Ubuntu (w/ Special Guests) in Boston

There are quite a few important events related to Ubuntu — and to free software communities more generally — in the Boston area in the next few weeks. I plan to participate in many of them.

First, this coming Saturday, October 13, there will be an Ubuntu install party hosted at MIT and organized by the Ubuntu Massachusetts local community team. It promises to be a lot of fun and a great opportunity to have a gaggle of geeks install a free OS on your computer for you. If you’ve been thinking about installing free software but been hesitant (my guess is that this is not the majority of my readers), this is the event for you. I’ll probably be doing RockBox installs as well so backup your music and bring an iPod if you’re unfortunate enough to have funded Apple through the purchase of one.

Next week on October 18, Ubuntu Massachusetts will be hosting a party at the Globe Bar and Cafe to celebrate the (scheduled) release of the Gutsy Gibbon. I am not thrilled about everything in this release — like Compiz by default — but I am happy about the progress of the distribution both technically and in reaching out to an ever-wider and ever-larger group of users.

On the week of October 29-November 2, Canonical is hosting the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Cambridge. I’ll definitely drop by for a least a day or two to make some strategic interjections and to participate in a few specifications that I care about. The summit is just down the street from my office at the Hotel at MIT so I have little excuse to not show up. I’ll also being hanging out with friends from Ubuntu during the week.

Finally, as part of the Ubuntu conference, Canonical is sponsoring FOSSCamp. It promises to be a Foocamp/Barcamp style "un-conference" with a focus on free software and open source. I’ll be there and, if there’s demand, will run sessions on Selectricity and a quick Making Debian/Ubuntu Packages for Sysadmins talk — basically a more polished version of what I did at the Ubucon in New York.

All events are open to the public although people who are not Ubuntu developers may be a little bored at the developer summit. I look forward to seeing both old and new faces around the project in the next month.

5 Replies to “Ubuntu (w/ Special Guests) in Boston”

  1. Being transformed into a small plank does not sound enjoyable. I think I’ll stay away from the developer summit.

  2. “All events are open to the public although people who are not Ubuntu developers may be a little board at the developer summit.”

    This is one of those lines where the ‘typo or pun?’ call is a little difficult for me.

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