Project leads are good at a lot of things, like thoroughly understanding the ins and outs of their projects, keeping things on track, and getting problems solved. The downside of being so good at the job is that they become immersed in the details and demands of running their projects and spend less time face-to-face with the people who are using them (let’s face it, email is not the same). The people at GroundWork know the value of getting people together in person. For the second year in a row, they’re sponsoring an Open Source Council, bringing together “lead developers from today’s best-of-breed open source IT infrastructure and network monitoring projects” at LinuxWorld in SF, where they’ll be able to talk in person, exchange ideas, and meet with users face-to-face.The developers get a lot out of it. For instance, at last year’s council, Matt Massie and Tobi Oetiker met in person for the first time, and discussed a change to the RRDtool database schema that would make Ganglia more efficient. Tobi returned to Switzerland, thought about it, and implemented the changes Matt proposed. Plus, as a developer, I can tell you that there’s a lot of value in meeting with users face-to-face. It’s the best way to understand how your software is being used and what issues users are facing. And if you’re a user, you can get answers from those questions you’ve been dying to ask, straight from the lead developer of projects like Dojo, Nagios, Cacti, and Ganglia.You can “Ask the Experts” at LinuxWorld this year during the following activities: at hour-long “Ask the Expert” sessions throughout Tuesday, August 7 and Wednesday, August 8 at the GroundWork booth in the exhibits area (Booth 501) and at a Birds of a Feather (BoF) session at 6PM on Tuesday, August 7. Complete information about the Open Source Council, including the Ask the Expert schedule is here. Technology Industry