So its soo close. So very close, to the Utah Open Source Conference 2008. Only, I have to write this paragraph about the conference itself and what it means to open source in Utah. What it means to be involved in this amazing conference.
This blog post is supposed to be about something useful, but I think its just going to be a rambling session about all the things I think that are neat about open source, freedom, Utah and the benefits of holding UTOSC every year.
So what do I think, well… I think that UTOSC is my favorite thing I’ve ever done as a tech person. I have an 8 year old boy, which is much of the reason I do this sort of thing. He’s the reason I try to get webcams working with Ekiga, or try to record videos to send him with Cheese. I love my boy, and I want him to be proud of his papa, and this is one way I can make a mark on society, to change the world if you will.
When I talk about changing the world, I don’t mean changing every aspect, but just doing something so simple that you love, to change the way others look at the thing and say, “wow!”. That’s the thing I mean about changing the world.
I mean, geez, what do we have this year anyway? Let’s see. Oh, to start off with, a great theme ‘HOWTO’. It really can’t get any better than that, can it!? It points the way to learn how to do something in open source. A contributor, a learning mechanism, a simple text document that started the whole thing.
We also have a great team of folks involved in making it happen this year. I would be remiss if I didn’t thank them. They’ve been instrumental in getting this to be the world class conference I hope it to become. We’re not there yet, but give us a couple more years to learn all of those little tips and tricks.
Software, that’s another thing we have that’s great. This coming year, I plan to take the UTOSC conference site and remake it again, this time with a better feature set. I have to say, however, that the system we put into place more than 8 months ago, has turned out to be a great asset. I thank those who’ve helped us make conman, our conference management software. You know who you are, and I appreciate the help.
Because we’re running the conference and are also computer nerds/geeks/etc, we get to play with cool hardware, dink around with printing, do audio, video and invite families to participate in our wondrous extravaganza every year. But we also get to do something else that much cooler, we get to share our joys and passions with others. Show others why open source is the way of the future. Why its important to us and why we think that paying for software or having limted access to software is just wrong.
Learning is always part of a hobby. This great, wonderful, exciting hobby of ours is so great we want to share the wealth with you all.
A couple things that I think are great about UTOSC 2008 are Family Day, I’m excited to set up the try-it lab on Friday night for the kiddies. The fact that we’ll have booths for all three of the major Linux distributions (Fedora, OpenSUSE and Ubuntu). But there’s more.
On Thursday evening, Paul Frields will kick our conference into high gear with Fedora, first. Friday comes and Joe Brockmeier will entertain us with some community talk. And finally, on Saturday morning, we have Christer Edwards whose been instrumental in much of the Ubuntu community growth over the past couple years.
I’ve been influenced heavily by the Fedora Project. And as an North American Ambassador, I’m also in charge of the Fedora booth. We have a few volunteers and they’ve been great. I anticipate the booth to be filled with people asking questions all three days. One thing I wanted to mention, is that the booths/expo area is open to any/all that come through. Spreading open source means allowing for the opportunity to use the software. We want you all to come and listen to what our folks have to say.
Okay, so it sounds like my writers block really didn’t happen, but I wasn’t sure I could just sit down and crank out something this easily. Off to write a simple 100 word intro to the Utah Open Source Conference.
Wish me luck!
Herlo
