The FOSS Force Video Interview
The SouthEast LinuxFest started at Clemson University in 2009. These days it’s in Charlotte, N.C., and hopes to host more than 1,000 people June 10-12, 2016. We had a little video chat with Jeremy Sands, who’s in charge of the event.
This is not the first time FOSS Force has talked with Jeremy Sands. Christine Hall interviewed him in 2015, and while the 2016 SouthEast LinuxFest may be bigger and better than ever, it’s still a down home, Southern kind of thing, right down to how Sands makes most of his living: running the College Sports Nation BBS, which is a very Southern thing since the region loves college football even more than it loves NASCAR.
This is a “Meet the Man Behind the Curtain” interview. It’s more about Sands than about either csnbbs.com or the LinuxFest he spends so much of his time organizing. But at the end of the interview, he talks about how the LinuxFest can always use more volunteers, even if all you can do is woman or man the registration desk for an hour. And sponsors? It’s a pretty healthy operation financially, but more sponsors are always welcome — especially ones from the Southeast, because this conference is proudly regional, not something identical to what you might find in, say, Los Angeles or Washington State.
Robin “Roblimo” Miller is a freelance writer and former editor-in-chief at Open Source Technology Group, the company that owned SourceForge, freshmeat, Linux.com, NewsForge, ThinkGeek and Slashdot, and until recently served as a video editor at Slashdot. Now he’s mostly retired, but still works part-time as an editorial consultant for Grid Dynamics, and (obviously) writes for FOSS Force.
Great interview, and I’ll definitely have to check out Jeremy’s college football bulletin board, just to see what he has in the way of the ACC powerhouse University of Miami đŸ™‚
Also, it’s great to see SELF becoming established as one of the main expos in the Linux year. Kudos to Jeremy and his crew of volunteers at SELF.