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Ottawa Linux Symposium 2000: Tech Rocks!
I arrived on Wednesday morning, and I was told that I wouldn't be able to check into my room until 3 p.m. No problems. I scanned the faces in the geek-filled lobby to see if there was anyone I recognized. I found San Mehat, VA Linux guy and Official Slashdot DJ. Quick acknowledgement and hello, and we were off to breakfast, joined about twenty minutes later by 'Hostile' Joe Arruda and Zac Sprackett, two angry young upstarts from VA. After breakfast and some Ottawa tech sightings, we headed to the show.
The common area of the show itself was a large hallway of the Ottawa Congress Center, connected by entryways to the Westin Hotel and to the Rideau Center, a huge mall. I scanned the room in an effort to find a machine connected to the Net. Passed a few friends Along the way, and finally sat down at a box running Red Hat and Helix GNOME. Good enough for me. Except for one thing: The network was nowhere to be found. This did not bode well. A little questioning later, I found that the network hadn't been completely set up yet, so it was going to be a little while before I could get online.
I went back up to the registration desk, and put down a deposit on a wireless networking card that I would use later. It was a pretty good deal. You sign in, drop a credit card number, and you get a card. Give the card back at the end of the week, and you get your deposit of $165 Canadian back. Again, not a bad idea. The good thing is that by the next day, the networking was up and running.
Except to get it to work, you needed to muck around with your system and find drivers for the thing. If I had the time, I would have done it, but I didn't. The Ottawa Linux Symposium shares one thing with the megashows like Linux World Expo -- the action is fast and furious, and you'll find yourself suddenly surrounded by interesting people you'll want to speak to. The Linux community makes friends fast. We're not talking about 'Oh, I met this guy' encounters, either. People like Alan Cox and Donald Becker. People like Miguel De Icaza and Dave Taylor.
Which brings me to another point. Accessibility. If you've got some kick-ass new code to add to Enlightenment, go talk to Rasterman. He's right over there. Want to discuss something you need added to the kernel, and want to show off your source to Alan Cox? He's sitting down hacking 2.4 while discussing Scooby-Doo. One of the great things about the Linux community is the ability to contact developers first-hand, especially though E-mail. Ottawa Linux Symposium is a testament to the fact that it works just as well in real life, too. Community building was in full force, and it was good to see it happen.
There's a little bit of a line of separation here. I was at the conference to write a story about it, not to attend the conference and glean knowledge from the presentations. So, I talked to someone who was: Julie Lavoie, systems administrator for Concordia University in Montreal.
"This year's OLS was less impeccably organized than last year's: registration was chaotic (splitting registration into people with last names beginning with A-M and N-Z does _not_ give you two equal lines!) and AV problems plagued many talks in the first few days, but Good Things Still Happened: the hardcore technical talks left me a wiser computer geek, Helix Code threw a smashing party and I found the mail client of my dreams."
"In another loopy tour through Miguel's hyperkinetic world, Miguel de Icaza opened the conference by telling a room full of hardcore Unix geeks how Unix sucks, what we can learn from Microsoft, and how GNOME will improve on all of this. Brave, brave.
Maddog shared wise 'everything old is new again' computing stories during the welcome reception. The FreeS/Wan project stood out as a shining example of security engineering done right during their talks: reduce complexity, make it possible for non-experts to configure your product safely, provide real security instead of marketing smoke. Rasterman demystified X programming. David Miller gave us a wacky, gossip-filled insider's view of kernel development in the past n years. The Helix Code folk introduced me to Evolution, the mail client of my dreams, which promises to displace my current mh/premail/procmail setup the second it's out of beta."
It's not exactly a Linux conference unless there's a few parties, right? I attended the Corel party at the Hard Rock for about an hour before I left in abject boredom. The Zero Knowledge party out at the ranch in Nepean, Ontario was a good one. Apparently, there was a problem with food there, but I didn't find out because I didn't eat any of it. I did enjoy throwing Linux enthusiasts off of the inflatable battle thing, and I won at least one Zero Knowledge T-shirt for it. Julie was at the parties, too.
"On the party scene: Corel's Hard Rock Cafe party was boring; the highlight was managing to get the Hard Rock to play techno. Zero-Knowledge's dude ranch party was good, and had cool party games like 'King of the Mountain' on top of a giant inflatable mushroom. Helixcode threw the best party of the conference, renting the cozy Black Thorn cafe, with unlimited drinks, live band, and awesome food. Helixcode also gave me a stuffed Bonobo monkey, so as far as I'm concerned they can do no wrong. A bunch of us went raving on Saturday night in the countryside of Ottawa. There's nothing like wrapping up a night of raving with a soak in the hotel hottub."
Enough fun and games! I also got a chance to talk to Craig Ross, who is the 'Token Canadian' at VA Linux and was one of the organizers of the show. Some of the differences between this year and last year was moving from the Westin Hotel to the larger Ottawa Congress Center. Also, this year's conference had a lot more attendees than last year. Take it away, Craig!
"Although I'm still attempting to recover from lack of sleep, I'm really quite pleased with the success of this year's conference. For those who attended last year, you probably noticed an increase in both the number of talks, as well as the attendees. Obviously we were excited about the increased interest in the event, though there was also the concern that the event would lose its intimacy."
"It was probably during the last night where I realized everything went as well as it did. It was almost as if I was walking around in a trance until that night, where everyone was coming up and commending us for putting on an excellent event, and how they were looking forward to next year. Or how Miguel changed his flight, just so he could stay. ;)"
"The talks were fascinating and informative, and we were really lucky to have Dave Miller, Miguel de Icaza, and Jon "Maddog" Hall for our keynote talks."
"As for next year, we're going to be making a lot of changes. Mostly to allow attendees, speakers and sponsors the ability to access their 'accounts' online, and submit papers, change information, etc. We're really excited about continuing to host this event, and appreciate all of the support from both our attendees, and sponsors. Thanks, and I look forward to seeing you all next year."
Ah, but you really couldn't tell a well-rounded account of the conference without having the perspective of one of the speakers, could you? Here's the word fron San 'NeTTwerk' Mehat, who gave a presentation of VACM, a new tool for administration in large server farm environments.
"I thought OLS itself in general was a great technical conference. The organizers had obviously thought ahead of time of the needs of the people who would be attending a pure technical conference; the wireless ethernet and ready availability of 'someone who knew what was going on' was a refreshing change from other less technical conferences. The speaker topics and presentations were informative, and in depth (even though the show was a little bit 'gnome heavy' in my opinion). As a presenter I found the experience very enjoyable. The usual last minute technical problems that might normally have me scrambling around for 'someone who knew what was going on' were quickly solved by show attendants. As far as the 'room-for-improvement' department, the actual scheduling of some of the various talks could use some improvement to avoid conflicts between talks which are equally interesting. Also, I believe the show could have been a little shorter. Four days of pure technical content is enough to melt my brain."
One of the biggest complaints I've heard about the show is that there were too many interesting talks scheduled in conflict with other interesting talks. In the Linux conference biz, those are the kinds of problems you like to have. It means more people will show up next year to check out the tracks they missed. Sure, it can be irritating to miss something, but the general consensus is that Ottawa Linux Symposium rocked, and everyone I spoke to looks forward to next year.
The Northern Belle is long gone. We floated it down the river almost a year ago.
:)
The main casino is completely new. Lots of pretty lights, loud sounds, and a waterfall too.
And we don't have muggers lying in wait outside the casino, like the Detroit casinos do.
Heh. The first time I crossed the border into Detroit, the Customs officer asked me if I had any firearms. When I said "No" he said "Good God man! Here, take mine!"
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