Linux Plumbers Conference

Hello everyone,

Thanks for making this year’s plumbers conference such an enjoyable event.  Next year, we’re planning to co-locate Plumbers with the Kernel Summit and LinuxCon in San Diego from 29-31 August.  The current plan is that Plumbers and LinuxCon would run as parallel but separate events.  To accommodate the parallelism, we’re still planning on keeping the numbers for Plumbers down to 300 and having a separate registration from LinuxCon.  We’re also planning to move the refereed presentations track into LinuxCon itself as a hard core technical track which would still be selected by the Plumbers Programme committe (both Plumbers and LinuxCon attendees would be able to go to this). We plan to keep the two microconference tracks for plumbers only, but also add a third unconference type track, where people could plan meetings and split into discussion groups in a style very similar to Ubuntu Developer Summit (only Plumbers registered attendees would be able to go to this).

If you have any feedback about this plan, please sent it to the current programme committee at lpc2011@virtuousgeek.org

Of course, we’re also looking to recruit another organising and programme committee for 2013, so if you want to volunteer, please read this web page and then send your bid to the plumbers conference steering committee (who are also the Linux Foundation Technical Advisory Board) at tech-board@lists.linux-foundation.org

For those who want a lift to either San Francisco or its airports, we’ve added a new section to the Ride Sharing wiki.  Please make sure to note which day you need a lift for (Friday or Saturday) and for drivers what time you’ll be leaving.

wiki.linuxplumbersconf.org/2011:car_sharing

It appears many of you have chosen to put off hotel booking to the last minute. As a result, there may not be space available in the negotiated rate block at the venue hotels (the Hyatt and the Marriott). There is still space available at higher rates, so please call for availability (see the “attend” page for details).

If you still can’t get a room or the rates don’t appeal to you, there’s one other hotel near the conference venue, the Hotel La Rose. It’s just a couple of blocks from the Hyatt in Railroad Square so a good choice if you can’t get a room at the venue.

Other good hotels in Santa Rosa include the Hilton Sonoma Wine Country and the Flamingo Hotel. These hotels aren’t within easy walking distance however, so if you choose to stay in one of them, you’ll need to arrange for transportation (either using a hotel shuttle if available, or taking a taxi).

If you’re going to be renting a car at the airport and are willing to transport others up to Santa Rosa (provided they have proximate arrivals, of course) please indicate that on this wiki page. You may also sign up to share rides on the same wiki page.

We have some funds available to provide for people who would otherwise be unable to attend the conference – if you’d like to apply, please visit the Linux Foundation page here.

The travel page has been updated with details of the shuttle bus running between the Airport Express dropoff point and the Hyatt. It’ll be running for most of Tuesday, and then again on Friday afternoon and Saturday morning. Bear in mind that tickets for the Airport Express do not guarantee a seat – make sure you leave enough time to make your flight if your preferred bus is full!

Marsee Henon from O’Reilly has extended an invitation to tour the O’Reilly campus (in Sebastopol, just a few minutes from the conference venue) to any interested attendees. The O’Reilly campus hosts O’Reilly publishing, Safari Books Online, and Make magazine. Please contact Marsee if interested. Logistics are TBD, but if there’s enough interest we’ll likely get a shuttle bus for the trip.

Sonic.net has graciously agreed to sponsor the Internet needs of our conference. They’ll be providing a 30/30Mb dedicated to the conference facility. Without their support, we would have been stuck with a single 20Mb downstream link (unknown upload speed) shared between the conference, guest rooms, and hotel office. This sponsorship is especially nice because Sonic.net is both a major ISP (you may have heard of its fiber deployments in Northern California recently, or it’s network administration win for one of the Google fiber rollouts) and a local company.

Sonic.net provides Flexlink Ethernet & Fiber solutions for businesses. Please contact preferred account executives Janelle Santos <jmsantos@corp.sonic.net>, Mitzi Zamarripa <mitzi.zamarripa@corp.sonic.net> or Tiffany (Lawson) Bagala <tdl@corp.sonic.net> with any questions; they’re authorized to provide special discounts to attendees and those associated with the conference.

Just a reminder that there is less than two weeks remaining before the late-registration deadline, at which point the registration fee will increase significantly. So please check out our shiny near-final schedule and register today.

Besides which, this year’s Linux Plumbers Conference is well on its way to filling up, which means that unfortunately someone will likely miss out. And we don’t want that someone to be you!

For those of you who have been asking about the travel details, the travel page has been updated with more information about the hotel and getting to Santa Rosa from the San Francisco airport.

For those of you who are planning to stay Friday evening, if you’re having problems reserving a room at the Marriott, then you may need to shorten your reservation to check out Friday morning, and then call the hotel directly to add Friday night. We’re currently working with the hotel to get this issue solved.