Get Ready for LinuxWorld Boston! 35
LinuxWorld Boston is fast approaching and this year there will be an "official" blog that follows some of the events, posted right here as a Slashdot Journal. There are several interesting talks lined up and even a Slashdot lounge where you can take a break from the busy convention floor and give us a chance to meet our readers -- Read on for the LWCE blog outline of the event.
This year's Boston expo will showcase some new wrinkles that we've added for our attendees' viewing pleasure.The LinuxWorld and OpenSolutions World Conference educational sessions, tutorials and hands-on-labs have all been beefed up and offer the latest information on new Linux/Open Source applications, tools, and trends. Workshops will show you how to integrate Linux into legacy environments and give you particulars on how to smooth out the little bumps. The old favorites are there too, like the Golden Penguin Bowl (squaring the Oracle nerds against the MySQL geeks). A jam-packed roster of Linux and Open Source vendors will show discriminating Linux fans, tomorrow's premier Penguin powered technology.
The Keynotes are all about interoperability, enterprise applications, virtualization, innovation, cost savings, and productivity gains in real world companies. Come see our industry-leading roster of keynote speakers. Headliners include:
* Nicholas Negroponte, Chairman, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), will deliver a presentation titled, "The $100 Laptop." Dr. Negroponte, Chairman of The Media Laboratory at MIT, wants to revolutionize how the world's children are educated. The $100 laptop will be the first large-scale weapon in the fight against the digital divide and uses a free Linux core to make it all possible.
* Bob Gatewood, CTO, athenahealth, will present, "Mission-critical Open Source in a High Growth Enterprise". Gatewood will give details about the infrastructure and integration of open and proprietary systems. Lessons learned over the past eight years will also be covered. athenahealth has built a $60M company on a mix of Open Source and proprietary solutions.
* Kevin Kettler, PhD, CTO of Dell Inc. will give a talk titled, " Virtualization and Linux: Anything but Traditional". He will discuss how virtualization is challenging traditional models of computing and explore client virtualization opportunities that allow users to run multiple OS instances to improve productivity, provide secure Web browsing, and enhance digital entertainment.
* Larry Augustin, Chairman, VA Software will moderate a CEO panel titled, "The Death of the Enterprise Software Business Model: How Startups are Leveraging Open Source to Change the Model". Panelists include CEO's from SugarCRM, MySQL, JBoss and Zend. The panel will discuss how industry leading open source software startups are changing the rules of traditional enterprise software with a more efficient model that saves their customers money and delivers better software.
* Bill Hilf, Director of Platform Technology Strategy at Microsoft Corporation will present "Interoperability: Dealing with the Diversity and Heterogeneity of Today's IT Marketplace". Addressing one of the biggest pains for customers today, using research and analysis from the Microsoft Linux and Open Source labs, Hilf will outline how commercial and open source vendors are working together to solve interoperability hurdles.
Government Day is a special forum designed to help public sector IT professionals get reliable information directly from their peers who have already made great strides in the open source arena. The event is sponsored by Novell, Microsoft and Trusted Computer Solutions and will focus on the dominant issues facing public sector decision makers in building and maintaining systems and staff in a world of rapidly evolving open source technology. This conference program is open to all credentialed members of the public sector.
NEW - For Linux Newbies - Be sure to stop by and see "The ABCs of Desktop Linux" theater presentations, hosted by Tux Magazine. Sessions include "An Introduction to Desktop Linux: It's Not Just for Geeks Anymore!", "Breaking Free: Exploring OpenOffice.org, the Versatile (and Free) Office Suite for Linux", and "Can I do that with Linux? An Overview of Linux-based Applications".
You might want to hang out with the pioneers that brought hardcore geek news together with Open Source Web server crushing technology? Say hello to CmdrTaco when you stop by the new Slashdot Lounge, sponsored by SourceForge.net.
Intel, the Enterprise Grid Alliance (EGA), and Global Grid Forum (GGF) are sponsoring the first-ever Enterprise Grid Solution Showcase. The new showcase will offer LinuxWorld attendees a first-hand look at how Grid, virtualization, resource sharing, automation and service-orientation, can help solve real-world challenges quickly and cost-effectively.
Special areas of interest in the showcase are the Enterprise Utility Computing (EUC) proof of concept, the Power of the Data Fabric section, the Grid Standards and Industry Consortia, and a live presentation theater promoting GRIDToday's new book titled, "The Emergence of Grid & Service-Oriented IT: An Industry Vision for Business Success."
The newly enlarged .org Pavilion sponsored by SourceForge.net in collaboration with IBM, offers a unique opportunity for attendees to meet developers of some of the Open Source community's stellar projects. Projects like Eclipse, the Fedora Project, LTSP.org, OpenOffice.org, OpenSUSE.org, Ubuntu, and X.org, among others will be there. Don't miss your chance to meet the people that create Open Source software.
Are You Certified? Do you think you're ready for your LPI test? Linux Professional Institute is offering free testing to all paid conference attendees (a $100 value), in the LPI Certification Room.
A panel of independent judges and industry experts will recognize the best and most innovative products, services, and solutions in open computing at the LinuxWorld Product Excellence Awards. The awards are sponsored by LinuxWorld Magazine and take place opening day, at 12:30 pm. Look for it on the show floor.
What happens if you feel compelled to talk about your conference experience or just give a little feedback? Included in each attendee's package is access to the LinuxWorld Wiki collaboration space, sponsored by SocialText. Read all about conference session descriptions, speakers, and other important conference topics. Post those comments and get involved at http://www.socialtext.net/linuxworld
The Software Freedom Law Center will kick off the Birds of a Feather sessions on Tuesday afternoon. Community members from OSSI, Samba, One Laptop per Child, OSDL, Amanda, LSB, Fedora, openSUSE, and many others will be there to discuss the latest trends. Attendees can sign-up to roll your own BoF session, if you feel the need.
Conventioneers will also want to swing by the Novell booth and speak to company representatives about their latest edition of SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop. Updates will include the Beagle search tool, the Zenworks Linux Management toolkit, an enhanced version of OpenOffice.org, XGL graphics, and better support of networking and printing protocols. The new version will be available this summer.
Make sure to visit the Red Hat booth and find out about how they are making it easier for customers to run their infrastructures with a virtualized Linux environment. As IT managers seek better utilization of hardware resources and streamlined maintenance, virtualization is gaining widespread acceptance. A beta preview of the integrated virtualization technologies will be available in the upcoming Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 release. The production version is due out later in the year.
This year's LinuxWorld Conference is sure to be an exciting event, with useful and entertaining activities for the developers, IT managers, business leaders, and everyday enthusiastic Linux user. Make your plans, learn something new, meet your friends, and have a great time.
It's April 3-6 2006 (Score:3, Informative)
I've been to this show several times and it's always a blast. A nice way to collect more new Penguin T-shirts, Linux pens and other artifacts of our era for archeologists to puzzle over a thousand years hence!