Southeast Linux Fest
Dear Fellow Bloggers,
It was not that long ago that I was listening to a podcast by Dan Lynch and Fabian Scherschel entitled Linux Outlaws. They are not the indepth technical podcast that I love to listen to, but these guys have the right views and brand of humor to keep me entertained and up to date on all my opensource news. About a month ago I listened to their show and heard the ad for Southeast Linux Fest in Spartanburg, SC. Spartanburg, you say? Well that’s just three hours from my home. So off I went to my first Linux Fest!
I want to give a slight overview of SELF 2010. As a new comer I arrived at SELF, excited and scared, Friday evening… Scared? Well this was of course my first Linux conference and I wasn’t sure if I was going to be left out in the wind like I was at other conferences. However, as soon as I arrived I instantly went to the registration desk, which was quite easy to find. There I picked up my meal tickets, obtained some SELF goodies, and was pointed in the direction of UbuCon. I figured that UbuCon might just be a gathering of other like minded souls whom enjoyed the Ubuntu distro. Although, this was some what true, there was also an extra added bonus. A few Ubuntu Community Managers where there as well including Jono Bacon. Wow, I sat in the same room with the folks that designed my favorite distro!
After the final session of UbuCon, I went my to room for a moment to attend to my lovely laptop which I attempted to trick out for speed; by mixing and matching LXDE and several other components including GNOME Network Manager. Needless to say Network Manager had decided to implode the moment it knew I had arrived as SELF. After about an hour of struggling with the laptop I decided it was time for dinner so I rushed to the lobby. Upon entering the elevator I met a gentleman by the name of Alan Hicks. I suppose he saw my newbie-ness to attending Linux conferences and offered to buy me a beer at the 299 (hotel sports bar). It turned out that Alan was a speaker at SELF and an avid Slackware Linux fan. After talking with him and several others that night, including a college professor whom had made the trek down from Ohio on motorcycle, I began to feel what I had heard so many others talk about in blogs, podcasts, etc. It was the power of the community! Opensource users are some of the kindest people you will ever meet. Perhaps this is because of the model to which we practice each day, the freedom of knowledge and software. It has a good ring to it, right? Feels very liberating… I went to bed feeling quite well about my choice to attend and looked forward to Saturday.
Saturday was awesome and I will not overwhelm you with all the details but again I was thrown into conference room after conference room with proven industry leaders with tons of knowledge being thrust at me, freely and willingly. What a blast! But, all at the same time, I could feel my brain sizzling by 7pm…
Sunday was a sad day, I didn’t want to leave. Instead I wanted to bag up the Ubuntu Community Managers and take them back to Burlington with me. What an amazing experience to match faces with names that you see in Launchpad, etc!
I look forward to seeing all the video recordings and presenter slides get posted to the Southeast Linux Fest site soon, so that I can again relive some of those fond moments that the opensource community shared with me!
Thank you Google, Fedora, openSUSE, and many others for partnering this event!
Tags: Jono Bacon, Linux Outlaws, SELF 2010, Southeast Linux Fest, UbuCon
[...] Southeast Linuxfest http://www.redshirtlinux.com/?p=31 [...]
[...] Check out my post from last year, giving SELF an awesome review. This is an awesome conference and I encourage everyone who is able to attend and/or speak to reserve a room as soon as further details are posted: http://www.redshirtlinux.com/?p=31 [...]