Almost since the beginning, the Ohio LinuxFest has held Birds of a Feather (BoF) sessions. However, they have often been something of a well-kept secret. We’re looking to change that for 2018, and make the BoFs a more active and popular part of the event!

For those who are not familiar with them, a BoF is typically a less formal and more interactive session than your typical presentation. The idea is to get a group of people interested in the same topic into a room and let the magic happen. There is no fixed format—you could stand in front of the room and show slides, hold a round-table discussion, or whatever strikes your fancy. Past BoFs have been organized around topics such the Vim editor, Google Summer of Code, and automation and orchestration tools. We’ve also had a GPG keysigning party as a BoF.

To increase the number of BoFs this year, we have set up an application form where you can let us know about your session ahead of time. What topic do you want to talk about with others? Let us know and we’ll try to give you a place to do that! If you don’t sign up ahead of time, all is not lost—we still want to enable same-day signups providing room is available. But pre-announcing will help us get the word out earlier and hopefully attract more people to your session!

We’re excited to see what you can come up with! Please contact our BoF Chair Vance Kochenderfer at vance@ohiolinux.org with any questions.