SCaLE6x Recap

So, last weekend I went to SCaLE(the 6th annual So. Cal Linux Expo) A great weekend it was. It was hosted at the LA Westin Hotel. I happen to man at the Ubuntu booth(of course we[myself and the Ubuntu California LoCo] weren’t official affiliates of Ubuntu) -which wouldn’t be made possible(and awesome) without the main architects of it all, Neal(Ubuntu-California LoCo Group Leader), Nathan. The convention exceeded my expectations and then some. And it was PACKED!

Just to give you a general sense of perception

Photo Credit: http://lxer.com

ArsTechncica also has coverage over SCaLE: http://arstechnica.com/journals/linux.ars/2008/02/12/ars-at-scale-the-exhibit-hall

If you key in closely on the Ubuntu booth picture, you can see me(looking down) I’m adjacent to Nathan(guy in the tan shirt), relative to his left; troubleshooting this lady’s issue with Kubuntu and her wi-fi.

Photo Credit: arstechnica.com

I guess that could present proof for the skeptics.

Anyway, I attended on Saturday(the main expo day). And it was very lively and although from ones perepective, the place may look small, it’s not as small as you would think;it accommodated about 80 booths( Like Sun,Google,RedHat,OpenMoko,Linux Astronomy ,Fedora,LinuxChix,Tux Droid,BSD,and all the other major Linux/Open source companies,and many many more). All of the booths, and what they presented was awesome. Our booth had countless visitors- we were quite a big attraction at the Expo. I came in the expo floor with Greg early around 8:30 A.M after we had been finished with all the ticket processing and clerical stuff. We set up the booth early and found just enough time to go to Jono Bacon’s keynote(He’s the Ubuntu Community Manager if you didn’t know). It was situated in the Westin Hotel theater was packed side to side- there weren’t enough seats, so we had to stand in the back with 50 other people. There was also another theater in the back that had big projector display of Jono’s presentation for those who couldn’t make it in the main theater. He was a relaxed and engaging while still delivering his theme about the achievements of the Linux desktop. He made wanted us to know that success from the Linux Desktop doesn’t come from the companies but from open-source community. He had a few humorous(He’s British) snippets during the presentation. The conferences were awesome, I attended Seth’s(Member of our LoCo Seth Kenlon’s talk) presentation on Video codecs- which to Seth’s amazement had quite a few laughs, including mine. It was very informative and insightful. Another that I “managed” to attend was “Peace, Love, and Rockets,” presented by HP Chief Linux Technologist Bdale Garbe . It about the world of model rocketry, avanonics in general, and how his hobby influenced into the realm of open source software and hardware. And his fights and dilemmas with the proprietary closed sourced/ and not to mention horribly documented devices involved in hobby model rocketry.

In the sum of it all, the convention was productive and awesome. At the end I got to meet and shake Jono Bacon’s hand. I wouldn’t change anything about this year’s SCaLE, they perfected this one! This was a great experience, I look forward to SCaLE7x.