Southeast Linuxfest 2010

In case you haven’t heard, the second annual Southeast Linuxfest is happening June 12-13 in Spartanburg, SC at the Spartanburg Marriott at Renaissance Park.

SELF 2010

There’s a lot of work going on behind the scenes to make SELF 2010 even better than last year’s event. SELF is currently accepting proposals for talks on all things FLOSS.

Registration will open soon, but you can make your hotel reservations now if you need to.
Spread the word! Let us know if you’re interested in helping out, having a booth or being a sponsor.

Southeast Linuxfest recap

Went roadtripping out to Clemson for the first annual Southeast Linuxfest with a few of my fellow CSCLUG-ers. The drive up there was pretty uneventful, and also doubled as a preview of what to expect when I head back up there for orientation.

The conference turned out quite well, with attendance numbers that far exceeded what was expected. Last numbers I saw said 455 registrations with a little over 360 actually showing up. Pretty awesome for a first year conference. Of course now the bar has been set pretty high for next year’s conference.

Meeting the people I’d been working with online to plan the conference was pretty cool. In typical fashion, I ended up taking on the task of photographer and spent most of my time wandering around taking photos of everything. I did stop long enough to catch a few very good talks, and bounced around from room to room catching snippets of other talks.

The talk by Richard Weait on the OpenStreetMap project was one of the more interesting talks that I made it to. Completely open mapping data that you can do pretty much anything with. And it’s not limited to just street data either. What’s really neat is that almost all of the map data comes from user contributions. Browsing around Charleston, SC shows a reasonably complete map, but there are gaps here and there that could probably be filled in with a few mapping parties. At the beginning of the talk, Richard asked the audience what else maps were good for, and I shouted out “finding out when the train is coming”. It was a reference to a Flintstones episode (“The Story of Rocky’s Raiders“), but I don’t think anybody got it.

Another talk by Brian Leonard on developing for platforms beyond just your own computer was pretty interesting. Showed off some pretty simple but interesting things that can be done with Netbeans and VirtualBox.

The performance by DualCore at the after-party was pretty good. Rap/hip-hop usually isn’t my thing, but their nerdcore style is something I could possibly get into.

Very soon planning for the 2010 Southeast Linuxfest will begin. I’m expecting it’s going to be a lot of work to make it at least as good (preferably better) than this year’s event.

Southeast LinuxFest rolling along

There’s still time to register for Southeast LinuxFest. Space at the Comfort Inn, the offical SELF hotel, is running low but there are still rooms in the SELF block available.

The list of speakers includes notable names from Zenoss, Google, Redhat, Fedora, Digium and others. There will also be breakout sessions that will cover topics of interest to anybody involved in using open source. Whether you’re a hardcore Linux/Opensource geek or new to the whole opensource world, SELF will have something for you. Check out the exhibitors to find out more about them or meet other like-minded users and see what they’re doing with Linux/OSS.

SELF is free to attend, but if you register as a paid supporter, you’ll also get the spiffy SELF shirt.

Southeast LinuxFest, June 13, Clemson, SC

Southeast LinuxFest

Coming up in a couple of months is the inaugural Southeast LinuxFest going on at Clemson University on June 13. The event features a number of prominent speakers from the Linux and Open Source world and should hopefully be a fun and informative event.

Southeast LinuxFest, June 13, Clemson, SC

The SouthEast LinuxFest is a community event for anyone who wants to learn more about Linux and Free & Open Source software. It is part educational conference, and part social gathering. Like Linux itself, it is shared with attendees of all skill levels to communicate tips, ideas, and to benefit all who use Linux/Free and Open Source Software. LinuxFest is the place to learn, to make new friends, to network with new business partners, and most importantly, to have fun!