Got to get down to it

OK, it’s crunch time. At the end of the week, you should be in Columbus, Ohio, at Ohio Linux Fest — if you’re going to a Linux show before the year’s out, make it this one. This is the last big show on the North American continent until SCALE in January. At OLF, Bradley Kuhn and Cathy Malmrose are keynoting — along with Jon “maddog” Hall — so you’ll not want to miss that (especially Cathy — Go ZaReason!).

Jon “maddog” Hall made an interesting point yesterday. That’s not necessarily news, since he makes interesting points often. But as one of the keynoters at Ohio Linux Fest, he made the observation in a pitch to get people there that half the US population lives within a 500-mile radius of Ohio.

I hadn’t thought about that before, but I think he’s right. Fortunately for those of you who are living in this area that maddog points out, you have a great opportunity to get to Columbus for the Ohio Linux Fest.

Five hundred miles is less than 10 hours by car; an hour by plane. You can do the math for the rest of it (bicycle, walk, etc.).

The Ohio Linux Fest is also offering a contest of sorts — if you’re the 1,000th registrant, there are prizes available. You’ll have to go to the site to check out what it is, and you might want to register soon — if you haven’t already (and if you haven’t, why not?) — to take advantage of the prizes featured on the site.

So run, don’t walk to Columbus, this weekend and get to OLF. Were I to go — bear in mind I live outside the 500-mile circle and I would actually go if I still flew — I would make it to these presentations:

Were I to go to this event, naturally I’d catch all the keynotes — especially Cathy Malmrose’s — and this would be my so-called Linux expo “dance card” for the weekend:

The keynotes (obviously): Cathy Malmrose, Bradley Kuhn and Jon “maddog” Hall

Friday: Three must-see talks would be Mark Terranova’s presentation on “So What Kind of Cult is Linux, Anyway?” and follow it up with Edward Cherlin’s “Linux for All” before going to Ruth Suehle’s “Off Your Linux Machine and Into Your Doctor’s Office.”

Saturday: I’d make a point to go to Mel Chua’s “Level-up with Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics: turn your life into a data-driven video game with FOSS” (and anyone who can say that in one breath wins), followed Karlie Robinson’s “The Business of Linux – How Individuals Can Get in the Game,” and later in the afternoon I’d catch Paul Frields’ “Graduating to GUI: PyGObject for Beginners.”

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday: On Sunday, I would take the LPI exam — I should have taken it at SCALE but I was so swamped with double duty in the Fedora booth and in the SCALE front office (I’m co-chair of publicity) that I didn’t have time to put pencil to paper. Next year, count on it.

And tell ‘em Larry the Free Software Guy sent you.

This blog, and all other blogs by Larry the Free Software Guy and Larry Cafiero, are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs CC BY-NC-ND license. In short, this license allows others to download this work and share it with others as long as they credit me as the author, but others can’t change it in any way or use it commercially.

(Larry Cafiero is one of the founders of the Lindependence Project and has just started developing software in his new home office. Watch this space.)