[OLUG] Review of LinuxFest

[Aaron Grothe]

Hey Guys,

As promised here is my review of LinuxFest.

To put this in the correct perspective.  My team and I were going to present
3 papers we presented 2 papers and decided to come home early.  It is very
much a first year kind of conference.  It is very badly organized.  We saw
about a total of 100-150 people in our 3 days at LinuxFest and I don't think
it is going to get better.

Several of the sponsors have pulled out

Redhat shut down their booth before the show even opened.
Informix shut down after the first day of general admission.
LinuxMall was talking about pulling out at the end of today.

Why we pulled out

At our first talk we had 1 person, this is not because it was a badly
attended talk between all 4 tracks there were 12 people attending all the
talks.
During our second talk we had four people and had construction going on in
the background so we had to yell.  Fortunately since none of the other
speakers showed up we had 100% of the audience.
It really is not cost-effective to have my people doing talks for empty
seats that nobody can hear.
I asked the management over a 1/2 dozen times in the last 3 months to list
one of the authors on the list of presenters and they were too
lazy/stupid/busy to accommodate this simple request.

Good things

I think the conference is now free.  So you don't have to pay $99.00 for it.
Got a chance to meet the guy who runs geeknews.org very good guy
Got a chance to pitch my plan to Bruce Perens if I didn't already have
venture capital I think I might have been able to swing a deal with him.
Bruce is very cool.
Got a chance to talk to one of the major guys at slashdot I think his name
is edmund.
Got a chance to talk to Eric Raymond for a little bit.

Unfortunately all of these people have already left the conference, except
for the slashdot guy.  I think mike from geeknews.org might hang around for
a few more days but I think he planning to shut down his booth and go hit
some movies.

I did have a chance to talk to the Kansas City Linux User Group and they are
thinking that they might try and organize a conference in a year or 2, after
the horror from this one dies down.  After this it is going to be very hard
to organize another one.  I really liked this location because it was
driving distance for me which meant I can afford to take my whole team.

It was really nice to see bunch of the important people from the Linux
community being willing to come to KC to help launch the conference.  I just
wish some of the organizational things had been done better.

Overall Summary : If you are going to go to worlds of fun and want to see a
linux event it is worth the drive across town.  Otherwise, I wouldn't bother
going from omaha to the event.

This is only my opinion though it seems to be one the whole team shares.

Regards,

Aaron
====
"The Journey is the Reward" - Old Zen Buddhist Saying




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