Linuxfest Northwest 2006
Linuxfest Northwest
is a non-commercial, one-day conference and exhibition of open-source
technology, with an emphasis on Linux. It is held once a year, is
free of charge and is hosted at the
Bellingham Technical College (BTC)
in Bellingham, WA. This year, Linuxfest runs from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM on Saturday,
April 29, 2006.
Linuxfest Northwest is produced by user groups, for users. It is more
fun and less commercial than other computer shows I have attended. This
year, seven user groups have collaborated to produce Linuxfest:
About 1,200 people attend Linuxfest Northwest each year. For 2006, 45
presentations are scheduled and more than 40 exhibitors will be in the exhibits
room. Exhibitors include user groups, book vendors, computer vendors,
ISPs and representatives from free software projects.
As usual, the official Linuxfest booth will be selling tickets for the
"World Famous
Raffle" at the end of the day. The raffle always has great prizes
and is worth sticking around for. In addition, Google once again will
have a booth in the exhibitors area, and representatives will be giving
out tickets to the Brew Fest.
The
schedule of
presentations for this year is impressive. They will be held in 12
different classrooms, during four different time slots. Once again, I wish
I could be in several places at once in order to attend presentations scheduled
for the same time. The schedule also indicates that
there is something for everyone. Some talks are suitable for complete beginners, such as
"Linux for Dummies"
by
Dee-Ann LeBlanc. For
more experienced users familiar with development, system administration
and audio/video, the schedule offers "OSS Network Management
Tools", by Francois Caen; "Persistent NUMA Threads
++", by Elaine Tsiang; and "Digital Photos and Image
Editing", by Adrian Klaver. In addition, speakers from the
following companies will be present:
Novell,
Oracle,
Sun Microsystems,
Red Hat,
IBM
and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Once again Linuxfest will sponsor a geek trivia contest called
"Alpha Geek",
hosted by Chuck Wolber. I went to the Alpha Geek contest last year and
enjoyed it tremendously. And after Linuxfest, you can debate trivia
answers while attending the
April Brew's Day party
from 4-9 PM.
At the show, the traditional grilled salmon lunch served by BTC culinary students
will be available, along with espresso drinks.
Directions explaining how to get to Linuxfest are available
here.
BTC has plenty of parking and there is no charge for it.
If you'd rather not drive, Pogo
Linux is chartering buses to take people from Seattle to the show. If you are in the Seattle
area and wish to "buspool" with dozens of other Linux fans, sign up
here.
Sign-ups will end no later than Thursday, April 27, so if you want to
ride the bus, sign up today!
If you would like to help promote Linuxfest Northwest, you can download
this full-color
poster
that shows a Pacific Northwest totem pole with Tux the penguin on top.
Linuxfest Northwest 2006 is going to be a lot of fun. I hope to see you
there!
