LinuxWorld is a congress annually held in the “Jaarbeurs” in Utrecht. It focusses on Linux, OpenSource and Free Software (hi Adriaan!). The visitors are informed about the latest developments in OpenSource, learn what OpenSource solutions could reduce cost in their organizations etc. Besides the technical information shared; these type of conferences are also great to network and meet colleagues in IT.
Co-located with LinuxWorld are the conferences infosecurity.nl, Storage Expo and the Tooling event addressing IT administration and Storage. So, all four big IT events are at one location at the same time! All four events in total draw thousands of people to Utrecht. In 2008 more than 8,000 people visited the four conferences in two days.
Sun got very good feedback on their VDI demo setup running 6 Sun rays and a Demo server with Open Source software stacks. Visitors were really impressed with the freedom of choice for OpenSource workplaces which is offered with VDI. This choice of freedom is really well in line with initiatives like Nederland Open In Verbinding: an initiative of the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs.
At StorageExpo the Sun stand was visited quite well. There theme was "Save Time”: fast storage, low prices. The breakout sessions on OpenStorage were packed. Both sessions had more than 60 people attending.
The Dutch OpenSolaris User Group (NLOSUG) was present as well. I gave a short presentation about OpenSolaris. What is it?, what are some of the key features?, the licensing model and how to contribute to OpenSolaris were some of the topics discussed. This talk was attended by about 30 people. Because one cannot tell everything about OpenSolaris in just 20 minutes there was a lot of talk about OpenSolaris afterwards. There was much interest in contributing to OpenSolaris using SourceJuicer, how to make an IPS package, ZFS features etc.
It is really good to see that there is so much interest in the products of Sun Microsystems and it's OpenSource solutions. The interest and popularity is growing bigger and bigger.