Linuxfest Northwest

LinuxFest Northwest is an annual technology conference and expo held in Bellingham, Washington. It is a Saturday and Sunday weekend event held in late April. The event is dedicated to discussion and development of the Linux operating system and other Open source and Free software projects.

Event Description

LinuxFest Northwest is a free event, focused on grassroots evangelism of Linux and other Open source software projects. During the event, conference attendees listen to a number of presentations and make contact with a number of companies and non-profit organizations who share an interest in open source software. The event raises money through a Raffle and by charging commercial vendors a donation fee for their booths. This allows the festival to stay free for all who wish to come, while raising enough money to fly popular speakers in each year.

Linuxfest Northwest 2008

Linuxfest will be held on April 26/27th 2008 at Bellingham Technical College. Notable presenters scheduled to appear include Brian Aker, Jesse Keating, Ted Haeger, and more. Like last year, It will be two days and hold a sponsored party on Saturday night.

* [http://blug.org/fest2008/schedule.dxp] - Presenter information
* [http://blug.org/fest2008/exhibits.dxp] - Signed up Exhibitors

Location

Linuxfest Northwest is held in Bellingham, WA; about 80 miles north of Seattle and 50mi (80km) south of Vancouver B.C.. The location is primarily chosen because the facilities are donated by [http://www.btc.ctc.edu Bellingham Technical College] . There have been discussions in the past to move the festival south to Seattle, however no local groups have taken on the task.

History

LinuxFest Northwest originated as "Linuxfest", held by the [http://www.blug.org Bellingham Linux Users Group (BLUG)] . The first 'fest' was held in 2000, but was mainly advertised as a local Bellingham event. In 2003, the fest was expanded to a regional event, advertising as far south as Seattle and Tacoma Washington, and North to Vancouver, British Columbia. Until 2006 it was a full day on Saturday. In 2007 it was expanded into a 2 day weekend event.

Previous keynote speakers

; 2007
* Brian "Krow" Aker — How Sites Scale Out
* chromatic — The Present and Phuture of Parrot
* Crispin Cowen — Securing Linux Systems with AppArmor
* Karl Fogel — 3 Centuries of Open Source & Copyright
* Jesse Keating — One Laptop Per Child
* Allison Randal — Parrot: a VM for Dynamic Languages
* Karen Sandler — Software Patents

; 2006
* Tim Bray — Open Problems in Network Computing
* Greg DeKoenigsberg — Fedora and Community Building
* Charles Ditzel — Twelve Reasons To Use NetBeans
* George Dyson — Turing's Cathedral
* Jim McQuillan — The Linux Terminal Server Project
* Danny O'Brien — Incoming! What's on the EFF's Radar

; 2005
* Brian Krow Aker — State of the Dolphin
* Chris DiBona — Google Open Source Update
* George Dyson — Von Neumann's Universe
* Chuck Gray — Impact of Linux
* Brian Hatch — The Command Line is for Everyone!
* Dee-Ann LeBlanc — Linux for Dummies

; 2004
* Charles Ditzel — Java 2004 : Java and Linux
* Chuck Gray — Linux Solutions for Business
* Brian Hatch — Linux Security
* Dee-Ann LeBlanc — Bringing Mainstream Games to Linux
* Rasmus Lerdorf — PHP from the Source
* Chris Negus — Fedora/Red Hat Troubleshooting

External links

* [http://www.linuxfestnorthwest.org LinuxFest Northwest] - Official Website
* [http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=07/04/06/1610229 LinuxFest Northwest 2007 Looms]
* [http://software.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=06/05/01/0440217 Laid back at LinuxFest Northwest]