The Linux Society

September has been for the past couple of years a very busy time for me in deed.  The beginning of a new academic year, the beginning of a new year at Linux Society, and all the upheaval that this brings.  I say upheaval in a very passionate way, I have a pretty cool job for a Linux nut, i met lots of new fresh faces coming to university to follow their academic paths, and i watch some who have only ever seen the proprietary windows XP world discover the world of Free and Open Source Software (more Vista users this year. i also say job loosely as i don't get paid, but i do have to be available most days and dedicate some hours to it).

I also have to try and cram in has much learning as i can, and this year i have a new addition to my little family coming (it's not so little now, and due in January 2008)

I was talking to my girlfriend the other day, and i remember saying the same thing to her as i did last year, namely that this was the busiest September that i have ever had, and i think few would disagree with that.

This year not only did we get ready for what turned out to be a truly spectacular event celebrating Software Freedom Day on the 20th September, then we had to be ready for Freshers Fair 4 days later.  As a society freshers fair is an incredibly important time.  It's a chance to speak to massive amount of people about Linux, i suppose for us its like our own special trade fair. 

One thing i noticed this year was the amount of people running ubuntu that i met this year, in all i would say i spoke to more Linux Users at freshers fair then ever before, i would argue that this maybe due to the amount of sub laptops that are making their way on the market, i met quite a few ASUS EEEPC owners. 

It's be a long September, we (me, girlfriend and daughter) moved the day after freshers fair, and then back to classes the day after that.  However i must have spoken to more people this year about free software then this time last year, and looking at the achievements that the Linux Society made last year i can only imagine that this year i'll speak to more than last year. 

We have a sort of weekend off this weekend, me, my girlfriend, and my daughter are going to a family wedding and we're off the reservation so to speak, we're all looking forward to it.

Software Freedom Day - Dundee - 2008 was just a whole new experience for me, and for most of the people that worked on it.  It's hard not to be emotional when you watched friends and people i have known for over two years, that i see every two weeks put their personal fears aside, stand up and talk to an audience mostly made up of strangers about something they love in the world of Free Software.  Not only did they put their nerves into a box, they delivered talks that even to professional speakers would have seemed good.  I saw a blog post after the event that i though showed our event in a good light (http://community.zdnet.co.uk/blog/0,1000000567,10009347o-2000469549b,00....), and thank PeterJudge for his kind words.  It was a lot of organisation and a lot of time put to getting this event of the ground, and left me some what exhausted after it all finished.

I made new friends this year, and forged deeper friendships with people i already knew (some where even rewarded with new nicknames).  I think in whole i'm proud of the event we held, the feedback i got was heart warming.  We managed to record some of the talks and they are being published on www.hackerpublicradio.org soon, my talk entitled What is Free Software, went out the other day and can be found at http://thelinuxsociety.org.uk/content/sfd-dundee-2008-what-is-free-softw... I'll let the Tayside Linux User Group mailing list know as and when each one comes out, the TayLUG mailing list can be found at https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/dundee  - We also recorded something a little special for my friend over at www.linuxbasement.com Chad_W, should be heading out on his cast sometime soon, i'll post when its out.

Of course i thank everyone that helped to make that a special day, and they all know who they are.  The night of the talk ended with a lot of geeks finding the bar downstairs from the event, and drinking a large alcohol fuelled amnesia worth of beer.  I have to be honest it was the best night out with the lads that i ever had, and we just laughed from start to end, i think it was a mix of, releif at getting through the event (i've order the I Survived SFD 2008 T-Shirt), the high and buzz from most of us doing a well received talk, and actually having a bunch of geeks that didn't have to explain the geeky jokes to.  (What does Ubuntu stand for?  Old African Word for Can't configure Debian, SQL statement walks into a bar and walks over to two tables and asks, can i join you (Thanks Scottish Developers for that one, any chance i can return it))

So i suppose what is left for me to do now is sign off, and thank everyone once again.