[ILUG] Open Source 2.0

[Patrick O'Connor]

Hi,
As a long time lurker with few posts many of you will not know me so I'd
like to introduce myself to you all.
My name is Patrick O'Connor and I am self employed offering IT Services to
small businesses in Dublin and it surrounds. As a long time supporter of the
Open Source movement I have been providing OS solutions to my customers for
the last three years. To date I have been more of a user of OS products than
an active contributor but hopefully that will be able to change in the
future.

I've just come back from the EuroOscon conference in Brussels (
http://conferences.oreillynet.com/euos2006/ ) and was heavily inspired by
the people and the talks there. This conference was aimed at people
interested in the culture and business of Open Source as well as the
incredible Open Source developers contributing to the amazing initiatives
around the world. The highlight for me was a talk given by Mark Shuttleworth
(yes Mark Shuttleworth!!) who gave a rousing talk on how to build on the
success of Ubuntu to create a real desktop OS for everyone.

The energy of the people and ideas I found at the conference have led me to
believe that a similar conference (on a smaller scale) to promote the use of
Open Source to the more general community at large could be held here in
Ireland and could do some good to promote the Open Source movement in
Ireland. I would see several tracks with a couple of talk each including
technical, culture and business running alongside demonstrations in an
exhibition style of some OS products (Ubuntu, mythbox, etc) and some BOFs.

I'd be really interested to hear if you think this sounds interesting /
feasible and would love to hear if anybody has any ideas to contribute. If
there is some interest perhaps a few of us could get together for a few
pints to talk things through.

Thanks a lot for reading.

Patrick