Ohio LinuxFest 2008

Mackenzie Morgan - Don't Get Cracked on Hostile WiFI

Jim Wildman - iscsi For the Hobbyist

Paul Ferris - Managing your Free Software career

Jon "maddog" Hall - Sustainable Computing

Elizabeth Garbee - Through the Looking Glass: Open Source From a Teenage Perspective

Dan Chen - Unbreaking Audio for the Unassuming Linux User

Scott Preston - Linux Robotics

Mat Kovach - Looking for Gravity Defying Fastballs, Sore Shoulders and Spitballs with Open Source Software

Esther "Moose" Filderman - OpenAFS: How Becoming Open Source Changed AFS, and Everything You Need To Know To Start Using It Today

Eric G. Wolfe - Fitting Square Pegs in Round Holes: Linux in a Windows World

Andrew Pitonyak - Can You Do That In Linux?

Ilan Rabinovitch - Hacking the legislature with Geek-PAC

Bob Solimeno - Drupal Applications in a Corporate Environment

Douglas Davis - Home Suite Home

Bdale Garbee - Peace, Love, and Rockets!

Don Vosburg - Xen: Virtually Here!

Peter Salus - Where Next?

An overview of the current rise of Blender, the world's most popular 3D animation software. While some brief background is given including Blender's origins, code base, development control, and community structure, we'll focus on the variety of ways that the Blender Foundation, now called the Blender Institute, has been able to successfully generate funds over the last five years. If time permits, we'll also screen their 2008 Open Movie release "Big Buck Bunny."

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Roland of a handful of Blender power users who is also on the development team, Roland provides a unique and entertaining perspective on the internal workings of one of the world's most popular Open Source projects. Having written both the official newbies guide - "The Essential Blender" - and an upcoming book on integrating Blender into the animator's studio, he is also recognized as one of Blender's premier documentarians. He lives and works in Pittsburgh.

Open wifi in general can be dangerous, and when you're headed to a conference, you really need to know how to protect your system from being compromised. Preventative measures, such as how to properly configure a firewall; day-of precautions, like those related to physical security; and post-conference data integrity checks just to be sure will all be covered. Though some of the information may be better understood by more experienced users, even beginners will benefit from hearing it.

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Mackenzie "maco" Morgan is an Ubuntu Forums moderator who refuses to admit that she's not a noob. She takes every opportunity to promote open formats and Free Software, particularly Linux.

iscsi storage is typically considered an 'enterprise' technology. This presentation discuss several ways a hobbyist or small business owner can use iscsi to add flexibility to their storage options. A quick overview of iscsi terminology and usage is included, but the main focus is on practical uses of the technology.

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Jim Wildman has been working with Unix since the mid 1980's and with Linux since the mid 1990's. He has worked in information technology in medical, manufacturing, Internet and financial markets as both a consultant and employee. He is currently employed by a large financial firm as the lead engineer on the global Linux Engineering team.

"Career management tips are often brought up in a generic light. Linux brings a different focus, managing a FOSS career therefore requires different thinking. Some of the tips covered apply to all careers but all will highlight just why managing an FOSS-career brings unique challenges and twists. Paul will cover a spectrum of ideas that range from common-sense networking hints to more pressing, Linux-related power and how it can be best presented for maximum, positive effect upon your career."

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Paul Ferris is a Linux Community member with 10+ years of experience implementing enterprise Linux. He recently chaired Ohio Linux Fest and in the past has been extremely involved in efforts to build community in the Ohio region. Presently, Paul Ferris is a Technical Architect for Brulant corporation. His technical expertise and team-building skills are utilized managing a talented group of engineers that support on-line commerce infrastructure with names that you will recognize.

Everyone is talking about "Green Computing" these days, but an even more interesting topic is "Sustainable Computing", which includes green computing, but also entails good business plans, sustainable systems, user friendly systems and "always on, omnipresent" computing. This talk will cover some of those topics, and show why Free Software is part of this answer.

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Jon "maddog" Hall is the Executive Director of Linux International (www.li.org), an association of computer users who wish to support and promote the Linux Operating System. During his career in commercial computing which started in 1969, Mr. Hall has been a programmer, systems designer, systems administrator, product manager, technical marketing manager and educator. Mr. Hall has received his BS in Commerce and Engineering from Drexel University, and his MSCS from RPI in Troy, New York.

In this look at a day in the life of a "geeky teen," Elizabeth will explain how free bits fit into a teenage lifestyle. This includes why a teen should care about open source and the ways a young person can integrate free software into a life dominated by the Windows and Mac OS's. Common misconceptions about open source in school will be exposed and explained, as well as subtle things a teenager (or anyone) can do to make free bits less "scary" to their peers.

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A 16 year old from the US, Elizabeth developed an early interest in open source, installing her first Debian machine (with some help!) at age 9. Since then, her main computing interest has been graphics manipulation and digital art. Aside from computers, Elizabeth is a dedicated student who is passionate about music, and enjoys reading comic books.

This presentation demystifies the maze that is Linux audio and demonstrates graphical and command-line tools and best practices (e.g., filing bug reports) to assist in resolving common issues. Modern sound hardware, the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA), Open Sound System (OSS), JACK Audio Connection Kit (JACK), PulseAudio, GStreamer, and Phonon components will be discussed, although troubleshooting will emphasise the former two components (hardware and ALSA).

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Dan Chen is a former Ubuntu core developer whose hair either greyed or fell out altogether in the process of resolving numerous audio issues in the aforementioned popular Linux distribution.

Linux is the perfect platform for robotics. This session will show how to use various programming languages to communicate with micro controllers, capture images from web cameras, perform voice recognition and text to speech, all the components you need for an intelligent robot.

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Scott is a member of the Java Community Process, Central Ohio Java Users Group, Columbus Ruby Brigade and founder of The Columbus Robotics Society. He wrote his first book The Definitive Guide to Building Java Robots, by Apress in 2005, and Co-Authored, Real-World-Ajax by SYS-CON Media in 2006. Scott has given talks about robotics all over Ohio including CodeMash 2008.

Software without a purpose has little value if it can't be used for something the people want. Using R, Open Source databases, TCL, Python, GNUPlot, and GNU FORTRAN, I'll demonstrate how that software can be used to research: Can a baseball defy gravity? Do pitches act differently at each stadium? Is a pitcher injured? Are current pitchers throwing spitballs and why they should!

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Mat been involved with Open Source for .. well too long. When not involved with running NOOSS and maintaining Uptime (http://uptime.openacs.org) and MyTurl (http://myturl.com), he turns his attention to baseball by contributing to the RetroSQL project, an effort to develop OSS and standards for baseball researchers. This year at the SABR (SABR) Mat lead a talk on OSS for baseball researchers. Leading a baseball talk at OLF was the next logical step. Mat is also currently working on a book called 'Hacking the Pitcher' and has been known to throw a mean spitball.

OpenAFS is a free, secure, distributed, file system which started as a research project, became an IBM product, and then Open Source Software. We'll look at how Open Sourcing has affected the development of OpenAFS while debunking some old myths from its for-pay days. We will also examine the basic terms and concepts used as well as the things OpenAFS can and can't do. At the end of the talk, you should know enough about OpenAFS so you can try it out for yourself - no server needed!

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Moose as been working with AFS since before it was called AFS, when it was a research project, and has worked with it through it's growth as an IBM developed & marketed product, and now as an Open Source project. She has run AFS at small and large sites, and does OpenAFS consulting and training among other system administration things. In her spare time, Moose gives talks and evangelizes about OpenAFS to whomever she can. If there is any time left over, it is spent napping.

A few Linux integration tricks. Kerberos and LDAP: advantages and disadvantages. Demonstrations: - Setup Kerberos authentication for PAM integrated services. - Using Apache mod_krb5 to imitate IIS integrated authentication. Samba 3 AD integration & MSRPC tricks. Demonstrations: - Setup a simple "Domain Member" Samba server; - Use the MMC computer management snap-in with your Linux Servers; - Building a better/smarter BIND DNS slave using MSRPC and a Domain Controller.

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Eric had his first taste of Linux with Slackware 3.4 in 1997, and has been an avid user ever since. He has helped found two Linux User Groups in WV, one which is still active almost five years later. This will be the fourth year he has attended the Ohio LinuxFest. Currently, Eric is a member of the IT Systems team at Marshall University, where he assists in the day to day operation of various Red Hat Enterprise servers, VMWare ESX servers, and even the occasional Microsoft Windows Server.

What can I run on Linux? Can I run Word? Can I burn DVDs? Can I play games? This presentation is a survey of miscellaneous applications for Linux. The emphasis is on solving problems rather than detailed coverage of specific applications. Topics such as office suites, graphics, financial management, and utilities will be covered. The intention is to provide coverage appealing to both the advanced and novice user.

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Andrew Pitonyak is a computer scientist and mathematician widely known in the OpenOffice.org (OOo) community as an expert in OOo macros. Andrew has numerous published documents and materials primarily in the area of Linux and OOo. He is frequently found on OOo related forums and mailing lists helping as time permits.

It is becoming increasingly vital to the success of open-source that elected representatives be properly informed about issues relating to open-standards & access to information. Issues such as the DMCA, DRM, copyright/patent reform, and information access pose very serious risks to open source and the freedom of information. This presentation will review ways in which ordinary geeks can better make their voices heard and make a difference in this election year.

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Ilan Rabinovitch is a Co-Founder of Geek-PAC (previously BytesFree.org). Additionally he has helped organize the Southern California Linux Expo as Conference Chair over the last 7 years. When not advocating open source and free software, he earns a living as a Systems Administrator at Edmunds.com in Santa Monica, CA

Drupal is an open source content management platform that is extensible and easily upgraded as new versions are developed. This platform was chosen to serve two technical databases to share information among research groups in a Fortune 500 manufacturing company. An unused desktop PC was obtained to make a LAMP server with Drupal. A working system was developed within one week to serve the needs of about 30 users.

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Bob Solimeno is a Principal Scientist working for a Fortune 500 manufacturer in the pulp and paper industry. He has been employed as a scientist working in a variety of industrial and research laboratory settings for more than 20 years, and has been an avid computer "power user" since 1982. GNU/Linux and Free Software have been part of his life since 1996.

The office suite can be used for many things in the typical home. A few handy home projects will be demonstrated that can be done with Office suites on Linux. Some examples are customized Christmas cards, a celebration slide show, a club newsletter, a poster, CD labels and taxes. Tips on sharing documents with people using other office packages will also be included. A short comparison of different office suites available on Linux will also be included.

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Doug has been a Unix user since mid 1980s and has used Linux at home since 1999. He has evaluated several office suites over the years. He has prepared presentations on Linux that were played on MS power point for several years. Doug has PhD Aeronautical Engineering from Air Force Institute of Technology.

My son and I enjoy building and flying model rockets. But when we went looking for an electronic altimeter to measure how high our flights were going, the products we found required the use of proprietary software for configuration and to extract the data recorded... and that's no fun! This presentation will report on our experiences developing open hardware and associated open source software to satisfy our altitude curiosity, punctuated with photos and video clips.

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Bdale first contributed to Free Software in 1979, has a long history of involvement in the Debian distribution, and is Chief Technologist for Open Source and Linux at HP. His primary hobby seems to be turning all of his other hobbies in to open source projects...

Xen Virtualization? Want to get started using virtualization, but think you can't afford it? Why not use a powerful hypervisor right there in Linux? Hear about the Xen hypervisor, what it can do, how you might use it, and see it in action! Come with your questions, too.

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Don Vosburg has been in the IT industry for over 15 years in a wide variety of roles. His experiences as a system administrator, architect, and consultant are augmented by industry certifications from Novell, Red Hat, Cisco, and Nortel Networks. For the last five years he has been a technology specialist for Novell, Inc. His area of special concentration has been Linux, where he has been involved in a number of real-world implementations of both desktop and server technologies. He has been tapped for presentations at Novell Brainshare, LinuxWorld San Francisco, and numerous other venues. Don has been married to his wife Diane for more than 25 years and enjoys telling stories about his four sons. He lives in Anderson, Indiana.

Where next? It's over 60 years since the transistor was invented. It's 25 years since rms launched the Gnu Project. Next year, the Net, UNIX and Linus Torvalds will be 40. It's 30 years since Microsoft moved from New Mexico to Washington. And both the Web and Linux will reach majority in 2009. Is that it? Where are we going? What might the next decade bring?

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Peter H. Salus is an aged technological historian. Among his books are "A Quarter Century of UNIX," "Casting the Net," and (most recently) "The Daemon, the Gnu and the Penguin."