Atlanta Linux Fest 2009
September 19th was the Atlanta Linux Fest, which had about 700+ people show up – don’t quote me though, there were a lot of different head-counts being tweeted that day. That number sounds great, but it’s nothing in comparison to the once great Atlanta Linux Showcase that was started by my LUG, Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts. With that selfless promotion out of the way, it looks like ALF has a great start to making the city of Atlanta a hot spot for FOSS conventions in the future. It was a tiring day, but I think Nick and Josh from the Ubuntu Podcast will continue to run this event for years to come. I’m not certain if there were other folks or organizations that started this, but Nick and Josh were certainly considered the poster children for it.
This was my first convention and because of my impulsiveness – I experienced the event in a slightly different way. As I registered for the event, I saw the option to “volunteer”. I thought to myself, “What better way of jumping into this event. See the front and back end of it all.” With that said, I only attended one workshop (Running an Open Source Business, presented by Tarus Balog of OpenNMS) and their was an in-prompt-to entrepreneur meetup. Overall; I had fun. Next time, though, I will register as a regular-folk and attend as much workshops as possible. It was amazing seeing fellow geeks huddled in one area with a common goal of being themselves and talking about what we love – free and open source software.
My wife, @fossthreads [identica] [twitter], was a vendor at the event and just as luck would have it – the Fedora booth was right next to us! Sweet! I didn’t talk to them much though… 
I was too busy. Now don’t get me wrong, the STAFF of the event didn’t hold me at gun point telling me to “do this” and “do that.” I really did volunteer, sacrificing the experience of the workshops for the experience of helping to operate, hopefully, one of many-to-come Linux-related conventions. I was actually falling asleep in the workshop I did attend, but that’s only because I was very tired at that point in the day.
The Unsortable List
I was very excited when I reached the venue. I got my ALF t-shirt, badge, and asked them what they wanted me to do. They asked me to greet the folks and let them know there were four places at the front desk where they could sign in. Later on it was apparent that the IBM facility had a WiFi connection, but a lot of people didn’t know how to connect. I asked someone about it and they said they have a list and folks that preregistered get their own username/password. I said, “Awesome! Can I have a list?” They gave me one and I walked around (for about 5 minutes) like a big shot! Thank the maker – that no one asked me for any WiFi information. As I looked through the list to get myself familiar with it, I realized that this particular spreadsheet was sorted by registration date! What!? I don’t even remember when I registered. It was about 6 – 8 pages and after 2 minutes of searching, I couldn’t even find myself on the list. Who printed that sheet!? It must have been a joke. 
Micro-blogging
One of the most exciting aspects of the day was tweeting about it while I was dead in the middle of it. When I noticed that folks were looking for coffee and they didn’t find any, I thought it would be helpful to use the #atllinux hash and spread the word. I ended up using that mechanism to confirm and inform folks various things going on during the event. It was very cool and I felt very connected with all these avatars!
My First Meetup
Nick Owen from WiKID tweeted about an open spot in the schedule and asked if folks wanted to do a quick meetup. Me, Christopher Johnson from if PEOPLE, Josh Sweeney from <ALT> Invest, Sanjay Parekh, Matt Smith, and Urvaksh Karkaria graciously strolled into the conversation and thus the meetup took place. Coincidently; this “first” convention procuded a lot of “firsts” for me: live tweeting, the convention itself, an entreprenur meetup, volunteering outside of a church event, and rubbing shoulders with vendors of an event. So; again, event though I didn’t see all the workshops – I still had a great time.
September 21st, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Marc, Thank you for volunteering and helping out immensely during the registration rush, as well as through out the whole day. People like you are what made ALF a success.
There were two versions of the printed spreadsheets. The original ones were by registration date (a special request which I initially questioned on Friday) followed on Saturday AM by the more common-sense ones sorted by last name.
Wifi credentials were to have been printed on the back of everyone’s name tag, but there were issues at the last minute that prevented that from occurring. These lessons will be remembered for ALF 2010.
Coffee, an initial consideration, was rejected at the last moments due to costs. Starbucks wanted $400+ to provide and deliver coffee+cups for 300 people. Then there was the possibility that some people would protest because they might not like the Starbucks company, and then there would be those who would say “why not tea?!?!”. At the end of the day it’s apparent that we can’t please all the people all of the time… but if coffee and registration are the only complaints, that means we must have scored well on content (not that any of us had any free time to attend any).
September 21st, 2009 at 6:00 pm
Hey, the shirts that your wife did rock. I really liked them, I have showned them off to all my friends, they are very impress that you guys did this with open source software. I will be nice and not point out the software your wife uses. ):>
But you guys who staff the event make it great. Sorry that you couldn’t attend more talks.
Anyone that didn’t a chance to go this year go next year. It’s really great things these guys did. Thanks for shirts and the help you did.
October 28th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Thanks for this! Much appreciated.