I just wanted to remind everyone that the Chicago Flourish Conference is coming up this weekend. Friday, April 6th and Saturday April 7th. If you are planning on attending be sure to mark you calendars and be sure to register on the website. The main website should have information on how to get to the conference, if you have any questions or concerns please feel free to contact me. Registration opens at 8 am, the presentations will be begin at 10 am on both Friday and Saturday.
Don't forget to check out the hack-a-thon and come join us after the even at IBM's HQ for the post-flourish social. -- Samir Faci UIC LUG President ---- Blog extract from main website -- Question to the world of Free and Open Source Software: What are my prospects when I graduate? As many of you know by now, for the last few months here at UIC*, we - the ACM* and g/LUG*,- have been eagerly working to put together a conference to discus FLOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software) as an engine of innovation. The Flourish Conf. will take place next 6-7 of April at the University of Illinois at Chicago. I am a self confessed gnu/Linux user, I love gnu/Linux, free software and even open source - sorry RMS!. I am also a CS student at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and curiously enough, even though most of our curricula is done in Unix - we even have 2 RedHat labs here, - it appears as if none of the big players within FLOSS ever come to hire at UIC. Why is that Microsoft comes here semester after semester snatching some of the most brilliant students on campus? Yet, I have yet to see FLOSS big players to come out here looking for people. These has made me wonder: Is there a professional future in FLOSS? .... ... and I know I'm not alone in my wonders. To answer these questions, we have invited quite a few of really smart people from different organizations: Google, IBM, Red Hat, and the FSF, and we are going to have a a chance to hear about the opportunities that FLOSS has to offer for our future. We will have two panels, a talk on GPL v3, a talk on Google's contribution and use of FLOSS, among many other really interesting talks, etc. We have also put together a series of technical talks on FLOSS related technologies and topics, and a couple other really interesting activities to give attendees a chance to meet and to be met: Friday's Social mixer, and Saturday's Hack-a-Thon. This is not only going to be a great time for students around Chicago, this is going to be a great chance for community members, and companies to come together and explore how FLOSS is shaping up our future! Come and join us! Roberto C. Serrano g/LUG @ UIC vice-president
