March 21, 2017

The 15th annual Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE) was held March 2-5, 2017 at the Pasadena Convention Center. This was the largest SCALE to date with over 200 presentations over 14 tracks and 4 days and an expected record breaking attendance of nearly 2000 open source enthusiasts. The FreeBSD Foundation was pleased to once again share a booth with the folks at iXsystems which base their TrueOS and FreeNAS software on FreeBSD. This year, the expo hall was open for three days and the booth traffic was pretty much non-stop throughout the event.

Image courtesy of FreeBSDNews

Many people stopped by the booth specifically to thank us for being there and to share their stories of using FreeBSD. We had a chance to catch up with some SCALE regulars who drop by the booth each year. There were many discussions regarding the features of FreeBSD and OpenZFS. SCALE actively encourages youngsters and students and we always enjoy introducing a new generation to FreeBSD and the opportunities the Project provides for learning technology skills.

The SCALE organizers do an excellent job organizing this conference and ensuring that exhibitors have everything that they need. Nearly every organizer dropped by the booth to say that they were glad to see FreeBSD again this year and hoped to do the same next year. We’re already looking forward to SCALE 16x.

– Contributed by Dru Lavigne