Open Source Pavilion at NECC 2007

(Photos and links at original post: http://www.stevehargadon.com/2007/07/open-source-pavilion-at-necc-2...)

This is the third year that I've overseen the Open Source "Pavilion" at NECC, and the response to Free and Open Source Software gets more enthusiastic every year. The increasing interest level brought us our own room this year (hurrah for better sound!), and continued support from ISTE for integrating the speaker series into the main program. While we greatly missed having a session by David Thornburg this year, we did have an excellent series of speakers that you can see here, covering all kinds of great topics including Python, Drupal, Moodle, and the One Laptop Per Child initiative.

Mike Huffman and Laura Taylor spoke on the Indiana INACCESS program, and a link to my recording of the session is below. The crowds that assembled for them were pretty much standard fare through the three days of sessions.

Many thanks to our great volunteers: Glen Moses, Stephen Blevins, Damianne President, Shawn Adams, Daniel Howard, Giulio Helmsdorff, Jimmy Halbert, Jim Kinney, Aaron Ruscetta, and the middle-school kids from Atlanta Public Schools!

This year we also need to give a GIANT shout-out to the great folks at Red Hat, who provided our first commercial sponsorship to the Open Source Pavilion, and were a great addition to the show. Thanks to Shawn Briscoe, Red Hat's director of State/Local Government and Academic Programs, and to Greg DeKoenigsbrg, Red Hat's Community Development Manager--both shown in their red fedoras! After three years of trying to tell commercial Open Source companies that something special has been going on at NECC, Red Hat is the first one to believe us!