LinuxFest Northwest 2009

April 25^th & 26^th—Bellingham Technical College

LinuxFest Northwest website

LFNW Saturday Night

If you haven’t already made plans for Saturday evening, please be a guest at the LFNW Saturday Night event. Thanks to our generous sponsors, LFNW will host an after-party for Fest participants at the Syre Student Center on the delightful Whatcom Community College campus (link at the site for a campus map pdf). 5:00 p.m. to midnight. NO CHARGE.

Food, entertainment, conversation, libation, Red Hot Cheetos.

Good music played softly, conversation nooks for a new project tête-à-tête, special entertainment interlude (slightly racy, but government-endorsed, family fare), goodies, awards. Coffee, water, soft drinks, Extra Hot Ginger Beer (non-alcoholic). Rabbit food, junk food, M&Ms.

Low key get-together for Fest attendees, exhibitors, presenters. There is no charge for the after-party, but you have to be wearing a Fest wrist band or in some other way be identifiable as a Fest participant.

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According to informed sources, The Official LinuxFest Northwest Saturday Event will be followed by a disorganized more informal wingding at a dive near the Hampton.

Texas Hold’em (small blind, a quarter to start; big blind, double it), black vodka & single malt (Islay or Laphroaig preferred), Cohibas or Davidoffs. It’ll change your life. Ask around at the Fest. If you’re brave enough for CLI…

Here’s the deal, if you don’t understand, you should probably find something else to do.

UPDATE (4/20/09; 10:30 a.m.):

The after-after-party is not sanctioned by LFNW. Some people apparently have gotten the mistaken impression that LFNW is sponsoring this poker party. We are not even clear that the party is taking place as rumored. LFNW is not responsible for the behavior of the people attending the Fest, nor for what they do or don’t do.

People who attend LinuxFest Northwest are guests of Bellingham Technical College, Whatcom Community College, and the City of Bellingham. Individual actions reflect on the open source community.

Tutorium – share your expertise

Last year, the Linux Lab was a hit. The people who came in were relatively new. They were curious about open source and appreciated having the opportunity to have a first hand experience. There were also quite a few fairly sophisticated questions.

The Tutorium is in a computer lab near the center of Fest activity. It will be available throughout the Fest for people to try out Linux and open source applications. The Tutorium also serves as an Email Garden and Surf City.

Please consider sharing your enthusiasm and expertise with people who are exploring open source. It would help if you had some experience with mainstream Linux distros; a willingness to be of service is really the only thing that’s needed. You don’t have to be an expert, but if you are a whiz, this is an opportunity to help someone get lit up about Linux and open source.

If you are able to assist the open source movement by being a tutor, please register.

Seattle chartered bus/RideShare

There will be no chartered bus from Seattle to the Fest this year.
Instead, GSLUG is organizing an LFNW Ride Share.

LFNW Badge

Coming to the Fest?

Here’s an LFNW badge to stick on your site.

Companies are recruiting at LFNW

Several companies are reporting that they will be recruiting at the Fest.  Amazon is making their first ever appearance; looking for LAMP folks. Red Hat is taking resumes.

This is consistent with a new forecast from IDC (pdf) that shows Linux-related software revenue growing by 21% during 2009. The overall software market is projected to increase less than 5% in the same period.

It’s a great time to be involved with open source.  Whether looking for a job or trying to find top LAMP talent, LinuxFest Northwest=opportunities.

PgDay@LFNW

Update on the one day miniconference on PostgreSQL.

PgDay will feature five 45 minute talks on everyone’s favorite database, PostgreSQL (facts courtesy of the vast PostgreSQL marketing department).

Presentation topics:

• Filesystem performance from a database perspective
• Using PostGIS to add spatial flavor to applications
• pg_proctab: accessing system stats in PostgreSQL
• PostgreSQL warm standby made easy
• PostgreSQL Replicator

There will be a friendly debate at the after-party about the merits of MySQL and PostgreSQL. The argument will continue at the after-after-party, followed by a rumble between the MySQL Vodka Slammers and the Postgres Beer Boys to settle things once and for all. Place your bets with Bill the Bookie at the World Famous Raffle™ table.

AskMonty & Black Vodka

Monty Widenius will be at LFNW, talking about MariaDB (a MySQL branch) and Maria Engine (transactional storage engine for MySQL). The presentation will be an open environment, where the audience helps guide the conversation…and the discussion is open for debate.

Monty is the main author of the original MySQL.

It is rumored that Monty will be at the LFNW after-party with black  vodka (not Blavod, but rather Finnish wodka flavored with salmiakki) and may be at the after-after-party with colder-than-ice-cold wodka…the real stuff.

Be prepared.

FreePBX – Phillipe Lindheimer

FreePBX is an open source winner. It has an exceptional development and user community, and is a critical component in most Asterisk deployments.

Phillipe Lindheimer is one of the key FreePBX developers. He is presenting at the Fest about the most popular LAMP/Asterisk application, FreePBX. This is an exceptional opportunity to talk Asterisk and open source VoIP with a world class expert on the subject.

Anyone considering a PBX implementation should catch this presentation.

From the FreePBX site:
FreePBX is an easy to use GUI that controls and manages Asterisk, the world’s most popular open source telephony engine software. FreePBX has been developed and hardened by thousands of volunteers over tens of thousands man hours. FreePBX has been downloaded over 3,000,000 times and claims over 300,000 active phone systems. If you don’t know about FreePBX, you are probably paying too much for your phone system.

FreePBX site

Fedora – In the House

The Fedora team is making a day of it at LFNW. The news is here.

Fedora Activity Day means having fun, getting things done, making rapid progress for Free and Open Source software.

In addition to FAD, the Fedorans will be making presentations that reflect their commitment to the success of open source technology and the people/companies that use it.

Attendance at Karsten Wade’s session “Participate or Die” should be required for any company that relies on open source software. Open source software puts control in the hands of users. Companies that don’t participate are giving up some degree of control of their businesses. More importantly, they are losing opportunities to get high returns on small investments without increasing budget or resources.

LFNW in the movies

Anyone who wants to know what LinuxFest Northwest is all about should check out this Jupiter Broadcasting video from the 2008 Fest.

Jupiter Broadcasting was formed in May, 2008 by the fine, fine folks that brought the Linux Action Show and CastaBlasta into the world. Here, at Jupiter Broadcasting, we do not make “podcasts”… we make SHOWS.  Quality, diverse and interesting shows.  Shows that we want to listen to ourselves.  Shows that hearken back to the golden age of radio.