This got backlogged due to all of the stuff I had to deal with before I up and disappear for close to month, but here it finally is.
OSCON, in a word, kicked ass. Okay, so two words. Aside from the fact that my luggage was lost for most of the time I was there, people were really impressed with our booth setup and with our commitment to the community. Let me explain.
We went in figuring that we would get railed due to the fact a large majority of people there would be there for Ubuntu live as well. I thought that at least every other person would walk up to us and say "Ive Switched." In fact, what we got was the exact opposite. We even got Ubuntu users AND developers coming up to us and tell us that we are doing some really cool stuff in Fedora. Boy, if they could only see the future!
A large number of people were visibly distraught at the fact that they paid $700 bucks for Ubuntu live and then Ubuntu didn't have an OSCON booth and not a single CD was there to be had. Naturally, they thought that Fedora would be the best place to vent this anger. After speaking to many of them, it seems as though they couldn't care less which distro they were running, they cared more about having someone at these shows representing their "clan" and someone they can vent their frustrations and delights at. Us being there worked well in this case.
I cannot begin to tell you how many people were so extremely enthusiastic about our little PS3 demo. People were walking up to us left and right asking us, "Hey is that Fedora on the PS3? That's wicked Cool!" I know, thats why I thought we should be showing that off. We even had a couple of IBM developers walk by us and tell us, "All of the cool innovation happens in Fedora anyway." Thats a direct quote.
That quote sums it up pretty efficiently and we heard alot of that stuff especially after Dave Jones' "Why Userspace Sucks" talk. It was really nice to have people acknowledge what we've been saying all along--we are the ones driving innovation forward.
Also, and this goes without saying, the OLPC was a massive draw. Everyone was really interesting in finally seeing the machines which will lead us to the promised land and did we ever deliver! We had non stop action around the thing. Education people, software people, government people, social movement people, a group of economists and we even had a monk come by and give us a benediction and thank us for contributing to such an awesome project.
We have some video footage which will go up somewhere once we have it in our hands. Other than that, I think that OSCON was the proper venue to re-invigorate the troops and to prove to everyone that not only will we not stop, but we are pushing forward even more quickly, with some pretty interesting initiatives and with a renewed commitment to our community showing that the Fedora 7 milestone wasn't the end of anything, it was simply the beginning of all the awesomeness to come.
