The Utah Open Source Foundation

UTOSC 2008 Has Ended. Thank you for coming

Clint Savage — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 21:56:25 +0000

The Utah Open Source Foundation thanks you for the opportunity to share some of the best of Utah’s brightest open source folks. We hope you all enjoyed this year’s conference and are looking forward to 2009.

Photos Going Up

It appear that flickr is getting a deluge of photos from UTOSC 2008, so go and check them out. I anticipate there being several hundred floating around. Remember, we have a flickr group and would love it if you could tag your photos with utosc and utosc2008. If you took photos, please add them to our group and tag them appropriately so others can find them.

Family Day

There were plenty of fun things to do this year and I think the biggest successes outside the keynotes and presentations was the Family Day area. A big thanks to Shauna ‘Grandma’ Theobald for her help with the ‘Kids Zone’. We plan to do this again next year!

Keynotes Rocked!

This year was great because we had two killer keynotes on topic and several local keynotes who did a great job sharing the message of open source. A special thank you to Paul Frields of the Fedora Project and Joe ‘Zonker’ Brockmeier for their willingness to come and help us spread the message.

We realize these fellas have very busy lives and so we’re extremely grateful for their dedication and time at their respective booths. I plan to not have them at the booths much next year if they attend.

Slides and Downloads

If you are looking for slides (or scripts, handouts, etc.) of your favorite presentation, many of them are already available on the UTOSC site. For those that are not there, we’ll be contacting the presenters and asking them to upload them ASAP.

Video and Audio Recordings

I’m quite sure we’ll start to get some questions about videos and audio recordings. The keynotes from Paul Frields and Joe Brockmeier are slated to be available within a week. We’ll announce them on this blog. The local keynotes from Mac Newbold and Howard Tayler, Christer Edwards and David Moss should be available within 2 weeks. This is exciting news!

The audio recordings are a bit more slow, but we should start to see the first of those recordings arrive early next week. We’ll be releasing 2 or so a week until we run out. There are approximately 50 audio and video recordings, so keep your eyes peeled and again, we’ll announce them here on this blog.

A Request from the Community

This year, we did surveys in the presentation rooms. If you attended a presentation and wished to fill out a survey, we’d love to have you fill one out anyway. We’ve created a form with the same questions from the paper form. If you’ve already filled out surveys, we’re extremely grateful as your opinions will go into our planning of presentations for next year.

In addition, we’ve created an overall survey we’d like you to complete. It will help us to improve UTOSC 2009 . UTOSC provided great memories for me and I hope you all enjoyed it too. I look forward to seeing you all next year.

Cheers,

Clint Savage
Utah Open Source Foundation

More Troubleshooting Challenge information

Doran Barton — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 17:29:40 +0000

We’d like to share some more information about the Guru Labs Troubleshooting Challenge being held as part of the 2008 Utah Open Source Conference that was recently announced.

The schedule is as follows:

Sessions will be held Thursday August 28th held at the Guru Labs booth in the vendor area (SI atrium). There will be 4 participants per session. Sign up sheets will be available at the Guru Labs booth.

Sessions:

11 - 11:30am Session I
1:30 -2pm Session II
3-3:30pm Session III
4:30-5pm Session IV

There will also be sessions on Friday, August 29th at the Guru Labs booth.

9:30-10am Session I
11-11:30 am Session II
12:30-1pm Session III
4-4:30pm Session IV

And then, on Saturday, August 30, the Final challenges will be held at SI 258:

10-10:30 am Session I Thursdays winners
10:30-11am Session II Fridays winners
2-2:30pm Final Session III

About the Utah Open Source Conference 2008

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/>.

How to register for the conference

UTOSC 2008 has chosen to utilize eventbrite as its registration system this year. To register for the Utah Open Source Conference 2008, visit <http://utosc2008.eventbrite.com/> and sign up today. We accept credit cards (through paypal) and payment at the door. We’re looking forward to seeing you soon.

So you think you’re a Guru? Prove it.

Doran Barton — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 18:43:34 +0000

At last year’s Utah Open Source Conference, locally-based Linux training firm Guru Labs hosted the first Troubleshooting Challenge, a contest to see who could restore a seemingly hopeless broken Linux system back to a pristine operational state the fastest. We watched as hopeful contestants rapidly keyed in commands to try to track down problems, beads of sweat appearing and running off their foreheads. Finally, a lone “Got it!” escaped one person’s mouth as spectators quickly gathered around to witness the remedy for themselves.

The drama is back!

On Saturday, August 30, as part of the 2008 Utah Open Source Conference activities, Guru Labs will, once again, be hosting a Troubleshooting Challenge to determine, once and for all (until next year), who is the Guru.

There will be a few rounds as the contest is whittled down to a final four. The ultimate victor will walk away with a $150 cash prize from the Utah Open Source Foundation. Final four finalists will each receive vouchers from Guru Labs to be used for enrollment in one of Guru Labs’ excellent week-long training courses. All participants who enter the challenge will receive Guru Labs t-shirts.

About the Utah Open Source Conference 2008

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/>.

How to register for the conference

Two more local keynotes you don’t want to miss

Doran Barton — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 02:50:28 +0000

Only a couple days left until the 2008 Utah Open Source Conference begins on Thursday, 28 August. If you’ve been reading these dispatches, you know there are lots and lots of reasons to come and participate in this year’s conference, but here are a couple more.

David Moss, Salt Lake Community College

After last year’s first Utah Open Source Conference, the core team was approached by David Moss, department chair of the Computer Science department at Salt Lake Community College. David was apparently impressed with the first UTOSC (and rightly so! It rocked!) and was interested in hosting the conference in 2008 at Salt Lake Community College. We explored lots of options for other venues, but in the end, SLCC just seemed the best place for the conference in 2008. To make things even more interesting, David said attendance at the conference would be required for students enrolled in the Computer Science program. Indoctrination… BEGIN!

We are pleased to announce that David Moss will be speaking to us the morning of Saturday, 30 August, at 8:30 a.m. and will speak on the topic of open source in education. David says he’ll be discussing the barriers the SLCC computer science department has faced adopting open source in its curriculum and how he plans to expand the use of open souce in the future.

Wait! That’s not all!

Howard Tayler, SchlockMercenary.com

Howard Tayler… where to start on this guy? Howard likes Halloween a lot, I mean, a lot. He also says he enjoys “recreational pyrotechnics and discharging firearms at helpless cans, bottles, and outdated computers.” He’s a veteran of Novell, where he was a product manager, and escaped relatively unscathed in 2004. He now has his dream job of working from home purging his demons via creative writing and drawing cartoons.

Howard is the creator of the über cool site SchlockMercenary.com which hosts a Web comic featuring the characters Kaff Tagon (Captain Kaff Tagon), Sergeant Schlock, Jevee Ceeta, and others, as they go about their mercenary missions aboard the space vessel Serial Peacemaker in the 31st century. If I didn’t get that all correct, get over it.

Howard will be speaking on Friday, 29 August, at 2:30 p.m. His topic of discussion will be… uhm… What was it again? … It’s not about carbosilicate rejuvenation, is it? Oh… right. Howard will be speaking about giving stuff away and making some money doing it.

About the Utah Open Source Conference 2008

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/>.

How to register for the conference

Come to Tucanos Aug 29 for good food, geek fun

Doran Barton — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 13:34:48 +0000

The Utah Open Source Foundation is hosting dinner for geeks, bloggers, and open source enthusiasts at Tucanos Brazillian Grill at the Gateway Center in downtown Salt Lake City on Friday, August 29, beginning at 8:30 p.m.

While this event is planned in conjunction with the 2008 Utah Open Source Conference going August 28-30, you do not need to be an attendee of UTOSC 2008 to come.

The Utah Open Source Foundation will be paying for appetizers for those who show up at Tucanos.

Tucanos is located on the south end of the Gateway Center, just above the California Pizza Kitchen. Directions to the Gateway Center can be found here.

About the Utah Open Source Conference 2008

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/>.

How to register for the conference

Kick off UTOSC with eggs, sausage and techy talk

Doran Barton — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 21:16:42 +0000

On Thursday, August 28, the Utah Open Source Conference begins. Presentations start at 12:30 p.m., but Phil Windley will be kicking off the conference with a CTO Breakfast from 7:30 - 11:00 a.m. in the Salt Lake Community College Student Center, room 221/223.

The CTO breakfast is an informal monthly gathering of leaders within Utah’s tech community. You don’t have to be a CTO to come. “Anyone interested in product development in high tech is welcome,” Windley says.

The SLCC Student Center has a variety of food vendors on the first floor. Get what you want to eat and jet upstairs so you can participate in the CTO Breakfast. For information on parking and where all UTOSC activities will be taking place, see this map.

About this conference thing

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/>.

How to register for the conference

UTOSC 2008: Family Day Activities

Clint Savage — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 14:56:07 +0000

There’s been a lot of talk about this thing called ‘Family Day’, being held on Saturday, August 30. Its been in the planning for some time now and things are very close to finalization. Because of this, its time to reveal what family day is and how it will work.

Some of the items should be clear, the general idea is that any attendee can bring their family along and enjoy some family activities. Because Utah is a very family based community, UTOSC 2008 is focusing on technologies for the family.

Bring the Whole Family

Located just outside the SI Building at the Salt Lake Community College, will be large inflated activities for children young and old. Volunteers from UTOSC will be stationed around this area making sure the kids have a safe and fun time.

If the kids are a bit older, they might enjoy our try-it lab, and parents will get an opportunity to see the OLPC (one laptop per child) as well as some machines running educational software and possibly a mythtv setup as well.

For Lunch

Lunch will be picnic style where families can bring blankets and sit out on the grassy knolls near the venue and enjoy the BBQ food from The Smokehouse restaurant. There will be chairs and tables near the student center for your use as well. The Smokehouse will be offering southern bbq meals for a good price. They did a great job for us last year so expect some great food.

The Plan

Drop the kids off at the bouncy houses and plan on spending an hour or two in sessions you’d like to see with your significant other. After the sessions, feel free to kick around for lunch and then peruse the try-it lab. Sounds like a great day for the family!

About this conference thing

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/>.

How to register for the conference

Novell Hack Week coming to UTOSC 2008

Clint Savage — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 23:09:30 +0000

Its official! For those of you who have always wanted to know how to hack a project together, this is a great opportunity.

We at the Utah Open Source Foundation learned a few weeks ago that Novell’s ‘Hack Week‘ will be occuring the same week as UTOSC 2008. We also learned UTOSC 2008 will have these awesome hackers come out to the Salt Lake Community College Thursday and Friday to finish off some of their cool applications. This is the third Hack Week from Novell.

On Saturday, we’re offering these hackers an opportunity to come down to UTOSC and give a few short presentations on what was finished and how they work. Let’s hope they accept.

Local keynote at UTOSC 2008: Christer Edwards

Doran Barton — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 17:00:02 +0000

Mark your calendar and clear your schedule! Christer Edwards, instructor of Linux courseware for Guru Labs and a very active participant in the Ubuntu Linux community, will be giving one of several local keynote presentations at the Utah Open Source Conference schedule Aug 28-30.

Christer will be presenting Saturday, Aug. 30 at 8:30 a.m., so limit your normal late Friday-night activities, get to bed early, or grab a caffeinated beverage on the way. You don’t want to miss Christer’s presentation!

Christer presented at OSCON — O’Reilly’s annual open source conference held this year in Portland, OR — in July on “Using Ubuntu in the Enterprise” and he will treat UTOSC attendees to a similar, perhaps improved, presentation.

When Christer isn’t hopping around the country teaching Linux courses for Guru Labs or working on various projects within the Ubuntu community, he lives in Farmington with his wife of three years and their six month-old daughter.

Christer has been publishing tutorials on a variety of topics for users of Ubuntu Linux on his weblog site — <http://www.ubuntu-tutorials.com/> — for over two years. After starting the Utah Ubuntu team in 2005, Christer helped organize Ubuntu communities in every state in the United States in 2007. Within Ubuntu, Christer has had his hands dirty in many aspects of the project including virtualization (KVM), the availability of SELinux for Ubuntu, and managing an Ubuntu package called Origami, a Stanford Folding @ Home frontend.

Christer’s presentation will outline lesser-known enterprise features of Ubuntu like repository mirroring, automated installation, network installation, ActiveDirectory service connections, and more.

“Ubuntu does have more to offer than just a shiny desktop, it has many of the same ‘enterprise’ features you may be used to in RHEL/CentOS, etc.” Christer said.

About this conference thing

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/>.

How to register for the conference

UTOSC 2008 Supports WordCamp Utah

Clint Savage — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 21:05:04 +0000

As an effort to help other community conferences in Utah and to help our overall technology Mecca, I’d like to invite anyone/everyone attending the Utah Open Source Conference 2008 to consider also attending the newly formed WordCamp Utah.

This one day event, held Saturday, September 27, 2008, is the latest project from our very own Joseph Scott, who will be presenting on WordPress Performance and Scalability at UTOSC 2008, has been hard at work planning and prepping for what will become the Inaugural WordCamp Utah.

If you are a Wordpress user as I am, it would be in your best interest to come down to the Open Source Technology Center at Novell and listen to such presenters as: Matt Mullenweg, Founder of Wordpress/Automattic, Alex King, wordpress developer and theme creator extraordinaire and many others.

We at the Utah Open Source Foundation have been working to help other local conferences succeed as well. In the true nature of open source, competition makes everything better. We look forward to your attendance at UTOSC 2008 and hope you will consider attending WordCamp Utah as well.

UTOSC 2008: Keynote Dinner

Clint Savage — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 16:54:43 +0000

During UTOSC 2007, we opened our conference with an opening keynote dinner, featuring two great speakers, Matt Asay of Alfresco and Bruce Perens, well known free software advocate. At these two keynote presentations, attendees were provided with great insight into the open source world, its technology and how great things can become greater with open source software and its communities.

In addition, there was a great buffet table full of food, well, because computer geeks like to eat! And last but not least, the findlay quartet played for us, and they will be returning to entertain us with some classical music.

In 2008, we decided that the opening evening keynote dinner was a great idea. We’re keeping the same format, and providing food and drink for all that attend. This year will be more grand, UTOSC has secured the Oak Room at the Salt Lake Community College Student Center. With comfortable table seating for approximately 300, and a podium and microphone for the presenters, UTOSC 2008 is sure to end its first full day of presentations with great keynotes from Mac Newbold (Code Greene) and Paul Frields (Fedora Project/Red Hat).

The full schedule of speakers and events is being finalized right now, and we anticipate a final version very soon. In the meantime, we have the list of presenters, along with times and dates available on our website, <http://2008.utosc.com/speaker/list/>

About this conference thing

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/>.

How to register for the conference

UTOSC 2008 Local Keynote Speaker: Mac Newbold, Code Greene

Clint Savage — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 14:37:32 +0000

For those of you who are in the know in the local technology scene, you know that Utah has a lot of good choices when it comes to successful small businesses. Today, we announce one of our local small business leaders who’s accomplished a great deal and helped the community as well.

Mac Newbold - Code Greene (Chief Technical Officer & Partner)

Mac has Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Computer Science from the University of Utah. He began intense involvement in web development in 2001 and has been an avid member of the Utah PHP User group (UPHPU) since 2004. In 2005, Mac co-founded Code Greene, a web development company, which has now grown to 10 team members. Code Greene develops using almost exclusively open source software and platforms. Code Greene helps clients make money by helping them streamline their businesses with intelligent dynamic websites and business process automation.

Keynote Title: How To Leverage Open Source in a For-Profit Business

Lessons learned by helping hundreds of companies develop an online presence and automate their businesses by using open source software and development platforms.

Mac will be warming up the crowd for the Paul Frields keynote on Thursday, August 28, 2008. He will begin at 6:30pm at the UTOSC Keynote Dinner.

About this conference thing

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/>.

How to register for the conference

Introducing: Ogden Area Linux User Group (OALUG)

Doran Barton — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 13:54:50 +0000

Open source enthusiasts in the Weber and Davis counties have a local user group they may participate in. The Ogden Area Linux User Group, or OALUG, meets in-person the last Tuesday of every month at 7:00pm in the Weber County Main Library. Directions and a map to the meeting location are located on the OALUG website.

OALUG also has an active mailing list which can be used by members seeking answers to questions, suggestions when trying to solve a problem, or just shooting the bull with like-minded geeks.

Seth House, current president of OALUG, said “The Ogden Area Linux Users Group (OALUG) is a group of professionals who share a love and a passion for Linux, regardless of distribution. The group serves Weber, Davis, and Morgan counties. We welcome absolutely anyone who is interested in Linux, or Free and Open Source Software, to participate and help run the group.” If you are interested in being a part of the OALUG, simply subscribe to the mailing list or show up to a meeting!

Update: We made a couple of errors in this post. OALUG meets at the Weber County Main Library (not Weber State Library) and we had the link to their website incorrect. These errors have been fixed.

If you plan on Attending UTOSC! Read this!

Clint Savage — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 13:48:05 +0000

Its the last day for early bird registration for UTOSC, >. After today, prices go up to $100 ($50 w/LUG discounts).

See you all there!

UTOSC 2008: Google your way to a meal and a good night’s sleep

Doran Barton — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 08:04:25 +0000

A few days ago, we mentioned the Dining and Lodging information that has been posted on the 2008 Utah Open Source Conference website for those looking for suggestions for where to crash and/or where to refuel while you’re attending the conference this month.

Thanks to Paul Frields, Fedora Project Leader, we now have an additional resource: A Google Maps page which highlights hotels, restaurants, and other notable locations around the conference. As if that wasn’t enough, the Google Maps application allows collaboration from multiple individuals which means if you know of a restaurant or hotel worth recommending to other people who are coming to the conference, you can add it to the map for others to see. Amazing!

About this conference thing

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/>.