Overview

Last week I attended a conference called SCaLE 20x – the 20th Annual Southern California Linux Expo. SCaLE is the largest community-run open-source and free software conference in North America. It is held annually in the greater Los Angeles area, and this year’s event was in Pasadena which is conveniently 15 minutes from where I live.

This was my first in-person conference since 2019 and my first Linux industry conference since joining Red Hat in February 2022. In the past, I’ve attended many Drupal conferences and camps going back to DrupalCon Denver 2012. It was comforting to see a few familiar faces from that Open Source community at this event. Even several vendors in the Exhibit Hall were familiar from DrupalCons.

I attended several informative sessions, and even though some of the information was way over my head, I left feeling more knowledgeable about the ins and outs of Open Source and Linux than when I arrived. Mission accomplished, right?!

Here are links to the sessions I attended, most of which are YouTube links to the presentation recordings.

How to Build a Custom Collaboration Stack with Open Source Software (description)
Welcome to the Cookie Factory! An Illustrated Intro to Kubernetes (description)
Keynote: Arun Gupta – Fostering an Open Source Culture (video)
RESF: An Approach to Stable Community Driven Open Source Stewardship (video)
Learning From the Big Failures To Improve FOSS Advocacy and Adoption (video)
Mastodon and the Fediverse (video)
Lessons in Open Project Management (video)
What’s new in 2023? Accessibility is a moving target (video)

Besides learning more about Open Source and Linux in general from the sessions, I also connected with several industry peers in the hallways and at exhibit booths learning the ins and outs of the Linux community. It was fascinating to see how Red Hat is a disruptive force in the Linux community and decisions that RH makes causes ripples effects throughout the rest of the community.

Below are some images from the conference to serve as my event scrapbook so to speak.

Pasadena Area

When in or near Los Angeles, be careful which door you walk through. You might end up dancing with the stars.

SCaLE20x had a very Steampunk theme this year.

Since I was only a couple of blocks away, I dipped over to Amara for lunch on Thursday.

Arepa and a Vanilla & Panela Latte from Amara Cafe.

People

The best part of conferences is seeing old friends and making new ones.

4 1 — I’ve known AmyJune for many years from the Drupal community, and now we both work for Red Hat. Fun!

Meeting Shawn Powers’ head

Sometimes you get to meet Twitter friends in real life. Sometimes you meet someone holding a huge printout of that person’s head on a stick. This is the latter time. Nice to meet your head in person, Shawn Powers! Shawn’s #BigNerdHead was being toted around by Katherine Druckman who also has a long history in the Drupal community. It was great meeting her, and we have several acquaintances in common.

Red Hat Exhibit Booth Team

Most Intriguing Sessions

Fostering an Open Source Culture

6 1 — Arun Gupta, VP of Open Ecosystem Initiatives at Intel, shared how he believes that open innovation, open platforms, and horizontal competition offer choice and build trust.

Learning From the Big Failures To Improve FOSS Advocacy and Adoption

Bradley M. Kuhn is the Policy Fellow and Hacker-in-Residence at Software Freedom Conservancy and editor-in-chief of copyleft.org. His talk examined the wins, losses, and challenges that FOSS advocacy has faced in the last thirty years.

Lessons in Open Project Management

In this talk, Michael Starch presented open project management through the lens of his JLabs project F’ (pronounced F Prime) successes and failures. Starting with an understanding of the goals a project has for moving to open source, Michael analyzed the paths a project can take to reaching an open management structure. Then he reviewed open management practices, common problems and solutions, and the dilemma of community engagement. He closed with a look toward potential future challenges.

Getting Stuff Done

3 1 — Sometimes emergencies arise and you pop out of a session to take a call with your team.

Conference Swag

Chocolate Computer!

I don’t know what DELL has to do with Open Source, but they gave me some chocolate.

Red Hats and stickers!

5 1 — Red Hat gave away red hats! And other things like bags, stickers, and books. My number of Red Hat hats is up to four including an actual red fedora!

Some prized takeaways

The bounty of swag including a really cool Akamai t-shirt with the Linux penguin Tux on it.

I won a raffle prize!

Oh yeah! I won a booth raffle. The prize was a $285 System 76 LAUNCH keyboard!! I can now annoy my entire household with loud mechanical key clackiness!

And it glows in the dark!

See you next year, SCaLE!

If you were at SCaLE20x, leave a comment and let me know what your favorite takeaways were from the conference! Or what was your favorite piece of swag. 🕹️🔋🍫