Hello All,
SCaLE 16 Ubicon Track Writeup – Ralph Sutter
I recently attended SCaLE 16X, the 16th annual Southern California Linux Expo. It was held in the Pasadena Convention Center March 9-12, 2018 offering 17 separate tracks. As in years past, I was looking forward to following the Ubicon track, which focused exclusively on Ubuntu. When that track didn’t appear in the initial on-line schedule, I began to wonder if the volunteers from Ubicon had decided to opt out this time. Finally, about 2 weeks before the convention, details about Ubicon began to appear on the SCaLE site. Ubicon did indeed take place, running Thursday and Friday.
Thursday offered 5 sessions ranging from System 76 lamenting Canonicals’ unexpected cancellation of the Unity project and their launch of POP OS to presentations on Snap Apps, System Security and a talk by José Antonio Rey flying in from Perú to explain Open Source and Worldwide Communities.
Friday added 4 more sessions. Following the theme of the open source community, J T Nelson detailed how he and his colleagues working in the Hollywood and Gaming industries, produced professional-quality video using powerful, readily available royalty-free on-line video editing software.
Author Nathan Haines gave a presentation on the evolution of Ubuntu followed by an Ubuntu Questions and Answers session.
The closing speaker, Jono Bacon, spoke on his time with Canonical as the Ubuntu Community Manager. He along with other speakers on the Ubicon track, stressed the invaluable contributions of volunteers in developing and advancing Ubuntu.
In addition to the speakers, a principal attraction at SCaLE is walking the floor of the Exhibit Hall. With over 100 exhibitors I had ample opportunity to collect swag for my grandkids and speak with reps from PIA, System 76, VideoLan and many others.
Alan Raul and I carefully scoured the Pasadena Convention Center hoping to find free food to match the outstanding offerings of SCaLE 15x. Alas, that was not to be. The best we could do was complimentary coffee and bagels discovered when we followed a food cart to the DevOps Ballroom.
We did manage to get comped cappuccino’s from Inteligencia Coffee thanks to two baristas curious about Linux. We also scored free admission to the USC Asia Pacific Museum given the fortuitous coinciding of Art Night Pasadena with SCaLE 16X.
Will I attend SCaLE next year? Most certainly. It always affords something for all users of Linux, from end users like me to professional programmers and developers. I’m looking forward to 2019.
Ralph Sutter
