A little more than a week ago, the Southern California Linux Expo took place and it was a great experience. I started off Thursday as I was picked up by the KDE wonder himself David Wonderly, and we drove up from San Diego to get up to the conversation a day before in order for him to help set up. On this Thursday evening, I was able to meet up with other Ubuntu community members such as Elizabeth Krumbach and Mike Basinger. Soon after all the hello’s had passed it was time to get down to business with my speech I was delivering now just two days away. I decided to walk to Denny’s, a quarter-mile away and sit there all night over coffee, making my speech look good. Battling into the night I came out victorious and returned to my room at four am to get three hours of sleep.
The next day, I woke up to quickly get down and get fully registered so I could receive my speakers badge. 
After I received my badge I set up to help a man named Nathan Haines, who is very active in the California LoCo I am active with, along with my other global Ubuntu commitments. Nathan ran a mini Ubuntu conference called Ubucon where all day there were presentations about Ubuntu. Here there were many great speeches being ran including a talk by Elizabeth Krumbach about getting involved in Ubuntu. After this we experienced all people in the room (including myself) pass the mike around and discuss their reasons for running Ubuntu. There were many different reasons, some being work and others being because they saw it as a clear choice for a system to run. After this talk took place me and Some of the canonical employees attending the conference all went to lunch, great food! Soon after this we had to get back as Jorge Castro who was at lunch with us, had to go give a talk back at Ubucon on The Power User’s Guide to Unity. Man unity is looking good. It is showing to be the best user interface for my liking. Soon after this experience I went to a session led by Clint Byrum on juju’s and all that this new stuff can do. After meeting this man at the conference, I am amazed by his personality and ability to bring out a complex subject and make it understandable. After the conference was over, I received a free t-shirt from the juju team that I have already worn. Now I went beck to the Ubucon mini conference and went to a session on customizing Unity by man I met that day named Richard Gaskin. His session was really interesting to me in the fact that It was able to showcase how to customize unity all while being able to stay out of the command line. Something I have never done, when I hack away on unity.After this event I decided to go out to dinner with the rest of my LoCo buddies. What a great time to relax and hang out. I am thrilled by all the bonding we were able to do. I then came back to the hotel and took the night by storm with some other members of the LoCo.
As Saturday came around, I awoke to get down to set up the booth, It was an awesome time as Liz and I got everything we needed ready before everyone else came to see all we had done.
I really feel the booth was awesome! Here I worked on the booth for several hours untill I had to go and work on my speech that I was giving at three in the afternoon. This speech turned out really well from what I can gather. After the speech, I went back to the booth for a short while where I handed out cd’s and talked about Ubuntu to people.Soon after this, the expo closed for the day and we were able to go do some more things for the day. A friend named Brandon and I walked to In N Out with a women who quite impressed me with her skills who worked for Mongo DB. A database I am now using. You can never beat In N Out, There is no better burger. Soon after this had finished and we walked back, I prepared for my next day manning the Scale expo floor.
Sunday morning I awoke to get up as quickly as possible to see all that is happening downstairs, Here I worked the expo floor for several hours, meeting lots of people and getting to know all the many faces that make off the Linux world. As I manned the booth and talked to people I was able to see the many different takes on Ubuntu and all that is offers for people. I was able to talk with all the people helping me to run the booth and getting to see how they help the Ubuntu LoCo as well. After the booth helping took place,.I went to a session on arduino’s lead by a fellow LoCo member Akkana Peck. I am still trying to come up with fun projects to do with my bread boards now that she has inspired me. When her talk was over, I proceeded to head out with a fellow LoCo member Mickey Lyle. If you do not know this person, you should. We then headed back to San Diego where I started to get back to the reality that I was no longer having fun at a Linux expo, but at my dorm room. All is fun while it lasts!!!
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Philip Ballew Can be Contacted at philipballew@ubuntu.com
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