Linuxfest in Bellingham last weekend
I was not able to attend but it seems that Linux has arrived in Bellingham.
From
NewsForge:
Linuxfest Northwest 2005 in review
If giving away T-shirts is an accurate way to estimate attendees, then at least 750 people made the trip to Linuxfest Northwest in Bellingham, Wash., last weekend. Linuxfest Northwest 2005 continued the conference's strong focus on highly technical presentations -- this is not a vendor-centric event.
The all-volunteer, grassroots festival is held annually on the Bellingham Technical College campus. The college provides facilities for the event at no charge. Mark Ashworth, a Linuxfest volunteer, explained that the low overhead allows the event to be free to the public and also helps make it all about the technology. Funds are raised through a raucous raffle at the end of the day, and also from the $100 donations that are requested of exhibitors. Ashworth said there are about half a dozen key volunteer organizers and 30 more student volunteers who help out on the day of the festival. "[It's an] all volunteer staff. We're not paid at all," he said.
George Dyson presented the keynote this year on "Von Neumman's Universe." It was based on the presentation he gave at OSCON in 2003. Dyson is a computer "paleontologist," as he describes himself, and happens to live in Bellingham.
On the vendor side, Pogo Linux continued its strong support of the event by chartering two buses to bring people to Bellingham free of charge. Google also made its first showing at Linuxfest with a recruiting booth for potential employees.
One notable difference from Linuxfest 2004 was the lessened concern over legal issues in the GNU/Linux world. In 2004 there was much talk about the SCO/IBM lawsuit, and presentations were given on the matter. Happily, that was not the case this year.
Have to attend the 2006 event. Running Fedora and SuSE on two machines here and ran it for some servers and security machines at my last "real" job. This website runs on a Linux server (as do most).
Good stuff...
Posted by DaveH at May 2, 2005 6:00 PM