Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2000 09:36:00 -0600 From: Sean Reifschneider <jafo@tummy.com> To: lwn@lwn.net Subject: Linux Fest 2000 Report, Day 4 (Pictures are at http://www.tummy.com/conferencereports/LinuxFest-2000/) =================================== Linux Fest 2000, Kansas City Tuesday 2000-06-23 Sean Reifschneider, tummy.com, ltd. =================================== 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. -- "I want to see more of you around the lab." "Fine. I'll gain weight." -- Chris Knight, _Real_Genius_ Sean Reifschneider, Inimitably Superfluous <jafo@tummy.com> tummy.com - Linux Consulting since 1995. Qmail, KRUD, Firewalls, Python