The Sheffield Linux Seminar which became part of our yearly business calendar some years ago is now seen as a permanent feature in the local area.  It's visited by people from other countries and speakers have been known to fly in from places like Germany and California and Belgium just so that they can get through to the kind of audience that they would like to reach.  Many people have been to these business seminars.  We hope that we shall be able to continue in this way for some years to come.  The schedule for the 2003 Linux Seminar which took place on the 4th of March 2003 at Sheffield Wednesdays football ground can be seen below.  Sadly, the original web page that was created for this vanished from this server some time ago.    This is a hand written re-creation.  No one knows where the original page and photographs went to......

As is the usual thing with our annual seminar most bums were on seats by 09.30 and a crowd of wide awake people had assembled to find out more about GNU/Linux and what they could or could not do with it.  By the time 10.00 came around it was difficult to get into either of the two rooms that we use at www.swfc.co.uk.  The event is always popular with the local business teams and Universities.  We even find that some people from our LUG take the day off just to join in.

Steve Wragg from Business Link South Yorkshire was up first to give his usual bright and helpful introduction to the days events.  Much applause followed and a few people vanished for a short break and a few cups of coffee.  Roger Whittaker followed on.  At this time Roger was the technical person for SuSE Ltd in London.   The following year SuSE were bought out by Novell and Roger went to work for them at Bracknell.  The presentation he gave was his usual excellent mix of business facts and examples of where SuSE Linux was in use.  A good example was the Open Exchange installation at Nottingham Council.  Great to see him once again.  Perhaps he might come back at some time in the future.

George Coxhead seems to be something of an old favourite at these sessions.  George works at Leeds Metro University.  He gave us some of his hard won wisdom and knowledge the use of GNU/Linux in a small business.  Great fella to talk to and definitely worth listening to in public or in private.  Everyone loved his presentation and would probably want him to come back again.  There was a short break after this which everyone was much in need of. 

Those of us who know Shridar who started and runs the Country Bookshop in Bakewell will know of his public presentation skills and of his patience in explaining some issues to do with Open Source software.  He  gave us an excellent presentation about the use of GNU/Linux in his business.  Since that time we have had many ShefLUG meetings at the Country Bookshop.  Many thanks to Shridar for all of his help.

The practical demonstration that followed which was also the lunch break proved to be an invaluable part of the whole day's doings.  Many people were seen to be playing with computers and discussing some very complex issues over a long period of time.  We even saw some union people discussing some issues with some higher management people.  We didn't set out to become a central focus of the years events but it seems to have developed into that kind of session.  At two o'clock we got back down to business once again when the UK Online team kicked off the afternoon's events.

I was pushed up front on the day to give a desktop Linux presentation.  It's a fact that desktop Linux is now more popular than the Macintosh operating system.  This being the case we thought that we should try to give a demo of one version of the many Linux desktops that are available.  KDE3 was selected.  Sadly, just as I was about to get started the ISDN internet line was cut off.  Since my presentation revolved heavily around net based resources I suddenly found myself to be cut off and without a safety net.  Sorry about that folks :)  Next year will be better.

Before the close of the day and when there was only about three dozen of us left Wim Vandeputte got up and gave what can only be described as a bravura performance.  Being one of the OpenBSD people and an active contributor to the project he is ideally placed to give a public talk about network security and OpenBSD.  Many servers and networks around the world rely on this software to keep the world moving and to keep out those nasty people who like to attack computers and the networks they are attached to.    You can see a picture of Wim above.  Here he is to be seen rolling up one of the many OpenBSD posters that is given away at public events each year.

We hope that you can make it to our next Linux seminar.  It takes a great deal of work to put these together and many people have thanked us for our efforts over the years.


Richard

www.sheflug.co.uk