I spent the weekend in Clemson SC at the first South East Linux Fest.

It was a great chance to geek out with a bunch of Linux enthusiasts, as well as some of the movers and shakers in the industry.

We enjoyed presentations on topics that ranged from SQLite and the fsync() bug to Asterisk, Open Street Map and the Ubuntu kernel. These guys provided a clear perspective of how the open source world organizes and operates on a daily basis. And their projects just glowed with coolness, which created this viral kind of buzz around the entire event, whether you were a casual Linux user or a hardcore developer.

In the vendor area, we were wooed by several distros, a handful of businesses that sell services around open source software, and some content providers (that is, podcasters and “nerdcore” rappers). We were treated to several raffles… woot!

Mad props go out to the planners of the event, which seemed to go off without a hitch.