LinuxFest NorthWest

Thomas, Taylor and I just returned from Bellingham, WA, where the LinuxFest NorthWest (LFNW) was held this past weekend. With over 800 attendees, this event is hosted by the Bellingham Linux Users Group with support from about 20 other Pacific Northwest user groups, the whole event runs pretty much on volunteer energy.

It’s held at Bellngham Technical College, with technical talks in classrooms and the exhibit hall in the school’s cafeteria. While this is ostensibly a “hobbyist” event, many of the attendees work in IT or on its periphery. Attendees came from as far south as Portland, OR and as far north as Vancouver, BC.

Taylor and Thomas both presented on aspects of open source IT monitoring. An impromptu plan to create a mini “monitoring track” at the conference by promoting their talks and other related presentations worked well: by the time Taylor and Thomas presented in the late afternoon they had overflow crowds.

I ran out of ISO and VMWare CDs by 12:30 the first day, and I wasn’t trying hard to give them away. I could’ve probably used 2X the amount, more if we’d given them away in Taylor and Thomas’ talks. (I’ve already received an email from one person who used the ISO and downloaded and installed the rpm.) I brought GroundWork lizards, but saved them to give away in Taylor’s and Thomas’ talks: Taylor used them as an incentive for asking questions.