| Desktop usability, open documents to be spotlighted at SoCal Linux Expo |
Jan. 19, 2006
Desktop Linux usability and the growing trend toward using open document formats will be two hot topics Feb. 11-12 at the fourth annual Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE), to be held at the Los Angeles Airport Radisson Hotel. The show will feature 55 exhibit booths, along with four speaker tracks.
Google software engineer Dan Kegel will discuss desktop usability in his "Why Johnny Can't Use Linux" presentation.
Peter Quinn, former CIO of the state of Massachusetts whose stance against proprietary document formats made him a folk hero in the open source community, will lead a workshop on "Open Standards For Government Organizations" and compare benefits, technical merits and vendor lock-in issues of ODF and proprietary formats.
Attendees will collect free CDs, listen to technical talks, and visit company booths for demos and product information. The expo, run by an all-volunteer staff, focuses on end-user education but also includes several classes devoted to businesses. Among the speakers and exhibitors will be representatives of Google, Novell, and IBM, a spokesman said.
Other speakers include Chris DiBona of Google, Matt Asay of Alfresco, John Terpstra of AMD, Aaron Seigo of KDE, and Douglas Pollock of IBM.
Many of the talks and sessions at SCALE will have end-users in mind and teach the basics of Linux in beginner's courses, which will complement the free Linux CDs given out on the show floor. Several distributions -- including Novell, Ubuntu, and Fedora -- will be given away, while others will be available for a small donation, said Orv Beach, organizer of the conference.
A complete list of speakers is available here, and the conference agenda is here. Online registration is here.
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