In London (well, staying in Bracknell & taking the train to London) this week, spent most of Tuesday doing in-person press interviews about openSUSE, the 11.2 launch (a bit belatedly) and talking about open source in general face to face with some of the press here. Brigitte and the PR team had set up a fantastic day of interviews and I had some quite good conversations with Glyn Moody, Richard Hillesley, Jason Stamper, Cliff Saran, and Peter Judge.

Talked about the openSUSE 11.2 release, where the project is at now, and also got rather a lot of questions about what it’s like to transition from journalism to my current job. I suspect the last part probably won’t feature in most of the final stories, but was more a chance to talk shop.

Had at least one question on what to expect in 2010 in open source. Outside of openSUSE, hadn’t thought a great deal about the bigger picture. Will have to ponder that on the train to London today.

Looking forward to seeing the final stories. It’s always interesting to see what people choose to focus on, or not. Still seems odd from time to time being on the other end of the interviews. It’s nice not having to write them up afterwards, though.

Also had a chance to meet with Roger Whittaker for dinner. That was a treat. He picked a rather nice place near the Novell Bracknell office and we had an excellent chat and dinner. We even talked about openSUSE a bit, in between international politics and other topics. Definitely need to find a reason to be in London a bit more often!