[lug] Linux Fest 2000 Report, Day 4

[Sean Reifschneider]

(Pictures are at http://www.tummy.com/conferencereports/LinuxFest-2000/)

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Linux Fest 2000, Kansas City
Tuesday 2000-06-23
Sean Reifschneider, tummy.com, ltd.
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It seems that most of the vendors were expecting the traffic to pick up
on Friday and Saturday.  Wishful thinking, unfortunately...  The show floor
was really slow, and even the people with local offices were pulling out.
In fact, the only place with a booth when we left at 5pm were Dash --
a local hardware supplier.

I finally ran across the official show explination on what happend with
RedHat.  To quote the "LinuxFest Happenings Scheduled for June 21, 2000":

   You will note there is an empty slot where Red Hat originally was located.
   In place will be a special hackers area.  What happened?  There is the
   reason I was given, and there are other items I have been told of."

Oh master thespian.

Kevin gave a presentation on NetFilter (the new replacement for ipchains
for the 2.4 kernels) at 3:30pm, which everyone at the conference attended.
Yep, all 27 folks were there...  We later ran into someone who said
they had dropped by at 3:30, and there was literally nobody on the
conference floor.

We were having problems with our corporate jet (see the picture), so
decided to pack up and go to the KULUA LUG meeting in Lawrence, then head
back home.  We're LUG meeting junkies -- we love visiting other LUGs
when we're traveling.  I hated missing Emmett from Slashdot's keynote
on Saturday ("it'll happen even if I have to give it in the parking lot
in front of the hall").

The sad fact of the matter is -- the LUG meeting was better planned,
better organized, more fun, and (nearly) better attended than the rest
of the conference.  The LUG members pitched in and paid to fly Emmett in.
The meeting was at this fantastic little Chinese place called "Plum Tree"
(2620 Iowa, Lawrence Kansas).  Highly recommended -- about 10 minutes
off I-70.  The woman who runs it made us feel at home.

There were 37 people at the meeting.  Emmett was the guest of honor, and
kept us all entertained with stories and later played the piano.  A true
renaissance man...  His speech thanking the LUG for banding together to
bring him out brought tears to my eyes.

He had brought a couple of boxes of Slashdot t-shirts with him, and
graciously signed them to commemorate the event.

We ran into a guy from Wichita wearing a Slackware T-shirt in 
Salina on the way back home Saturday.  It was quite indicative when
his answer to our question "Did you come out for the Linux conference"
was "What Linux conference?".

The LUGs are talking about putting together a show next year, which we
have pledged to support.  The date being thrown around s March of 2001.
Look for it, but I'd recommend you look carefully to ensure that "Greg
Palmer" and his company "Mobius Marketing" aren't involved.

To quote Emmett, "It's not all bad, because it brought us together."
That's what Linux is about.
-- 
 "Science exists to lend belief to sci-fi movies."
Sean Reifschneider, Inimitably Superfluous <jafo at tummy.com>
tummy.com - Linux Consulting since 1995. Qmail, KRUD, Firewalls, Python