Ohio Linuxfest A Success!

If you didn't make it to the Ohio Linuxfest this past weekend you missed a great time. With speakers like John "Maddog" Hall, Jeff Waugh and Chris DiBona not to mention vendors like Novell, IBM, RedHat, and Sun, there was a something for everyone at Ohio Linuxfest this year.

I (Aaron) was there with a booth right next to The Linux Link Tech Show guys. I got to meet so many people from the Open Source community and everyone was interested in the show. Thanks to everyone who stopped by to say hello and find out about the show!

Attendance was up this year by about 33% with about 1050 people there for the one day event. The doors opened at 8:00am with the keynote address starting at 9:00am. Thanks to the help of a lot of great volunteers check in was a snap and everyone was able to get right to the booths.

Jeff Waugh was suppossed to give the opening keynote, but was held up by plane delays so Chris DiBona graciously traded slots and did a fine job talking about Google and their contributions to Open Source. Although I didn't get to see it, Jeff's talk in the afternoon was well received based on the amount of applause coming out of the conference room at the end. John Hall's closing keynote address was fantastic as he talked about getting involved, the downfalls of patents, and the advantages of free software. There were even live penguins brought in by the Columbus Zoo to the delight of the crowd although they were a little late and caused John to have to wait a bit to start his talk.

I spent a lot of time with The Linux Link Tech Show guys and want to thank them for all the help they gave me since I was by myself and had to lug around a tun of gear. They also let my borrow their mixer when mine was not working right at one point. We were able to do some joint interviews with Jeff Waugh, John Born (Neuros), and Ted Haeger (Novell Open Audio). Look for a special on Ohio Linuxfest in the next few days.

This was my second year at Ohio Linuxfest. I personally had a great time at the show and would recommend it to anyone who is interested in Linux or the Open Source/Free Software movement.

If you attended the show, leave a comment and let us know what you thought about it!