LinuxFest Northwest is an annual technology

Technology

Technology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and procedures. The word technology comes ;...

 conference and expo held in Bellingham, Washington

Bellingham, Washington

Bellingham is the largest city in, and the county seat of, Whatcom County in the U.S. state of Washington. It is the twelfth-largest city in the state. Situated on Bellingham Bay, Bellingham is protected by Lummi Island, Portage Island, and the Lummi Peninsula, and opens onto the Strait of Georgia...

. It is a Saturday and Sunday weekend event held in late April. The event is dedicated to discussion and development of the Linux

Linux

Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

 operating system

Operating system

An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...

 and other Open source

Open source

The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

 and Free software

Free software

Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...

 projects.

Event Description

LinuxFest Northwest is a free event, focused on grassroots

Grassroots

A grassroots movement is one driven by the politics of a community. The term implies that the creation of the movement and the group supporting it are natural and spontaneous, highlighting the differences between this and a movement that is orchestrated by traditional power structures...

 evangelism

Evangelism

Evangelism refers to the practice of relaying information about a particular set of beliefs to others who do not hold those beliefs. The term is often used in reference to Christianity....

 of Linux and other Open source software projects. During the event, conference attendees listen to a number of presentations and make contact with a number of companies and non-profit organizations who share an interest in open source software. The event raises money through a raffle and by charging commercial vendors a donation fee for their booths. This allows the festival to stay free for all who wish to come, while raising enough money to fly in popular speakers.

Location

Linuxfest Northwest is held in Bellingham, WA; about 80 miles north of Seattle

Seattle, Washington

Seattle is the county seat of King County, Washington. With 608,660 residents as of the 2010 Census, Seattle is the largest city in the Northwestern United States. The Seattle metropolitan area of about 3.4 million inhabitants is the 15th largest metropolitan area in the country...

 and 50mi (80km) south of Vancouver B.C.. The location is primarily chosen because the facilities are donated by Bellingham Technical College. There have been discussions in the past to move the festival south to Seattle, however no local groups have taken on the task.

History

LinuxFest Northwest originated as "Linuxfest", held by the Bellingham Linux Users Group (BLUG). The first 'fest' was held in 2000, but was mainly advertised as a local Bellingham event. In 2003, the fest was expanded to a regional event, advertising as far south as Seattle and Tacoma Washington, and North to Vancouver, British Columbia. Until 2006 it was a full day on Saturday. In 2007 it was expanded into a 2 day weekend event.

Previous featured speakers

2010

• Brian "Krow" Aker
  Brian Aker
  Brian Aker, born August 4, 1972 in Lexington, Kentucky, USA is an open-source hacker who has worked on various Apache modules, the Slash system, and numerous storage engines for the MySQL database. Aker was Director of Architecture at MySQL AB until it was acquired by Sun Microsystems. He led...
  
   — Drizzle
• Jesse Keating — Fedora Developers conference
• Brian Alseth — ACLU Technology and Freedom

2009

• Joe Brockmeier — Building Packages, Distros, and More
• Jon "maddog" Hall — How Free and Open Source Software will have World Domination
• Jesse Keating — What's under the hat? A sneak peek at Fedora 11!
• Seth Schoen — Information security discovers physics
• "Monty" Widenius
  Michael Widenius
  Ulf Michael Widenius , born 3 March 1962, in Helsinki, Finland, is the main author of the original version of the open-source MySQL database and a founding member of the MySQL AB company....
  
   — AskMonty & Black Vodka

2008

• Brian "Krow" Aker — Caching via libmemcached
• Joe Brockmeier — A Look at KDE4
• Mel Chua — OLPC: Education in the classroom worldwide
• Brian Hatch — Network Protocols Illuminated
• Jesse Keating — Fedora 9 Sneak Peek
• Rob Lanphier — Hijinks and tomfoolery on the 3D Internet

2007

• Brian "Krow" Aker — How Sites Scale Out
• chromatic — The Present and Phuture of Parrot
• Crispin Cowen — Securing Linux Systems with AppArmor
• Karl Fogel — 3 Centuries of Open Source & Copyright
• Jesse Keating — One Laptop Per Child
• Allison Randal — Parrot: a VM for Dynamic Languages
• Karen Sandler — Software Patents

2006

• Tim Bray — Open Problems in Network Computing
• Greg DeKoenigsberg — Fedora and Community Building
• Charles Ditzel — Twelve Reasons To Use NetBeans
• George Dyson
  George Dyson (science historian)
  George Dyson is a scientific historian, the son of Freeman Dyson and Verena Huber-Dyson, brother of Esther Dyson, and the grandson of Sir George Dyson. He is the father of Lauren Dyson. When he was sixteen he went to live in British Columbia in Canada to pursue his interest in kayaking and...
  
   — Turing's Cathedral
• Jim McQuillan — The Linux Terminal Server Project
• Danny O'Brien — Incoming! What's on the EFF's Radar

2005

• Brian "Krow" Aker — State of the Dolphin
• Chris DiBona
  Chris DiBona
  Chris DiBona is the open source and public sector engineering manager at Google. His team oversees license compliance and supports the open source developer community through programs such as the Google Summer of Code and through the release of open source software projects and patches on Google...
  
   — Google Open Source Update
• George Dyson — Von Neumann's Universe
• Chuck Gray — Impact of Linux
• Brian Hatch — The Command Line is for Everyone!
• Dee-Ann LeBlanc — Linux for Dummies

2004

• Charles Ditzel — Java 2004 : Java and Linux
• Chuck Gray — Linux Solutions for Business
• Brian Hatch — Linux Security
• Dee-Ann LeBlanc — Bringing Mainstream Games to Linux
• Rasmus Lerdorf
  Rasmus Lerdorf
  Rasmus Lerdorf is a Danish programmer with Canadian citizenship and is most notable as the creator of the PHP scripting language. He authored the first two versions...
  
  — PHP from the Source
• Chris Negus — Fedora/Red Hat Troubleshooting

External links

• LinuxFest Northwest - Official Website
• LinuxFest Northwest 2007 Looms
• Laid back at LinuxFest Northwest