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.
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.
he's an excellent advocate for a healthy and positive community
The reactions about this when announced on Reddit seem to contradict that:
> I'm a little disappointed that u/geerlingguy is the one running it, since he's posted some shitty beliefs about gay people that, to my knowledge, he has never retracted or disavowed.
> So he can tell all the women there they have no right to their own body?
> Hmmm I didn't know Jeff was anti-gay and anti-women's rights.
> Hi u/geerlingguy ! Are gay people allowed to attend your event?
I wasn't aware he's publicly said anything like this, but I've always assumed he was quite religious so I'm not particularly surprised.
To be fair, this is a pretty tame and measured expression of disapproval of the modern societal acceptance of homosexuality. I honestly don't know what more I could ask for, in modern societal discourse, for someone I disagree with in terms of how they go about expressing it: the links I read seem to imply he was honest, polite, and clear on his feelings, not inciting hate, violence, or spewing vitriol. Jeff's views are his own, and maybe the crux here is that I don't see politely disagreeing about the righteousness of living homosexually as remotely severe enough to warrant this much attention considering the quality of character of a lot of public figures visible to those of us outside the USA.
I admit seeing a response like this irks me as I feel it needlessly detracts from the mission. That said, it's both A) fair and a good thing to judge and critique any public figure's character and I do think public figures and their views deserve scrutiny, and B) a means to continue to allow powerful people and groups to assassinate the character of and dilute the message of people who run contrary to their goals. I'm genuinely torn on how to feel about how to feel here. I worry we allow ideas to be discarded at the first sign of something we disapprove of in people who share them -which is wrong-, yet several of my best friends are queer and I also could not stand to see them trod upon. Those same queer friends all have views and personality flaws which would be judged just as harshly by others.
Regardless, I don't like you using my excerpt that way. Not everyone's views of "community" mean the classic cancel culture era idiosyncratic definition whereby anyone in any role remotely resembling leadership must share the same specific set of homogeneous views on political and cultural issues to be given any member's "consent" to lead a group. I stand by what I said and still do believe Jeff is an excellent advocate for these ideas. There are obvious limits, to be clear, I would never go to Toastmasters if the local club head spoke about killing jews, but this isn't that and IMO there are so, so many more important battles to go fight out there than this.
Everyone draws their own boundaries based on what is important to them. I do not think your example is unreasonable.
But the homelabbing scene, and many parts of tech in general, are generally more inclusive than many other scenes, perhaps partly because we have a very diverse community in the first place. I think it is important context, and not just a needless detraction, for a physical gathering that the organizer does not share these views.
Regardless, I do not think any interpretation of "positive community" can include the dejection of homosexuality.
But the homelabbing scene, and many parts of tech in general, are generally more inclusive than many other scenes, perhaps partly because we have a very diverse community in the first place
Also probably because many of us were social rejects growing up. I recall my entire CS graduating class being way more accepting of people different from them as a result.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
There’s no point trying with these people, they’re too far gone. They can’t even recognise their breathless intolerance of others for what it is, it’s echo chamber stuff. May as well go piss upwind.
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.
Why would anyone there care if you’re queer? The guy posted a blog 10 years ago (since removed) with one paragraph about his personal religious beliefs; and now suddenly the event he’s hosting is “queer not welcome”? I mean come on.
You want equality, I’m absolutely sure you’ll be treated like everyone else there if you go to the homelab event, regardless of your alignment.
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.
I was scrolling on my phone while drinking my first coffee. I make no apologies for my inability to read more than one sentence at a time.
That said, why not put something in the navigation, like an About page? And why isn't this description in the FAQ? Two things I looked for and didn't find (or would have if I had read the second sentence.
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.
Looking forward to it, also good luck!
Is there an agenda or list of speakers posted? Maybe I missed it on the site?
https://www.homelabfest.org/creators/
Agenda won't be up until a CFP is over, but there will be 10-20 sessions including a few panels.
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.)
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 reactions about this when announced on Reddit seem to contradict that:
etc.
https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/1wq04et/im_startin...
https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/1wq2orh/jeff_ge...
I wasn't aware he's publicly said anything like this, but I've always assumed he was quite religious so I'm not particularly surprised.
To be fair, this is a pretty tame and measured expression of disapproval of the modern societal acceptance of homosexuality. I honestly don't know what more I could ask for, in modern societal discourse, for someone I disagree with in terms of how they go about expressing it: the links I read seem to imply he was honest, polite, and clear on his feelings, not inciting hate, violence, or spewing vitriol. Jeff's views are his own, and maybe the crux here is that I don't see politely disagreeing about the righteousness of living homosexually as remotely severe enough to warrant this much attention considering the quality of character of a lot of public figures visible to those of us outside the USA.
I admit seeing a response like this irks me as I feel it needlessly detracts from the mission. That said, it's both A) fair and a good thing to judge and critique any public figure's character and I do think public figures and their views deserve scrutiny, and B) a means to continue to allow powerful people and groups to assassinate the character of and dilute the message of people who run contrary to their goals. I'm genuinely torn on how to feel about how to feel here. I worry we allow ideas to be discarded at the first sign of something we disapprove of in people who share them -which is wrong-, yet several of my best friends are queer and I also could not stand to see them trod upon. Those same queer friends all have views and personality flaws which would be judged just as harshly by others.
Regardless, I don't like you using my excerpt that way. Not everyone's views of "community" mean the classic cancel culture era idiosyncratic definition whereby anyone in any role remotely resembling leadership must share the same specific set of homogeneous views on political and cultural issues to be given any member's "consent" to lead a group. I stand by what I said and still do believe Jeff is an excellent advocate for these ideas. There are obvious limits, to be clear, I would never go to Toastmasters if the local club head spoke about killing jews, but this isn't that and IMO there are so, so many more important battles to go fight out there than this.
Everyone draws their own boundaries based on what is important to them. I do not think your example is unreasonable.
But the homelabbing scene, and many parts of tech in general, are generally more inclusive than many other scenes, perhaps partly because we have a very diverse community in the first place. I think it is important context, and not just a needless detraction, for a physical gathering that the organizer does not share these views.
Regardless, I do not think any interpretation of "positive community" can include the dejection of homosexuality.
Also probably because many of us were social rejects growing up. I recall my entire CS graduating class being way more accepting of people different from them as a result.
Many churches believe they have a “healthy and positive” community along with their constituents while espousing those same views.
A community can simultaneously be healthy and positive while being politically disagreeable to others.
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)
Brother, you are preaching to simonw's audience, what do you expect.
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 ;)
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.
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.
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.
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).
If people are technical brilliant but they hurt people I want nothing to do with them.
What evidence is there that this guy has hurt anyone? I mean, besides the rubbish ansible playbooks.
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.
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.
that hurt and kill people-> you mean human life via abortion?
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.
There’s no point trying with these people, they’re too far gone. They can’t even recognise their breathless intolerance of others for what it is, it’s echo chamber stuff. May as well go piss upwind.
I know what you mean, but I still think it's good to try. You never know.
Not a lot. But being anti <X> and letting anyone know is imposing your views on others.
Totally agree. These responses I expect to see on reddit alone and why I stopped viewing reddit years ago.
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.
Should I be comfortable going to this event if I'm queer? Is there a benefit to excluding queer people from this event?
I like this idea and hope someone else is inspired to run a more inclusive event.
Why would anyone there care if you’re queer? The guy posted a blog 10 years ago (since removed) with one paragraph about his personal religious beliefs; and now suddenly the event he’s hosting is “queer not welcome”? I mean come on.
You want equality, I’m absolutely sure you’ll be treated like everyone else there if you go to the homelab event, regardless of your alignment.
With the amount of comments about it I'd hope that the host would make a statement at the least. Silence is telling.
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.
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.
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?
I was scrolling on my phone while drinking my first coffee. I make no apologies for my inability to read more than one sentence at a time.
That said, why not put something in the navigation, like an About page? And why isn't this description in the FAQ? Two things I looked for and didn't find (or would have if I had read the second sentence.