Notes on Indiana Linuxfest

Last Friday, Saturday and Sunday were Indiana Linuxfest, and I had the opportunity to attend Saturday. I got there in time to catch most of the opening keynote (9am) so I was a bit too wiped to really do the party and see dual core, which saddened me, but I had to be not-sucky on Sunday.

Here are some notes:

• The flyer should have a venue map so you know right off where you're going. The talks should be organized by day, and if there's going to be a presenter bio, the talk should have the presenter's name on it, so you know who is giving what talk.
• First presentation I saw was on Open Hardware, and I came in late. This sucks, because it was cool. Talked some about the Arduino, which I really need to get, because they're cool. Also mentioned were Beagle Boards (I think), which is cool because they're computers the size of a 3.5" floppy disc. Also, the EZ430, a programmable watch from Texas Instruments. This is everything I thought the programmable Timex Iron Man watch was going to be. His last line was "We live in the future; We might as well start taking advantage of it." A man after my own heart.
• Dan Klein, a Googler from Pittsburgh, gave a talk called Frank Lloyd Wright was Right. In this, he told a story about his hometown, where Wright was asked to suggest a plan to fix some of the architecture problems with Pittsburgh. His advice? "Raze it to the ground and start over." Don't just patch and make due with incremental change, but start over and do it right this time. The presenter suggested this should be the way to take on many of the problems with computing infrastructure, as well.
• Brian Proffitt talked about "The Death of the Linux Desktop (and I feel fine)". Great presentation by a great presenter, with good discussion.
• The Bloomington Hackerspace, BloomingLabs, set up shop at the 'Fest, and that was cool. Hands-on is always cool. I got to pick my first padlock! Yay!

I could go on, but I won't. But I hope they consider this enough of a win to do it again next year, and and I hope and plan to make Ohio LinuxFest in September.