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/>.