A New FOSS Conference Comes to Florida (Video)

Video A New FOSS Conference Comes to Florida (Video) 9

Posted by Roblimo on Friday September 05, 2014 @04:46PM from the more-foss-is-not-to-be-sneezed-at dept.

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Bryan Smith has worked with the organizers of several Linux and Open Source events and has spoken at more than a few, but he has always wanted to see more FOSS events in Florida, the state where he lives. There was a Florida Linux Show back in 2008 and 2009, but all that remains of it today is a "ghost" Web page. But that's the past. This year Bryan has put together FOSSETCON, which debuts this September 11 - 13 in Orlando. It's an ambitious undertaking -- but Bryan has rounded up a lot of solid sponsors, and that's often the key to holding a successful IT event. (Alternate Video Link)

Rob: Bryan, you’re bringing your new Linux show toFlorida and it’s called what—Fossetcon?

Bryan: Yes, it’s called Fossetcon, but I’ve got a correction there.

Rob: Okay.

Bryan: It’s not a Linux conference, it’s a Free and Open Source Conference, which also includes things like GNU/Linux, BSD. So it’s not just for Linux, it’s for the whole free and open source community.

Rob: You have an impressive list of sponsors—how did you get them?

Bryan: Well, a lot of begging, asking. A lot of trust goes on with regards to the sponsors that we do have right now. So, too, at the same time, most or all of these companies believe in free and open source and they utilize it and you know, they are all about supporting the community. So it’s a thing where it doesn’t take much in regards to – we say we’ve got an event and they already know what they can do at the event. But it’s a thing of whether or not they believe that the community will be engaged, and whether or not you have passion enough to get them to align with your passion and will help out the community.

Rob: So this is going to be in Orlando—don’t you live in Jacksonville?

Bryan: Yes, I do live in Jacksonville, but Orlando is where a lot of good things happen, where dreams happen, miracles, all of the good stuff, with all of the theme parks. And you know, Jacksonville is its own thing, Orlando is just where you have events. Frankly, you have events.

Rob: And cheaper air fares.

Bryan: Yes. That is right too.

Rob: So why did you decide to do this? Why are you doing this?

Bryan: Well, why? It’s I go to a lot of conferences, I speak at a lot of conferences yearly and I’m always traveling. There is no event in my backyard, there is no event beyond. So in the South East you’ve got the South East Linux Fest, you’ve got some other events that are happening in the Carolinas, you’ve got Fosscon. There are various other open source shows, open well, great wide open, there are a few but there are none in Florida—not one. And so we get jealous and you know we want to have our own things in our own backyard. We have a vibrant, burgeoning community. In our community, what a lot of people don’t realize is that we’ve got a lot of individuals that contributed to free and open source in regards to media and in many commercial and enterprise realms right in Florida. We have a ton of just really brilliant and great community folks that are here—we want them to come out and we’d like other people most importantly to come to our area and share this knowledge with us that they have.Because everything is in Portland and San Jose, it’s all going to West Coast or it is up north,and you know, we need the speakers to come to Florida and share their innovations with us.

Rob: Which they are apparently doing. You’re getting it. You’ve gotten a pretty good rack of sponsors and speakers. How about outreach to the community, to get people to attend? How is that coming?

Bryan: Well, so, the community outreach is a daunting task at the same time because, you know, a lot of people we want this event, we have been wanting this event since 2009 – since the last Florida Linux Show. But in regards to aligning with the community and getting everyone to come out and everyone to socially invest in the event, as always with any of it, it can be daunting. But we’re definitely making a lot of headway and we expect to have Orlando out in full showing hopefully and you show our sponsors that Orlando is behind the event.And then naturally we’ll have it again next year. And then who knows, 20 years from now, it will be Fossetcon 20 or what not. Fossetcon 19 is what it will be Fossetcon 19.

Rob: Have you talked do you have anything going out, to the LUGs like in Miami and Tampa, elsewhere?

Bryan: Yes sir, so Tampalug is a LUG I’ve actually been to... the LUG, I mean, the SLUG IRC Channel, so they have their own IRC Server, but also GOLUG, LEAP... I’ve been to various LUGs, I’m on the mailing lists, I got an IRC channel I’m also in there as well, and a lot of the – so Orlando has two LUGs, Linux Enthusiasts and Professionals and it’s got GOLUG, Greater Orlando Linux Users Group, I know quite a few individuals in both and we expect the Leapsters and the GOLUG to come on out as well.

Rob: Leapsters and Go people... yeah, right.

Bryan: Yeah.

Robin Miller: What’s the date, I mean we are pushing right up against the deadline here, aren’t we?

Bryan: Yes sir. It’s next week September 11th through the 13th—it’s a three-day event. The first day is training which we call Day 0 and so during Day 0 is where we’ve got Zen training, , we’ve got chef training, we’ve puppet training, we’ve got MySQL training... It starts off with breakfast, so we’re providing some breakfast for you and there’s also a lunch, but we provide only a training day, because it’s only registered for the hospitality and in a training environment it’s best to have the attendee stay in one spot and it’s more conducive to learning.

Rob: How are the signups for that going?

Bryan: Okay. So the signups for the training – so training is on Thursday.

Rob: Right.

Bryan: Where as you know people got to take off work. Naturally what we’re expecting for Thursday is around half of our attendee base that will come on the latter two days, they will show up on Thursday just by virtue as I said – you’ve got to take off work or you’ve already taken off of work and so being it goes a little later in day we’ll get some students and some other folks that are kind of the stragglers will waltz in a little bit later and get in on the action. That’s another interesting thing that registration numbers don’t always exactly correlate to the amount of attendees that just show up out at a blue literally like the sky opens up. But the one problem with our Day 0 was that we’re providing food, and so when people don’t pre-register they don’t eat, because if we’re providing food you have to – first it has to be a reasonable amount, so if 2,000 people show up we definitely couldn’t handle that as far as buying everyone food, but at the same time if a smaller number of individuals show up we’d like to be able to order enough food for everyone, and it could be a situation where 10 people don’t eat or 100 people don’t eat, but that’s why we always urge people to pre-register for things such as that, because that takes that mental strain and burden off of us.

Rob: And the on the page and the video, but the accompanying section on Slashdot, you will notice, folks, that there is a link and an URL where you could go sign up because we’d like to see it. I’m hoping to show up myself probably not on the training day, but one of the other two days, I hope to get up my video camera in here.

Bryan: Yeah, I will be grateful to have you there doing some interviews mixing up with the community like you always do, Robin we always appreciate your contributions such as this, it is awesome, no come on now.

Rob: What was your background before you got into this show stuff, what were you doing?

Bryan: Well, so I was always into IT, really way back up. You know, I didn’t have a computer, so I would lie to people and tell them that I knew how to work on computers, so they’d give me a computer and I was like wow, I’ve got a computer, and I then I’d break it worse than what it was and then I’d fix it. But I started off with 5¼ floppies and doll stuff, games and work my way up.In the mid-1990s, I discovered this thing that everyone was calling Linux and I was like what is this. I started with a Red Hat Hurricane, Linux, I think it was like 4.7, 5.0 or something like that and beat that around a little bit. It took about six years to get it installed and to get everything figured out and watch what I was doing.Then I got into BSDs and so now I’m primarily a Debian/GNU Linux, and BSD guy. So that’s why I always pull for BSD because I’ve got a lot of love for it also.

Rob: But you are pretty much self-taught, you are telling me.

Bryan: Oh, yeah, well definitely, definitely so. So pretty much everything. Now I do have like certifications and all that jazz, just because I figured out I’d play the game, but in our community there really is no certification in regards to development, and too in the nature of – if you get your hands dirty with things and you work hard enough, we know that you can eclipse those who even get CS degrees. So yes, it’s also taught and the fact that the source was out there, the fact that all of these solutions were out there, hey, it made me who I am.

Rob: So basically there’s a lot of people following your footsteps, there are your fellow travelers who have already followed, maybe ahead of you, I don’t know, but there are a lot of coolpeople in Orlando, it’s going to be a lot of good people at this show, and I know some of them, so hey, if you don’t know, come on down, right?

Bryan: Definitely so, yeah, let me tell you. As I said it is a 3-day event, the latter two days the 12th and 13th that’s when we have our expo hall open up, we have keynotes and we also have five different speaker tracks where various speakers talk on all types of great topics. Which you can take a look at on our schedule on the website fossetcon.org.

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