LinuxFest 2004

Reflections on our first "con" from the Prez.

Well LinuxFest 2004 has come and gone, and I'd have to say I am pleased overall with the way things went. Since this was our first stab at a big event, we knew we'd run into some unforeseen pitfalls, but as far as pitfalls go, I think we handled them allright. We definitely got the experience needed to burn this sucker down next time!
And as God as my witness, that room shrunk between the time we reserved it and the event.
I'll swear to it .

See photos from the event.

Presentations

The presentations went well. I received a lot of good feedback from the attendees on this. Thanks to Erik, Ari, sternn, dfu, and Mark for showing everyone about networking, X, multimedia, and migration, respectively. I think everyone found it informative, and incidentally, this was *the* most popular part of the event.

Vendors

Thanks to John from PowerHouse for setting up the very cool vendor table - there were a few installations that couldn't have happened without a hardware fix that was supplied by PowerHouse at a very reasonable price. John also loaned us some very nice hardware for the event, for which we are grateful. John's presence was a nice fit and was appreciated by most everyone there.

Gaming

Well what can I say - it was our first go at this, so it didn't quite turn out as I had hoped. I saw a lot of people having a good time, but I know that it could have been organized better. A special thanks goes out to Brian from LAN Extreme - he, as a guest, pulled part of it together and ran a good ladder tournament for us.
And for that, buddy, I owe you lunch. Q'Doba's on me man.

Other Volunteers of Note

Thanks to elfstones for providing *all* of the food and pop for the event! Snacks and caffeine keep us on task.
Thanks to Pat, Joe, alt_phil and to the Big Chicken Dinner for keeping the network running and for providing constant support and information to the multitudes of attendees wanting to know/install/troubleshoot some Linux foo.
Thanks to dfu for the awesome "STAFF" shirts and to Rick and Kevin for helping us tear down.
I apologize if I've left anyone out - so many people helped. If you were one of them, then you are excellent!

Attendees

Thanks to everyone who braved the subzero cold to geek out with us! We hope you learned cool new stuff and found Linux as cool and useful as we do! Feel free to drop by a meeting anytime, as you are all welcome. We are happy that we could share our passion with you all.

Well, that's about it.
We are totally insane and are already planning for next year, so hopefully I'll see a lot of you all next year. Remember, Linux is part software, part attitude - the attitude may work without the software, but the software will not work without the attitude! I have to go now and set up the machine I bought at the event for my 2 year old. She likes Red Hat 9

-- Chuck Geigner, "mongoose"
President, UHACC. 29 Jan 2004