Regional Show Highlights Community Strength

As we prepare for the big LinuxCon event in Portland, OR this September 21-23, other notable shows and events are popping up on the radar for the Linux community to attend. One show that gets a big mention for me is the seventh annual Ohio LinuxFest.

The Ohio LinuxFest is one of the more successful regional Linux events, in the class of SCALE, the Northwest LinuxFest, and the SouthEast LinuxFest.

I think this event is significant not just because it’s geographically close to my home base. All of these regional events provide ongoing evidence that there is a real need for community-oriented shows in an era when corporate events seem to be the predominent flavor. While our own LinuxCon is not a clone of these regional shows, there is no denying that the success of these events was a big influence on why we put LinuxCon together.

This year’s Ohio LinuxFest (OLF) will be held on September 25-26, 2009 at the Greater Columbus Convention Center, in downtown Columbus, Ohio. According to the show organizers, in honor of the 40th anniversary of Unix, the featured keynote speaker will be Doug McIlroy, a major contributor to the great-grandfather of Linux and a direct contributor to code that powers many of the Unix products of today. McIlroy invented the concept of pipes‚Äîinter-process data streams, so almost all modern operating systems either benefit directly or borrow from McIlroy’s ideas.

Staying in the Unix history theme, another speaker at OLF will be be Peter H. Salus. Salus is a venerable technological historian, who has written A Quarter Century of UNIX, Casting the Net, and (most recently) The Daemon, the Gnu and the Penguin.

Rounding out these views will be a forward-looking talk by Keynote speaker and Linux Journal editor Shawn Powers. Powers‚Äô talk, entitled ‚ÄúFixing the Economy with Linux,‚Äù will focus upon the opportunity that Free Software brings to today’s marketplace.

The usual OLF University professional training classes will also be offered the day before the event. OLFU will feature a Linux Basics program with FreeGeek Columbus, LPI training with Steven Pritchard, and three tracks of LOPSA Professional Sysadmin classes on Friday Sept 25. New this year, Free Geek Columbus joins the OLFU line up with a special class for those new to Linux with Ubuntu Desktop training.

This is a high-caliber show, and definitely worth attending. And if a Hoosier’s saying that, you know it must be good.