LinuxCon will not be a trade show

Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin (right) called last night to reassure me that his group is not taking a risk with LinuxCon, just responding to user demand.

"We have an event in two weeks in New York, the End User Collaboration Summit, that's at capacity, where people will be interacting with the CEO of Red Hat and key developers.

"We had our Collaboration Summit in Austin, at capacity. We have Legal Summits, the Kernel Summit event. We have the symposium in Japan. We just want to open it up to a broader community."

The Linux Foundation has learned how to put together all-day and multi-day events for a few hundred people in an auditorium. Zemlin is planning next year's LinuxCon based on an attendance of near 1,000.

The most likely site is the Portland Theater at the Oregon Convention Center but nothing is decided yet. The recent Linux Plumbers Conference, which this even will play on top of, drew about 300 to a site near Portland State, Zemlin said. (Go Vikings.)

I also asked Zemlin about OSCON, which has outgrown Portland and is moving to the Bay Area next year. 

"OSCON is a little different" from what LinuxCon will be, he said. "A lot of it now centers on Web technology, Ruby, higher level programming. There isn't a lot of overlap."

Zemlin said that LinuxCon is part of the move toward smaller industry events generally. The Open Source Business Conference (OSBC) is a good model for where he's going.

"OSBC has a small event that talks about business issues. Ours will be focused on technical developers and the vendor community. They want a forum where they can exchange ideas about the technical platform."

So if that's your thing maybe I'll see you in Portland next September.