Just wanted to post this here, someday it might be cool to have this regionally as well, but Sep 12-14 HomelabFest will be in St. Louis, MO (technically St. Charles, which is closer to the airport). It will include a number of homelab-related content creators, talks, a bunch of cool exhibitors (mix of community and companies in the homelab space)... hopefully a good time for all!
I meant to post this earlier but was a bit overwhelmed with all the inbound email. (Planning an event of this scale is hard, I have empathy for anyone who does it lol.)
Good to see that you gave yourself and those assisting you a year to plan and setup everything. Many people underestimate the amount of work that goes into planning this type of event and end up overwhelmed and full of last minute panic. Hope all goes well.
Yes—a year is a minimum, from all the people I talked to—and I've already spent about six months prior setting up everything I could pre-announcement. I have a lot of respect for anyone who puts on an event, of any size.
Hmm. I follow a few topics on HN out of curiosity. I think I know what ‘homelabbing’ is, but there’s no explanation. Everyone likes a secret society when they’re in it.
For those who don't watch his YouTube channel or read his blog, Jeff is a fantastic spokesperson for for everything self hosting (enjoying the NTP binge of late!). I really hope this is a success as he's an excellent advocate for a healthy and positive community and framework of understanding this stuff, not to mention his quality as an orator. It would be great to see a cultural push back against surveillance capitalism and centralization of compute and we need good voices and responsible advocates sharing their thoughts to those learning the ropes.
The guy has an obvious conflict of interest - running a youtube channel/taking sponsorships. I've never undestood why so many people take his word at face value. It's at best attempts to manufacture hype for views and at worst shilling for whoever gave him money to shill for them (i.e. qualcomm buying arduino is good actually)
Just to be clear, I've never taken a dime from Qualcomm, Apple, Raspberry Pi, etc—when I do take a sponsorship from any company I'm clear about it.
I always mark videos as sponsored if anything was provided (eg review samples) and not purchased. That never includes payments or editorial oversight, and equipment is either returned or shelved afterwards for future comparisons.
I’m vaguely aware of the dude having removed a lot of rubbish ansible roles which I think he wrote over the years, and now he’s some kind of blogger or something?
He’s not a technical person, sysadmin cosplay aside — and so I think, at least here, we should only judge technical contributions; of which his is a handful of yaml files for installing apache which don’t really count for much.
> Frankly, personal politics matter a great deal to me. I can't look away.
I think if you'd also say under every traditional Muslim's post "by the way this person thinks gay people should be thrown off roofs, and women's votes should be half that of men's, and they should only be able to divorce if the man consents, and men should be able to hit their wives to discipline them, and women should walk around in dehumanising clothing because only women are to blame for rape, and supports a religion that builds the most backward societies on the planet" then you'd look a lot more honest.
But you won't. Because you look away from the catastrophic stuff and instead poorly mis-summarise mild stuff that you disagree with to make it sound catastrophic.
The abortion and homosexuality stuff seems to me mostly religious beliefs in the US tho (as far as i can see from the outside) so what you’re really saying here is that you support ostracising someone because of their private religious views? Isn’t there even something in the US constitution about that? If you want to change the constitution to support punishment for wrong belief, and don’t see how that could backfire on you, I’m not sure what anyone can tell you.
Seems like an obvious slippery slope to me. While I disagree with those religious views personally, I strongly believe people should be able to hold whatever beliefs they want and shouldn’t be punished for them.
I'm relatively confident that the US Constitution doesn't contain any prohibitions against the private boycott of people with different religious beliefs.
I've thought about it a fair bit, and I don't think there's really a very clear line between which religious beliefs people should politely decline to comment on, vs openly critisise. The cultural taboo that exists in much of the west against privately excluding people on the basis of religion has had some really positive effects (the marked decrease in religious violence of the past few hundred years is amazing), but it also leaves society somewhat vulnerable to the spread of some particularly cancerous ideas.
Your remark has nothing to do with the technical merit of this event. Your remark only has to do with his personal life and such comments have no place here (in my opinion).
That's a fair opinion to have. Personally I have the opposite opinion and have no desire to participate in an event organized by someone with these views. I find homophobia absolutely abhorrent and cruel with real life harm to others. I am grateful this was pointed out to me.
“Personal” is an arbitrary line that anyone can decide to draw anywhere. Supporting someone professionally/publicly gives them resources which they can use on other “personal” pursuits.
Also, as we’ve seen in the case of DHH and others (https://drewdevault.com/weird-guys should not be taken as gospel, but it’s certainly a reasonable place to start), public figures have a tendency to move their “personal” business more towards their professional/public platform.
Religious types are never happy in doing only what they say and believe - they want to force these views on others, whether they like it or not. I've seen what religious imperialism does. These choices are not personal and will never be personal.
Worse yet, when you allow SOME types of hate (against women and against homosexuals), it opens the door for other hate. This is Catholic teachings, so are non-Catholics welcome? How about Jews? Moslems? How about pagans and witches? Are bisexuals welcome, since they are half-homosexual?
When you refuse to draw the line at hate, but draw it where you find it convenient, you leave the door open for hate to sneak in everywhere, under the guise of tolerating intolerance.
I put my foot down at any form of hate. Attending, paying, or otherwise supporting this event is tacit acceptance that his form of hate is acceptable.
Further discussion (un-moderated):
https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/1wq04et/im_startin...
https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/1wq2orh/jeff_ge...
Please don't reference that pit of doom for anything.
Every platform has its flaws, including HN.
Just wanted to post this here, someday it might be cool to have this regionally as well, but Sep 12-14 HomelabFest will be in St. Louis, MO (technically St. Charles, which is closer to the airport). It will include a number of homelab-related content creators, talks, a bunch of cool exhibitors (mix of community and companies in the homelab space)... hopefully a good time for all!
I meant to post this earlier but was a bit overwhelmed with all the inbound email. (Planning an event of this scale is hard, I have empathy for anyone who does it lol.)
I've just got into your videos and they are really excellent. If only I were in the US I might come along.
(Currently adding Flux so my Gitlab k8s things auto-apply to my Homelab. No such thing as too much overkill.)
Is there an agenda or list of speakers posted? Maybe I missed it on the site?
Agenda won't be up until a CFP is over, but there will be 10-20 sessions including a few panels.
https://www.homelabfest.org/creators/
Looking forward to it, also good luck!
Good to see that you gave yourself and those assisting you a year to plan and setup everything. Many people underestimate the amount of work that goes into planning this type of event and end up overwhelmed and full of last minute panic. Hope all goes well.
Yes—a year is a minimum, from all the people I talked to—and I've already spent about six months prior setting up everything I could pre-announcement. I have a lot of respect for anyone who puts on an event, of any size.
Hmm. I follow a few topics on HN out of curiosity. I think I know what ‘homelabbing’ is, but there’s no explanation. Everyone likes a secret society when they’re in it.
The first paragraph on the page seems pretty descriptive?
For those who don't watch his YouTube channel or read his blog, Jeff is a fantastic spokesperson for for everything self hosting (enjoying the NTP binge of late!). I really hope this is a success as he's an excellent advocate for a healthy and positive community and framework of understanding this stuff, not to mention his quality as an orator. It would be great to see a cultural push back against surveillance capitalism and centralization of compute and we need good voices and responsible advocates sharing their thoughts to those learning the ropes.
The guy has an obvious conflict of interest - running a youtube channel/taking sponsorships. I've never undestood why so many people take his word at face value. It's at best attempts to manufacture hype for views and at worst shilling for whoever gave him money to shill for them (i.e. qualcomm buying arduino is good actually)
Just to be clear, I've never taken a dime from Qualcomm, Apple, Raspberry Pi, etc—when I do take a sponsorship from any company I'm clear about it.
I always mark videos as sponsored if anything was provided (eg review samples) and not purchased. That never includes payments or editorial oversight, and equipment is either returned or shelved afterwards for future comparisons.
The only thing I accept money for is clearly demarcated ad integrations, like for Micro Center or Surfshark. See https://github.com/geerlingguy/youtube#sponsorships for details.
If I wanted to hype views I would not be sinking a few thousand hours into planning an event ;)
Brother, you are preaching to simonw's audience, what do you expect.
That’s cool. I hope this succeeds
People should also know that Jeff Geerling is anti-abortion (even after r@pe), anti-contraception and anti-homosexuality.
I wouldn’t go if I could and I love homelabs. Your politics matter, especially now.
What does a personal politics matter?
I’m vaguely aware of the dude having removed a lot of rubbish ansible roles which I think he wrote over the years, and now he’s some kind of blogger or something?
He’s not a technical person, sysadmin cosplay aside — and so I think, at least here, we should only judge technical contributions; of which his is a handful of yaml files for installing apache which don’t really count for much.
Totally agree. These responses I expect to see on reddit alone and why I stopped viewing reddit years ago.
Frankly, personal politics matter a great deal to me. I can't look away.
I don't support people who advocate for policies that hurt and kill people (mostly women in this case). That cause tremendous suffering.
I can't support such people in any way, even if their personal politics have nothing to do with their work or whatever event they plan.
People can believe and support what they want, but they should not be free of consequences for such beliefs: exclusion and boycots.
> Frankly, personal politics matter a great deal to me. I can't look away.
I think if you'd also say under every traditional Muslim's post "by the way this person thinks gay people should be thrown off roofs, and women's votes should be half that of men's, and they should only be able to divorce if the man consents, and men should be able to hit their wives to discipline them, and women should walk around in dehumanising clothing because only women are to blame for rape, and supports a religion that builds the most backward societies on the planet" then you'd look a lot more honest.
But you won't. Because you look away from the catastrophic stuff and instead poorly mis-summarise mild stuff that you disagree with to make it sound catastrophic.
The abortion and homosexuality stuff seems to me mostly religious beliefs in the US tho (as far as i can see from the outside) so what you’re really saying here is that you support ostracising someone because of their private religious views? Isn’t there even something in the US constitution about that? If you want to change the constitution to support punishment for wrong belief, and don’t see how that could backfire on you, I’m not sure what anyone can tell you.
Seems like an obvious slippery slope to me. While I disagree with those religious views personally, I strongly believe people should be able to hold whatever beliefs they want and shouldn’t be punished for them.
Maybe I’m just too liberal in that regard tho.
I'm relatively confident that the US Constitution doesn't contain any prohibitions against the private boycott of people with different religious beliefs.
I've thought about it a fair bit, and I don't think there's really a very clear line between which religious beliefs people should politely decline to comment on, vs openly critisise. The cultural taboo that exists in much of the west against privately excluding people on the basis of religion has had some really positive effects (the marked decrease in religious violence of the past few hundred years is amazing), but it also leaves society somewhat vulnerable to the spread of some particularly cancerous ideas.
My remark was to inform people so they can make up their own mind what to do or support.
At no point did I talk about government intervention or something like that.
Just civilians being informed to make choices they want to make
Your remark has nothing to do with the technical merit of this event. Your remark only has to do with his personal life and such comments have no place here (in my opinion).
That's a fair opinion to have. Personally I have the opposite opinion and have no desire to participate in an event organized by someone with these views. I find homophobia absolutely abhorrent and cruel with real life harm to others. I am grateful this was pointed out to me.
“Personal” is an arbitrary line that anyone can decide to draw anywhere. Supporting someone professionally/publicly gives them resources which they can use on other “personal” pursuits.
Also, as we’ve seen in the case of DHH and others (https://drewdevault.com/weird-guys should not be taken as gospel, but it’s certainly a reasonable place to start), public figures have a tendency to move their “personal” business more towards their professional/public platform.
If people are technical brilliant but they hurt people I want nothing to do with them.
that hurt and kill people-> you mean human life via abortion?
Personal choices:
"I don't eat meat."
"I won't have an abortion."
"I pray 5x a day."
"I won't be homosexual."
Versus religious coersion of:
"You cannot eat meat."
"You cannot have an abortion."
"You must pray 5x a day."
"You cannot be homosexual."
Religious types are never happy in doing only what they say and believe - they want to force these views on others, whether they like it or not. I've seen what religious imperialism does. These choices are not personal and will never be personal.
Worse yet, when you allow SOME types of hate (against women and against homosexuals), it opens the door for other hate. This is Catholic teachings, so are non-Catholics welcome? How about Jews? Moslems? How about pagans and witches? Are bisexuals welcome, since they are half-homosexual?
When you refuse to draw the line at hate, but draw it where you find it convenient, you leave the door open for hate to sneak in everywhere, under the guise of tolerating intolerance.
I put my foot down at any form of hate. Attending, paying, or otherwise supporting this event is tacit acceptance that his form of hate is acceptable.
> What does a personal politics matter?
Not a lot. But being anti <X> and letting anyone know is imposing your views on others.
Vouched, cause I wasn't aware of this.
Citations are here: https://louwrentius.com/jeff-geerling-is-anti-abortion-again...
Hate is hate, and religion is just the excuse.
I considered attending, given I'm only 4 hours driving away. But I wont support hate like this. We need less hatred, not more in this world.
Pass.
Disclosure: I wrote that blog post but with sources.