From then until Saturday 14 May the Berlin Exhibition Grounds will be where professional users, decision-makers, developer, newcomers and Europe’s open source community will meet.
From LinuxMorning to LinuxNight
On Wednesday morning at the opening event, members of Messe Berlin, LinuxTag e.V. and selected projects will hold welcome addresses. This will be followed by the presentation of the three winners of the annual Univention Graduates’ Award. On 12 May from 7 p.m. to 2 a.m. LinuxNight, already a legendary event, will be taking place at the transformer station in Berlin Kreuzberg. This social event for all members of the open source community is one of the high points of LinuxTag.
Highlights from the trade fair and conference
Among the independent projects exhibiting this year is the German-language Linux gaming community called "Holarse - Spielen unter Linux", who at Stand 116b in Hall 7.2a will be demonstrating that there is also a Linux gaming community, something many people do not know. Be it adventure games, children’s games, shooting games, the project will be showing every category live at the fair. secure-u e.V., a project exhibiting at the fair, will help visitors to optimize their personal security when dealing with digital forms of communication such as the internet and e-mail (Hall 7.2b, Stand 113a). And "Sportsfreunde der Sperrtechnik" will be demonstrating so-called lock picking as a sporting challenge at Stand 145 in Hall 7.2b.
During the four-day event visitors can look forward to the open programme of papers. The choice of speakers is made independently by the conference team of LinuxTag e.V., and is based solely on the quality of the papers. For example, the Hardware Hacks track on Saturday will feature the latest scientific progress of a mission to land on the moon. Google has invited candidates to compete for the Lunar X-Prize, which requires teams to send an unmanned craft to the moon. c-base will be showing its scientific project called Open Moon at LinuxTag.
High-ranking keynote speakers will be present, reflecting the conference’s role as a leading international event. They are senior executives from companies, organizations and projects, including from Greenpeace and Oracle. The keynote by Claudia Sommer, the web manager at Greenpeace Germany, entitled "How Open Source changes the world", will present arguments underpinning the relevance of the open source community. From the perspective of a real production environment Wim Coekaerts, Senior Vice President of Linux and Virtualization Engineering, Oracle, will describe how applications are increasingly being delivered to the customer as packaged appliances, and the role of Linux in this context.
Full details of the open programme of papers are available on the Linux website at:
www.linuxtag.org/2011/de/program/program.html
LinuxTag has its own app, developed by the open source community, which enables everyone to put together their own timetable from the various tracks, and which can be downloaded here: code.google.com/p/linuxtag/
Individual speakers have written about “speaker features” on the LinuxTag website, which are available here:
www.linuxtag.org/2011/de/program/speaker-features.html
Security Day debuts at the fair
On Friday, 13 May at LinuxTag, a new event format, Security Day, will debut in the Open Source Arena in Hall 7.2b. The Hacking Contest will also be taking place on this stage, accompanied by a special security track. Finally, at 4.15 and 5.15 p.m. a very special kind of “security workshop“ will be taking place in the Summer Garden. Shaolin teachers and masters will acquaint visitors with tai chi chuan, the Asian martial art of shadow boxing. More information on Security Day is available on the LinuxTag website under Program / Topics of Focus / Security.
16 years of experience – facts, data and figures
With 160 lectures focusing on 27 key topics, as well as 27 free workshops, the open programme of papers is the widest-ranging of its kind in Europe. In addition to the programme of papers and an accompanying Business & Public Sector Authorities Conference, LinuxTag traditionally includes an exhibition featuring projects and companies associated with the open source sector. In 2011, 77 independent software projects and 43 commercial exhibitors are displaying their solutions, developments and ideas.
The association LinuxTag e.V. is the non-commercial sponsor of the event and co-organizes it with Messe Berlin GmbH. The exclusively honorary members of the LinuxTag program committee have fulfilled this task for the past 16 years. They organize the conference and provide information on Linux and Open Source. For example, in order to ensure free internet access for visitors and to satisfy the needs of this special industry gathering, the members of LinuxTag e.V. have laid several kilometres of cabling on the Berlin Exhibition Grounds.
Already in its seventeenth year, LinuxTag presents a wide spectrum of products and services that reflect the nature of the international community. LinuxTag stands for innovative products and services, for creativeness and direct communication. The advantages of open source software, that is of open development models and software solutions, can best be exploited if programmers communicate directly with companies and software providers, as they do at LinuxTag. The reason for its special atmosphere is the fact that independent projects, commercial exhibitors, high-ranking speakers and a wide range of visitors from the Linux and Open Source community are here side by side.
Acting patron sets the tone
In 2011 Cornelia Rogall-Grothe, Under-Secretary of the Ministry of the Interior and the federal government’s IT officer, is once again acting as patron of the event. "Cornelia Rogall-Grothe has again laid down an important marker, politically as well, as regards general acknowledgement and confirmation of the open source movement and its aims", said Jens Heithecker, director of the Competence Center at Messe Berlin. "As Germany’s main city for creative IT the German capital is the ideal place for LinuxTag to lay the foundation for a cross-sectoral IT industry. The Berlin/Brandenburg region with its 40,000 employees in this sector occupies an important role as a location for business in IT."
About LinuxTag
LinuxTag is Europe’s leading specialist trade fair and conference for all aspects of open source Linux and free software. This four-day event has been taking place since 1996, and since 2007 it has been held annually on the Berlin Exhibition Grounds. It offers the very latest information for professional users, decision-makers, developers, newcomers and the community. In addition to the programme of papers and a separate conference for business and public sector authorities, LinuxTag traditionally includes an exhibition featuring projects and companies associated with the open source sector. Verein LinuxTag e.V. is the non-commercial organizer of the event, which it stages jointly with Messe Berlin GmbH. More information is available at www.linuxtag.org.