Jeff Osier-Mixon

I am a technical writer and blogger in the open-source world, specializing in embedded systems. This means the cell phone you are carrying in your pocket, as well as the washing machine that washed your pocket and the stoplight you are waiting for while you are browsing this on your phone (which you shouldn't be doing), and all the networking points that make it possible for you to read things on your phone in the first place. All of those systems have computers "embedded" inside them, and a large number of them run open-source software, particularly Linux. I enjoy working in this space because I like knowing how things work, and I like showing other people how that happens. I write a blog on these subjects at http://jefro.wordpress.com.

I write highly technical documents and (sometimes) marketing material for Silicon Valley companies, and have been doing so since 1992. I also volunteer for several organizations, including Teaching Open Source http://teachingopensource.org) which helps university professors and K-12 teachers learn about the tenets of open source and how it is changing many industries. I also am a member of the BeagleBoard community (http://beagleboard.org), which surrounds a fascinating small computing apparatus that brings inexpensive high-performance computing to hobbyists and developers alike as open source hardware, a new construct in the computing industry. I am currently working on a book about the Beagleboard.

I have been speaking at technical conferences since 2008 about the importance of documentation, about open source hardware, and about open source software in general. I'd be happy to discuss any of these topics with anyone who cares to listen.