas I came across a couple of extremely useful publications for those people needing to promote open source to business users. The first is a report on the International Status of Open Source Software, from the Cenatic Foundation. As well as providing an overview of the state of Open Source adoption around the world, the report looks at various factors that might explain differing “maturity levels” (their term) or levels of adoption.

must do boring database stuff before playing with #geonode .. must do boring database stuff before playing with #geonode .. # is fighting with people who don’t understand the need for structured data when a word table has done them perfectly well for 20 years #fb # saw a swan trapped in ice on Lancaster Canal earlier, but no RSPCA near here to call :-( #fb #

This might seem slightly off-topic, but hey, it’s about Computing, GIS and Archaeology as far as I’m concerned… namely the likely demise of Yahoo’s Del.icio.us (yes, I know the current status is “for sale” but three days ago they were going to close it so there’s a measure of uncertainty there, I think you’ll agree). I’ve been using this since 2005 as a place to chuck all my useful tips and tricks on how to do “stuff”, or interesting things I’d like to read later.

writing notes for “An Introduction to GIS using QGIS” #workingtheweekend #qgis #fb # maybe I don’t understand all the #freesoftware vs #opensource args but what’s the point ofthis http://bit.ly/eOP6FJ (via @glynmoody) # just had an ubergeeky half hour debugging a mono application on osx. Perhaps need to get a life… # w00t, made it to 300 followers! Hello everyone! # wonders if she has been inadvertently trying acai berries without realising (via @daanensen) #

It seems like all I’ve posted about recently is very quick updates on conferences that I’ve been to, and not a lot about what I actually spend most of my time doing. The principal reason for this is being too busy, but that’s getting a bit lame. Once upon a time I used to post lots of tips and tricks about things I’d figured out- sometimes just as a aide memoire after days of trawling through mailing lists and forums.

Last weekend was the second Wherecamp EU Unconference, this time at the University of Nottingham. A mighty good time was had by all, I think! It attracted a different crowd to the previous event, back in February in London. There were less of the “big names” there, but a lot of new faces, which is encouraging. Again, the Unconference format worked well, with people doing talks on a range of subjects, some only after being persuaded to the night before!