The final countdown to DCBSDCon 2009 has begun.  Open registration closed this past weekend and the final preparations are taking place.  The first of many speakers will be boarding their flight to the United States in a matter of minutes.  Set your watches… now!

Organizers and volunteers will begin setting up the event space tomorrow.  The conference opens for registration Thursday morning at 9am EST and officially kicks off with our first speaker at 10am EST.  We will be recording audio (thanks to Will Backman of BSDtalk fame) and video during the presentations.  These should become available within a couple weeks after the closing.  If you’re interested in following along (in a mostly detached manner), feel free to join everyone in the freenode #metabug channel.  Twitter updates will be broadcast to the IRC group.  In addition, photos will be uploaded routinely to the DCBSDCon photostream over at flickr.

There’s plenty of swag to be had and merchandise from the BSD projects and sponsors.  If you were on the fence about attending DCBSDCon but finally came to your senses, it’s not too late!  Friend of DCBSDCon tickets are still available for the comparatively low price of $125.  These will also be available onsite at the event.

News bsdtalk, flickr, MetaBUG, registration, twitter

Only 2 days left to register for DCBSDCon 2009!  The open registration has been very successful but there are still tickets available for late stragglers.

This week has been incredibly busy but rewarding.  Seeing all of the swag arrive from vendors and the final organizational bits fall into place help relieve some of the stress.  Besides the shirts available for purchase at Zazzle, we also ordered a small run (60) of shirts that will be available at the conference.  They’re heavy Gildan cotton tees, the same excellent quality I’m used to ordering from ThinkGeek and OpenBSD.  I expect them to go very quickly at $10 apiece ($15 for XXL) so arrive early to get yours.

Besides the pre-conference dinner Wednesday night at Lebanese Taverna, we have space reserved at Adams Mill Bar & Grill for Thursday night’s social event.  It’s a short walk down Calvert St to the restaurant.  The festivities start at 8pm on the 2nd floor.  Make sure to bring your conference badge for entrance to the event.

I’m really looking forward to seeing everyone next week.  I know everyone is there to see our awesome lineup of speakers, but I’d like the chance to thank everyone personally for coming to our inaugural event.  If you see me wandering around (likely in a daze), please grab ahold of me and introduce yourself.  And don’t forget to check out the Frack room LAN games during your down time.  See you all next week!

News beer, Frack Room, registration, shirts

Like any self-respecting Open Source conference, we have an exhibition space with commercial sponsors and “dot org” groups. Starting with the orgs, we’ll have tables for some of the BSD projects.  The peeps over at iXsystems have their usual display of FreeBSD and PC-BSD goodies.  The OpenBSD project is shipping out merchandise for the conference.  They always have a nice selection of t-shirts and CDs for sale.  The DragonFlyBSD project is working to send out free install media, we’re crossing our fingers.  Matt Dillon and the team at DragonFly have been doing some exciting things with cluster technologies.

Rumor is that Beastie will make a surprise appearance, so bring your cameras.  I’ll buy anyone a few rounds of stout if they manage to sneak in a Segway.

Of course, none of this would be possible without the generous contributions from our sponsors.  Even under normal circumstances, it can be challenging to procure sufficient funding to host a large conference.  During a global recession,  executives everywhere are pressured to cut costs and hunker down.  Fortunately for us (and one could argue, the entire economy), these companies and organizations recognize that such a stance is self-defeating and serves only to worsen an already difficult recession.  They understand that spending, not just for the sake of meeting operational requirements, but to further stimulize the markets, benefits everyone.  Cheers to our sponsors over at Message Systems, iXsystems, the FreeBSD Foundation, Freedom Technologies, MatrixGroup, ShmooCon, OmniTI and Google!

And I’ll be tipping back a pint for every single one of them.

News Beastie, dot-org, DragonFlyBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, PC-BSD, sponsors

Not to be confused with the panic room, we’re excited to announce the Frack Room.   This will be a community space with network and system resources for hosting LAN games and hacking sessions.  It’s taking the place of the SysAdmin Challenge.  While the Challenge is a great conference event, it would be more appropriate for a larger conference with multiple tracks.  This year it would be more of a distraction, competing with our main sessions and not paying the speakers their due respect.  The Frack Room should be a good place for attendees to hang out and kill (no pun intended) time between talks, after a quick lunch, or any other time they won’t be attending a presentation.  Developers can also use this room to collaborate with other hackers to work on new features or squash some bugs.

The room will have plenty of table space, network drops and a game server (hosting BSD-friendly games, of course).  On tap we plan to include favorites like Quake 2 and bzflag, in addition to newer titles like OpenArena (Quake 3) and Teeworld.  If you have other games you’d like to include, vote for it in the poll or add your write-in candidate in the comments below.

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News Frack Room, frag, gaming, hack, SysAdmin Challenge

Things are slowly and steadily evolving from a frenetic chaos into an orderly panic.  Organizing a real conference (not to be confused with a faux conference) is unlike anything I’ve been involved with before.  By comparison, 250 slides is a walk in the park.

I had the opportunity to visit the conference facilities this morning.  The Marriott Wardman is a very nice hotel with extensive convention space.  DCBSDCon has a few rooms in the main lobby area that will be configured for presentations and the SysAdmin Challenge.  We’ve also reserved a small classroom in a quiet section of the hotel for the BSDA certification exams.  I attended ShmooCon 2006 at this hotel, so I’m familiar with most of their ameneties.  It’s a fancy venue for a BSD conference, particularly an inaugural one.  But that won’t stop me from wearing shorts and a t-shirt, even in the dead of winter.

We will offer a free wireless LAN (802.11g) so attendees can stay connected, but bandwidth will be limited.  If you have a WWAN card or tethering phone through your wireless provider, you might want to have it available in case the tubes get snug.  I measured Verizon EVDO speeds around 2.5Mbps/512Kbps with a full signal.  I expect similar results for most other providers, given this is the nation’s capital.

Oh, and One More Thing…

Looks like I’ll be presenting an updated version of my NYCBSDCon 2006 talk.  Make sure you’re there for the closing session on Thursday night if you want to catch it.  On the other hand, I wouldn’t blame you if you left for an early beer.  Because it doesn’t matter anyways… BSD is Dying.

P.S.  Don’t forget to register!

News BSD certification, BSD is Dying, hotel, SysAdmin Challenge