SCALE 14X: Making the Mark and Getting Ready for Doctorow

SCALE 14X Thursday

One of the drawbacks of having to work a show like SCALE is that I don’t get to go to enough sessions while I’m here. As the traffic cop at the intersection of old and new media, it’s my job to marshal the publicity team’s forces into taking the information happening at the show and then processing it for the wider public consumption.

Pasadena Convention Center - SCALE 14x — The calm before the perfect storm, complete with plaza-sweeping Zamboni: The hall at the Pasadena Convention Center is ready for SCALE 14X attendees.

That said — and fighting off rumors Thursday morning that, yes, I am the one to introduce Mark Shuttleworth at the UbuCon keynote that starts the entire UbuCon and SCALE 14X on Thursday (not to worry, I didn’t) — SCALE 14X Thursday kicked off a new era in the conference; specifically one where it become a major player in the FOSS expo constellation, and perhaps the biggest independent show in North America.

Shuttleworth’s keynote kicked off a busier-than-expected day at SCALE 14X. Sessions on Thursday throughout UbuCon and the rest of SCALE 14X seemed to have more than adequate attendance, especially in the larger rooms at the Pasadena Convention Center. In fact, the Chef Training was standing room only, and some of the attendees had to be turned away.

One of the great things about working a show like this is that you get to see a lot of people who, invariably, you get to see every few months or so if you’re caught in the Deadhead-like, road-goes-on-forever-and-the-party-never-ends cycle of attending Linux and FOSS events. There were many folks to catch up with in the crowd of SCALE 14X attendees that are always speaking or organizing or reporting on or even just attending the events.

Josh Simmons at SCALE 14x — Josh Simmons of O’Reilly talks about becoming a Web developer in one of the many sessions at SCALE 14X on Thursday (photo by Sean McCabe/SCALE)

One such person, who spent his afternoon speaking in a session about Web development, is Joshua Simmons of O’Reilly Media. Joshua, who despite his age is a FOSS expo veteran, knocked it out of the park on Thursday, giving a detailed presentation on becoming a Web developer, and it was one that was as informative as it was thought-provoking. It’s one that I hope he takes on the road and we see at other Linux/FOSS events through 2016.

LOOKING AHEAD TO FRIDAY: Today, SCALE 14X shifts into another gear, with the opening keynote of Cory Doctorow at 9 a.m. Doctorow, a celebrated science-fiction writer and digital freedom warrior, will be talking about “No Matter Who’s Winning the War on General Purpose Computing, You’re Losing.” Day two of UbuCon and the PostgreSQL Days continues, as well as the introduction of the SCALE 14X Legal Track — with open source becoming so prevalent in society, lawyers need to keep up with trends and SCALE is there to help.

The exhibit hall — 143 vendors all ready to display their wares — will open at 2, and the evening winds down with UpSCALE Talks — rebranded Ignite talks where speakers have preset slides at 20-second intervals and speakers have five minutes to keep up — and Bad Voltage Live wraps things up with its ribald live performance.

More to follow tomorrow. Watch this space.

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Larry Cafiero

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

3 Comments

FOSS Force Staff January 22, 2016

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Ken Starks January 22, 2016

Touch ’em all Larry, touch ’em all. Great coverage and I will someday pull up my big boy pants and get to SCALE. Right now I’m working on just getting to work on time.

Looking forward to your continuing coverage of this show. Hopefully, I’ll find a way to see you sometime this year.

And introducing Mark Shuttleworth? Wow….uh, I’d do a cannonball run there and back here just to see that.

Thanks for your great work Larry. This was a fun article.
Mike January 22, 2016

Cory Doctorow is well worth seeing.

With the Linux Foundation dumping all remaining pretense of community involvement and revealing their corporate agenda Mr. Doctorow’s warnings are more relevant than ever.