A New Event for the Community

I gotta say, I'm pretty excited today. We've announced the 2009 event schedule, and we've added a new event for the Linux community: LinuxCon.

This is a conference that, like our other summits, is specifically geared towards a certain segment of the Linux community. The Kernel Summit we just hosted, as one example, is for the kernel developers. The upcoming End Users Summit, as another example, will be an opportunity for corporate end-users of Linux to share their goals and wishes for Linux in their organizations.

So who will benefit from LinuxCon? A group that, in my opinion, has been a bit underserved by the "big" conferences: the Linux community itself.

This is going to be a technical conference that will be very open in terms of the content provided. It's going to have "paper-based technical conference sessions, tutorials, keynotes, a technology showcase, targeted mini-summits on topics such as mobile, desktop and embedded, and much more," according to the press release we've put out this morning. Think of it as sort of a Linux.conf.au, only here in North America.

Those mini-summits will be cool; they could be co-located existing events that want to share the workspace and collaborative atmosphere of LinuxCon, or something new. Are you part of an open source project that would like some quality face time with your team members? You can talk to us about hosting your own mini-conference at LinuxCon.

We're doing this event a year or so from now, in September 2009 in Portland, Oregon--co-located with the Linux Plumbers Conference. Unlike OSCON, we like Portland as a venue, because there's a big amount of technical talent locally, and the city's easy to get to and visit. Just kidding, O'Reilly, we know you need to make a buck. Actually, Portland may not be a permanent home for LinuxCon--we're thinking that each year we will take LinuxCon somewhere new, to give more people in the community an opportunity to learn and contribute.

When we say "community," we're talking everyone: end users, developers, vendors: if you have a personal or professional investment in Linux, you're welcome at LinuxCon.

This means a lot of work for me... I've been tasked with helping to organize the show. That's where the excitement's coming from. A big show for the community by the community is something I've felt was always needed, and to have the opprotunity to lend a hand is huge for me. Send those suggestions in now, people!