Atlanta LinuxFest came and went with a bang. C-T blogger Andrew Browning took on the crowds armed with nothing but a shitty camera, an awesome haircut, and a healthy appetite for all things FOSS. 

Last weekend marked the second annual Atlanta LinuxFest, held on September 19th in honor of Software Freedom Day.  What better way to promote software freedom than a free gathering of people willing to spend the better part of a day sharing their love and knowledge of Linux?

For an event in only its second year, Atlanta Linux Fest did a great job of drawing people in. Registration for the Fest topped out at over 600 people, with a number of high-profile companies offering up presentations, including Fedora and their commercial sponsor Red Hat, Ubuntu / Canonical, Google, IBM, and the Software Freedom Law Center.

Some of the talks were tailored toward certain Linux distributions, but none felt like sales pitches. In fact, I didn't hear any distro-specific bad-mouthing. Even the Ubuntu fanboys behaved. Other operating systems, of course, were fair game; after all, what's a Linux convention without some jokes at Microsoft's expense?

If any underlying theme became apparent at the Fest, it was "get involved". Kirrily "Skud" Robert's  engaging keynote presentation, Standing out in the Crowd, addressed the topic of making participation in F/OSS more inviting to underrepresented portions of the member-base. Her presentation focused on women in open source software, but as she pointed out, the information and suggestions presented could be applied to any group under-represented in the open source community.

Many presentations, including Kirrily's, highlighted the fact that barriers to entry in open source involvement aren't as high as we often think. It was encouraging to hear that so many open source contributors weren't natural-born coding geniuses, but simply people with a passion for development.

Members from many different backgrounds and of all ages were in attendance. Unlike some hacker cons, this event was very family-friendly, and I was pleased to see such a wide range of age groups represented. Don't get me wrong; I absolutely love the raucous nature of hacker cons, and spending a weekend sharing drinks with intelligent geeks is definitely my idea of a good time.

However, it made me feel really good to see a number of younger individuals at Atlanta Linux Fest. There were probably at least a half-dozen people there who looked too young to have driven themselves to the event, and I even saw a couple of bewildered moms in tow. Kudos to those parents who allowed their children to spend Saturday hanging out with a bunch of open source geeks in real life. There's real potential in the future of open source software.

For all its upsides, the Fest had its fair share of downsides. There were no epic failures, but it was obvious that the Fest has grown up more quickly than the coordinators expected, and though that's hardly a bad problem to have, it left organizers mildly under-prepared.

The IBM Facility in Atlanta was a very nice site, but it was tucked away off the highway and signage to the event was almost non-existent. As my brother and I drove down side-road after side-road looking for the convention entrance, we saw several other attendees doing the same. Inside, there was nary a vending machine to be found; and you could almost hear attendees groan in unison when it was announced that the coffee was for volunteers only. Those of us who pre-registered for lunch expected something a little nicer than pizza and canned soft drinks. And some of the rooms just weren't large enough to accommodate the number of people wanting to view the presentations.

So I suspect the coordinators learned a lot this year, and I'm looking forward to seeing how they handle the logistics of the Fest next year. I'll definitely be going again, and I hope to see you there.

Atlanta Linux Fest 2009 by the numbers

Pre-registrations: 600+
Cost of Admission: $0 (lunch not included)
Duration: ~9 hours from introduction to closing ceremony
Simultaneous Tracks: 5 (plus additional UbuCon and Birds of a Feather sessions)
Scheduled Presentations: 36