LinuxFest NW a Success!

We had a great time meeting people and talking about open source in small business at LinuxFest NW. Besides our own talk, we sat in on George Dyson's fascinating history about the early development of computing at Princeton University, at the hands of Von Neumann and Oppenheimer...

We also enjoyed Reverend Ted's presentation about the upcoming features in SuSE 10.1, demonstrating the stuff that puts Linux on a par with Apple and ahead of Microsoft--the clean, fast F-Spot photo manager, the Banshee media player that finally lets us legally play music in Linux, and XGL special effects that'll put Vista to shame.

One other note: The O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) last year apparently was unable to use volunteers for setup, shutting much of the local Linux community out of their event. This was due to complaints by the unionized workers at the Convention Center, the new venue for the event. In response, the Portland LUG and other local groups created the "Free" OSCON, or FOSCON. Now, apparently O'Reilly loved the idea, and so they're sponsoring both events. FOSCON may end up being at the same venue, and allow anyone to attend the exhibitor floor, "birds of a feather" sessions, and FOSCON events for free, while still charging for the OSCON lectures and classes. We're planning to attend--if you'd like to meet up with us there, drop us a line!

The biggest disappointment with LinuxFest was just that there was too much going on at the same time, and not enough time to soak it all in... I made it to perhaps half of the exhibits, and with 12 sessions going on simultaneously, I think everyone only got a taste of a couple interests during the day.