July 2008
Accomodating the need to eat and sleep at UTOSC 2008
Even the geekiest of geeks have to eat and sleep, so for attendees of the 2008 Utah Open Source Conference, we’ve put together a list of restaurants and hotels near the conference location (Salt Lake Community College, Redwood Campus) and around the Salt Lake Valley.
You’ll find this information at <http://2008.utosc.com/pages/lodgingdining>.
Check back as we may be adding more information to the page before the conference begins.
About this conference thing
The 2008 Utah Open Source Conference is the second annual gathering of open source enthusiasts in Utah. Following the amazingly successful first conference held in 2007 at Novell’s Open Source Technology Center in Provo, UT, this year’s conference is being held on the Redwood campus of Salt Lake Community College near Salt Lake City.
For more information about this conference, to register to attend, or to see a really neat website driven by open source software, go over to <http://2008.utosc.com/>.
Posted by Doran Barton on July 27, 2008 in Conference
utos-attendees: For… you know, UTOSC attendees
We’ve set up a new mailing list for all attendees of the 2008 Utah Open Source Conference and we’ve prepopulated the list membership with those people who attended the conference in 2007. This utos-attendees list is a perfect way to ask questions, share information, and stay up to date with the latest news about the conference.
If you’re coming to the conference from out of town, the utos-attendees list is a great way to learn about your lodging options while you’re at the conference. If you’re looking for activities to do after conference sessions end at the end of the day, the utos-attendees list would be a great way to find out what people are doing.
To subscribe to (or, heaven forbid, unsubscribe from) this mailing list, go to http://utos.org/mailman/listinfo/utos-attendees/.
Posted by Doran Barton on July 18, 2008 in Conference, Events
The conference schedule… just in the nick of time!
Clint and company have been working hard to code up the beautiful and illustrious UTOSC website so you can see the schedule of speakers for this year’s Utah Open Source Conference.
It’s done!
It’s now time to drop everything; Don’t walk, RUN to the schedule pages and start figuring out what sessions you’re going to attend at this year’s conference.
If you haven’t yet registered for the 2008 Utah Open Source Conference, what are you waiting for?!
About this conference thing
The 2008 Utah Open Source Conference is the second annual gathering of open source enthusiasts in Utah. Following the amazingly successful first conference held in 2007 at Novell’s Open Source Technology Center in Provo, UT, this year’s conference is being held on the Redwood campus of Salt Lake Community College near Salt Lake City.
For more information about this conference, to register to attend, or to see a really neat website driven by open source software, go over to <http://2008.utosc.com/>.
Posted by Doran Barton on July 15, 2008 in Conference, Meetings
Introducing the Provo Linux User Group (PLUG)
This is the first of many articles to come introducing our readers to the organizations associated with Utah Open Source. Today, we bring you one of the oldest Linux user groups in existence, let alone in Utah: the Provo Linux User Group (PLUG).
PLUG was first formed in 1994 by two then-students at BYU, Thayne Harbaugh and Mike Handy. Thayne and Mike had wanted to form an on-campus student organization for enthusiasts of Linux, but were unable to find a faculty member willing to sponsor its creation. Undaunted, they created PLUG as an off-campus organization.
This was during the early days of Linux and the Internet. The fact the plug.org domain name was available is one example of how early this was; The Intel Pentium CPU was brand new and most geeks were running 386 and 486 CPUs with less than 1GB of hard drive space; Internet service was still a novelty and most connections were made over serial modems at 9600 bps to 14.4Kbps.
The Linux community was young, still driven mostly by volunteers coordinating through online groups. However, 1994 would be the year Red Hat, SuSE, and Caldera would all release the first versions of their respective distributions, thus kicking off the fast-paced commercial Linux distribution race.
PLUG began holding its meetings the second Wednesday of every month — a tradition that has stood the test of time — at various venues around Utah Valley including the Canyon Park campus, The Palace, and at CEDO.
After the first five years of PLUG, the original founders were either moving out of the area, getting busy with work-related (Linux, of course) tasks, or just feeling it was time to pass the torch. Jason “Jayce^” Hall suddenly found himself holding said torch and carried PLUG through the next several exciting years until 2007 when Jason stepped aside to become more involved with UTOS and Ryan Simpkins took the helm.
Over the years PLUG has hosted several special engagements with impressive speakers such as John Terpstra and Steve French of the Samba project, Perl guru and O’Reilly author Damian Conway, and Miguel de Icaza of the Gnome project. Over the course of several Summers, PLUG has held annual barbecues for members and their families which also included surplus swap meets where members could trade or sell old hardware.
PLUG has a member mailing list which varies in the amount of traffic it gets. Most of the time, the list sees fairly low to moderate traffic, but occasionally will fill its members’ mailboxes with spurts of off-topic discussions. PLUG hosts archives of these highly intellectual discussions at http://plug.org/pipermail/plug.
The PLUG website is firmly located at http://www.plug.org/ and, as mentioned above, meets (with some very, very rare exceptions) the second Wednesday of each month at the Omniture building in the Canyon Park campus.
Posted by Doran Barton on July 15, 2008 in Community, Membership, UserGroups
Announcing a UTOSC keynote speaker: Paul Frields
It’s time to let loose information about yet-another keynote speaker for the 2008 Utah Open Source Conference. We are very pleased to announce that attendees at the upcoming conference will have the fortune of hearing from Paul Frields, current Fedora Project Leader (FPL).
Before being employed by Red Hat and serving in the FPL position, Paul worked as an engineer for the U.S. government, but has been intimately involved in the Fedora Project community since 2003 (after Red Hat created the Fedora Project out of the ashes of the free Red Hat Linux distribution). Paul’s involvement with Fedora has included working on and chairing the steering committee for the Fedora Documentation Project.
Paul lives in Fredericksburg, VA with his wife and 2 children where he also helps manage FredLUG - the Fredericksburg Linux User Group.
Paul’s personal blog illustrates that he represents many in the open source community. In addition to being a outspoken advocate of open source software and the communities surrounding open source projects, Paul loves music (playing and listening) and good movies. He lists as one thing he hates that he can’t just play music and hack on Linux all day.
As the FPL, Paul claims accountability for everything in the Fedora project. He works with the Fedora Program Manager, Fedora Engineering Manager, and Fedora Community Architecture teams to make sure Fedora is on track and making progress toward meeting the goals of their next release and supporting the community using the current releases. Paul also manages a handful of Fedora Project packages.
Paul plans to talk about the Fedora Project in his keynote presentation, how it came about, where it’s going, and some of the challenges it has faced in its five year existence.
We are truly lucky to have Paul Frields along with Joe Brockmeier as keynote speakers at this year’s conference!
A blurb about the conference
The 2008 Utah Open Source Conference is the second annual gathering of open source enthusiasts in Utah. Following the amazingly successful first conference held in 2007 at Novell’s Open Source Technology Center in Provo, UT, this year’s conference is being held on the Redwood campus of Salt Lake Community College near Salt Lake City.
For more information about this conference, to register to attend, or to see a really neat website driven by open source software, go over to <http://2008.utosc.com/>.
Posted by Doran Barton on July 12, 2008 in Community, Conference, Events, Keynotes, News
Volunteer opportunities at UTOSC 2008
As you may know, the 2008 Utah Open Source Conference is coming up in less than two months (28 - 30 August, 2008). In order to pull off another successful conference, we need help, possibly your help. In addition to getting a warm feeling inside, conference volunteers may be privy to other benefits:
- Free admission to the conference (a $70 value!)
- Cool swag and other goodies
- Meet and greet with speakers and presenters
It’s an opportunity to be a part of history in the making. The second Utah Open Source Conference is destined to be just as groundbreaking as the first.
Now, we’re not talking about garbage-dumping duty. We’re talking about important, critical functions to the conference. Here are some of the positions that need to be filled:
- Room manager - These individuals coordinate the presentation rooms, collect statistics, manage prize giveaways, and distribute news and announcements to attendees before and after presentations.
- Ambassador - These individuals help attendees and conference presenters get the information they need and get to where they need to go.
- Registration - The all-important front-desk people who hand out badges, sort out registration issues, distribute conference information packets, take registration fees, and welcome attendees to the conference.
- Blogger - These individuals simply blog about the conference as they attend. It’s just that easy.
There will probably be more volunteer positions created as the conference approaches.
There’s no better way to experience the Utah Open Source Conference than from right in the center of it. Volunteer positions expose you to the inner workings of a conference like no other opportunity.
If you’re interested in volunteering, send us some e-mail to volunteer@utos.org with your contact information and what you may be interested in doing.
For information on volunteer positions, see http://wiki.utos.org/UTOSC2008/VolunteerPositions.
Posted by Doran Barton on July 7, 2008 in Conference
Reminder: Jayce^ on Couchcast.org today (NOON MDT)
Last week, we announced that Jayce^ Hall will be on couchcast.org. Well that day is today, so come and listen to him and the couchcast crew as they discuss who will be at the Utah Open Source Conference 2008.
Here’s the details again just in case you missed them the first time:
When: July 7, 2008 12pm MDT (Today)
Where: http://couchcast.org
See you all there!
Posted by Clint Savage on July 7, 2008 in Conference, Events, News, Podcasts, Streaming
Utah Open Source Podcast Update
We’ve been madly at work this week updating our podcasts through last Friday. We’ve got quite a list up at http://podcast.utos.org, with more coming this week. Take a look at the latest available podcasts:
- Utah Python - Jython by Daniel Miller
- PLUG - Samba by Steve French
- Utah Python - Google App Engine by Seth House
- SLLUG - Embedded Linux by Jeremy Garff
- UPHPU - Qcodo by Travis Barney
There are many more. Feel free to use the rss feed. Promote the open source user in you!
Cheers,
Clint
Posted by Clint Savage on July 4, 2008 in Meetings
Vote! No more abstracts!
UTOSC 2008 abstract submission has ended. And while that part of the process is over, we now have the task of selecting presenters. For those of you who have submitted presentations, or those in the community we’ve contacted, feel free to vote for your favorites in our digg style voting system.
As mentioned before, login and click on the “SPEAKERS” link at the UTOSC 2008 website. Vote for or against the presentations (or don’t vote for a presentation at all). But hurry, because voting privileges are only good until July 10, 2008.
On July 15, 2008, a tentative presentation schedule will be delivered. In addition, because UTOSC 2008 has more presenters than we can possibly take, many presenters will be asked to be alternates. This selection date should give you almost 45 days to prepare your presentation.
Don’t forget, registration is open as well, visit http://2008.utosc.com/ to register today. If you haven’t already, contact your Local User Group for discount codes today.
We hope to see you all at Utah Open Source Conference 2008.
Cheers,
Clint
Posted by Clint Savage on July 2, 2008 in Conference, Events
Announcing a UTOSC keynote speaker: Joe Brockmeier
The 2008 Utah Open Source Conference is coming up fast (August 28-30). We are going to continue to give you reasons to be very excited (as we are) to attend UTOSC 2008 until the very end.
We are very pleased to announce one of the keynote speakers at this year’s conference will be none other than Joe “Zonker” Brockmeir of Novell and the openSUSE project.
Joe’s keynote presentation, titled “How to bootstrap a community,” is sure to be interesting considering his background. What started with purchasing a copy of Slackware in 1996 turned into nearly a decade-long career writing about Linux and the open source community and industry for a variety of high-profile tech publications. Prior to being hired as openSUSE Community Manager for Novell early this year, Zonker spent time as Editor-In-Chief for Linux Magazine and as editorial director of Linux.com. His writing background also include contribution to many books, HOWTOs and other technical documents.
While his job at Novell is primarily centered around supporting and promoting the use of the openSUSE Linux distribution, Joe’s been quoted in a few recent interviews saying he’s committed to advocating the use of all forms of Linux and open source software.
Joe Brockmeier’s keynote presentation will undoubtably hold special value for users of the openSUSE and SUSE distributions, but considering Joe’s experience and knowledge about the Linux and open source industries over the last decade or so, this presentation offers great potential value for any UTOSC attendee.
A blurb about the conference
The 2008 Utah Open Source Conference is the second annual gathering of open source enthusiasts in Utah. Following the amazingly successful first conference held in 2007 at Novell’s Open Source Technology Center in Provo, UT, this year’s conference is being held on the Redwood campus of Salt Lake Community College near Salt Lake City.
For more information about this conference, to register to attend, or to see a really neat website driven by open source software, go over to <http://2008.utosc.com/>.
Posted by Doran Barton on July 2, 2008 in Meetings