After a day of rest, I am ready to blog about my weekend in Columbus. It was a very busy weekend as I volunteered for the second year. I left Thursday evening, carpooling with Simon Ruiz and his wife Sarah. Simon is part of the Indiana Ubuntu Local Community Team and they are good folk. Arrived at 9:30 pm, met the OLF guys at Drury, and went to my room at Hyatt on Capitol Square.
Got my room for 45 bux a night. It has a nice view of the State Capitol and it’s clean and cozy. But since it’s a four-star hotel, they will charge you for internet. Boo! Found a free hotspot close by, though.
On Friday morning, I went to the convention center and helped with the Professional Attendees’ registration. They were taking tutorials on time management, the LPI exam, security, and other system administration courses. I did meet Tom Limoncelli, the author of Time Management for System Administrators. Tom’s a nice fellow in person. I thanked him for his book, as it helped me and my husband with organizing time. I later bought his other book that he co-authored, The Practice of System and Network Administration. It’s over 950 pages thick and chockful of best practices that system/network administrators should know.
At lunchtime, I helped pass out shirts for the attendees and assembled the lanyard passes. After lunch, I relaxed and went to Barley’s for the pre-party. Went back to my room as sleep was of importance. Saturday was a day of much activity and I needed the sleep.
I was one of the presenters introducing the speakers, and I was assigned the Town Hall stage. The OLF organizers gave me a shirt and a “STAFF” lanyard pass. I got to hear Peter Salus, Elizabeth Garbee, Ilan Rabinovitch, Roland Hess, Paul Ferris, and Jon [Maddog] Hall. I also got to hear Jono Bacon as well. There was some technical difficulties with the overhead projector, but it was solved when presenters directly hooked up their laptops to the projectors instead of via the podium.
There was a huge raffle and HP gave away 5 portable computers and two printers. Simon Ruiz won the Photosmart inkjet. He was thrilled to the gills. The Linux Link Tech Show guys also gave away lots of books.
The after-party took place, with desserts and old school video games. I played a round of Super Mario 2. (The Princess is the best character for the game.) Dualcore performed their nerdcore rap. There was a dance off involving a chubby guy without a t-shirt. Moob-a-riffic! One attendee noticed my new Limoncelli book and I let him browse through it. He did not know that Sarbanes-Oxley regulations do apply to SAs. I advised him to chat with his colleagues about proper compliance. Note to the profs at Ivy Tech: Thank you for teaching me that tidbit.
The final morning was spent at the Greek Orthodox Cathedral across the street from the center. One of the Zenoss guys invited me to attend, so I got to see something new…er…I mean old. They commemorated the fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council. I recognized various elements of the Liturgy, but it was different. I’m still sticking to the Book of Concord and high church Lutheranism. At least I understand a bit why various Lutheran clergy crossed over to Constantinople. I ate with Mr and Mrs Ruiz at the North Market and we went back to the Fort.
I’m glad I went to OLF and learned plenty. Much love and kudos to Beth Lynn and the OLF staff. They worked so hard to bring this to fruition. Over 1000 attended the conference and it was a great success. Travis Bigrigg has a great collection of pictures on his Flickr page. Looking forward to next year!
