As we get closer to the Southern California Linux Expo — SCALE 13x for those of you keeping score at home — it bears mentioning that the largest community-run Linux/FOSS show in North America has grown to host a lot of other sub-events during the course of the four-day expo.
In years past, Ubuntu, Fedora, PostgreSQL and Chef held their own sessions at SCALE — Ubucon, Fedora Activity Day, PostgreSQL Days and Intro to Chef respectively — and they’ll be back this year. Highlighting the “event within an event” lineup at SCALE 13x are also a few others.
Most prominently, Puppet Labs is holding its Puppet Camp at SCALE 13x on Thursday, February 19. Puppet Camps are one-day, regional events held around the world for people who are currently using or interested in using Puppet. Attendees have the opportunity to talk to a diverse group of Puppet users, benefit from presentations delivered by prominent community members, share experiences, and discuss potential implementations of Puppet with their peers. There is a separate registration for this all-day event, and more information can be found at the link above.
Not to be outdone by its Ubuntu and Fedora peers, openSUSE is holding a Mini Summit at SCALE 13x on Thursday, February 19, as well. Geekos are kicking off 2015 events in Southern California, and to attend the free openSUSE Mini Summit, you must buy a SCALE ticket; registering on the openSUSE events page is not enough. In addition to demonstrations of openSUSE capabilities and having a human resources representative from SUSE to discuss job opportunities, there will be a drawing for some openSUSE Raspberry Pi boards.
On Friday, Infrastructure.Next is for people interested in the evolving tools and projects for managing large-scale IT infrastructure. From storage to configuration management to virtualization infrastructure, all the way to Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS). This is a one-day program that will help practitioners learn more about efficiently embracing the software-defined datacenter. A separate registration is required for this event.
Also, Apache is holding a BigTop event on Thursday and DrupalCamp LA will be hosted on Thursday as well.
One workshop of special note is an Ally Skills Workshop sponsored by the Ada Initiative. The workshop teaches men simple, everyday ways to support women in their workplaces and communities. Participants learn techniques that work at the office, at conferences, and online. At the end of the workshop, participants will feel more confident in speaking up to support women, be more aware of the challenges facing women in their workplaces and communities, and have closer relationships with the other participants. There is a separate registration for this workshop.
There is much more to report, and we’ll do so in the coming weeks. Further, FOSS Force will have daily reports from SCALE during the event. Now in its 13th year, the Southern California Linux Expo runs from February 19-22 at the Hilton Los Angeles Airport hotel.
Larry Cafiero, a.k.a. Larry the Free Software Guy, is a journalist and a Free/Open Source Software advocate. He is involved in several FOSS projects and serves as the publicity chair for the Southern California Linux Expo. Follow him on Twitter: @lcafiero
