For the past four years, the "brightest minds in Linux" have come together at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit to "tackle and solve the most pressing issues facing Linux today." The opportunity to solve is coming up quickly, and those who want in on the tackling had better move fast.

The annual Collaboration Summit is one of the many conferences put on each year by the Linux Foundation. Like several others, it is an invitation-only event, limited to just 300 brightest minds — those minds include "core kernel developers, distribution maintainers, ISVs, end users, system vendors and other community organizations." This year's event will take place in San Francisco from April 14 - 16 at the Hotel Kabuki.

Though proposals submissions closed just last week, and presenters are not scheduled to be notified until March 1st, a preliminary schedule has already been released. Among the events will be keynotes from Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin (State of the Linux Union), IBM VP Dr. Daniel Frye (10+ years of Linux at IBM), PostgreSQL developer Josh Berkus (How to Prevent Community: Making Sure Your Pond Stays Small), and Alexander Shanz of German Air Traffic Control (Why Your Life Might Depend on Your Code).

Roundtable discussions will include Andrew Morton, Greg Kroah-Hartman, Jon Corbet, James Bottomley, and Christoph Hellwig on the Linux kernel, and Doug Tidwell, John Mark Walker, Matt Asay, and Sam Ramji with "Does Open Source Mean Open Cloud?" Workgroups are scheduled on Driver Backport, OpenPrinting, Foss Bazaar, Legal and Tracing, LSB, and Desktop — special tracks will also be offered on MeeGo and High Performance Computing. There will also be a full-day MeeGo session at the Summit. Additional presentations will be announced on March 2nd.

Registration for the event is open through April 12th, and is free of charge to those selected — as only 300 spaces are available, however, early submission is strongly recommended. A session of the Foundation's training series, Linux Performance Tuning will be offered on the 12th and 13th at a cost of $1,200. Interested parties can submit an invitation request via the Collaboration Summit website.

Photo courtesy of ralphbijker.