It’s been a busy week, trying to adjust to the radical difference in time zone and attend meetings and juggle other things that need doing (like scraping together the release notes for the beta 2 announcement…). But, it’s been really fun and interesting so far as well.

I had the pleasure of meeting a number of colleagues from Novell Japan, who have been exceedingly gracious and kind enough to take me out for some wonderful food. And to overlook the fact that my chopstick skills are, shall we say, less than expert. However, by the time I get home, I will probably be able to manage just about any food with chopsticks. Also, there’s some measure of irony in the fact that I went to my first Korean barbecue restauarant in Japan, I think…

So far this week I’ve had the chance to meet with local representatives of the Linux Foundation, and also got a chance to meet our own Satoru Matsumoto (known on IRC as helios_reds). Several good ideas from these meetings, but the most pressing need for openSUSE to grow in Japan is obviously a better translation infrastructure. (And more contributors helping with translation and original content in Japanese.) The local community has created a site called Geeko.jp especially for rallying the Japanese-speaking community around openSUSE, and I’m looking forward to seeing it grow and flourish.

Yesterday, I participated in a meeting with Yukio Yoshida of the Linux Consortium and HitachiSystems to talk about openSUSE and solict some thoughts on building community in Japan. This was a new experience for me not only because it was the first time I had the pleasure of meeting Yoshida-san, but also because it was my first meeting with an interpreter.

And a few hours later, we had a press conference to discuss openSUSE with the local tech press, and I had the opportunity once again to work with an interpreter — while giving a presentation. This made me extremely conscious of my presentation skills, because I had to slow down greatly and had time to pause and reflect on the presentation one thought at a time.

Today is the first day of the Open Source Conference in Tokyo. I’m really looking forward to seeing the show and seeing the projects and companies that are participating. Tomorrow, I’ll be giving another presentation on openSUSE, and showing off some of the nifty features of openSUSE 11.0 and beyond. Looking forward to meeting more open source enthusiasts and getting the word out!

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