This page contains the list of events that were featured at Flourish 2008 along with a brief description of each.  Some events have their own page with more information.

Contents

Speeches and Talks
Panel Discussion
Code for a Cause Hack-a-thon
Networking Event
BSDA Examination
Flourish Mini-expo
WAFD Rumble
BARcamp Mini

Speeches and Talks

Flourish 2008 featured seventeen talks encompassing three topics: Software Freedom, Using Open Source Software and Education. The speaker lineup included both local talent and big names in Open Culture including Jon "maddog" Hall and Bruce Perens. Please refer to the Speakers page for more information about Flourish 2008's talks and speakers.

Panel Discussion

Main Page:  Flourish 2008 Panel Discussion

The Panel Discussion ended up being the highlight event of Flourish 2008 with its highly controversial discussion topics and extremely passionate discussion points made by panelists. Topics included Microsoft's attempt to make their Office Open XML format an ISO standard, software piracy, software patents and copyright law. More information is available on the Flourish 2008 Panel Discussion main page.

Code for a Cause Hack-a-thon

Main Page:  Code for a Cause Hack-a-thon  

In collaboration with the Chicago Technology Cooperative, Flourish Conference 2008 attendees were given the opportunity to participate in the first ever Code for a Cause Hack-a-thon.  The Code for a Cause Hack-a-thon was a two day coding sprint where Flourish attendees had the opportunity to contribute to small development projects to create applications for local non-for-profit organizations and community groups that may have had difficulty funding such projects themselves. The event was extremely successful with approximately two dozen active participants and another 50-60 observers who visited the Hack-a-thon to learn more about the use of open source software in the nonprofit/volunteer sector.

So what happens when you combine a couple dozen geeks and some worthy charities? Although things got a little chaotic, the participants produced some very impressive work, ate a ton of pizza and had a lot of fun!  Here is what the participants developed:

• An Online Homeless Shelter Search
• A Prototype Website for a Non-profit Organization
• An Online Survey Management and Reporting Tool
• A Python Screen Scraping Tool
  

Publisher O'Reilly offered to send a free book to the most active Code for a Cause Hack-a-thon participants.

More information is available on the Code for a Cause Hack-a-thon page.

Networking Event

IBM generously hosted the Flourish Networking Event Friday evening at their award winning "2001 Space Odyssey"-style innovation center located in downtown Chicago. This event gave attendees a chance to mingle with other enthusiasts and key influencers in the open source community. Attendees also had the opportunity to tour an IBM datacenter, sit in at one of several IBM organized talks and eat massive quanities of free Pizza and other food. Admission to the Flourish Networking Event was free for all Flourish attendees who registered.

You can view photos of the Flourish 2008 Networking Event here.

BSDA Examination

The BSD Certification Group (BSDCG) offered the BSDA certification exam to attendees of Flourish 2008. This was the second time the BSDA exam was offered in North America only six weeks after the launch of the exam. The BSDA certification is designed to be an entry-level certification on BSD Unix systems administration. The successful BSDA candidate is able to complete common administrative and troubleshooting tasks and has a good understanding of general BSD Unix and networking principles. In addition, the successful candidate demonstrates basic skills with these BSD operating systems: Dragonfly BSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD.

More information about the exam itself is available on the Certification page of the BSDCG website. Exam candidates were expected to be proficient in the BSDA Certification Requirements and the Command Reference.

Three examination times were offered; one on Friday and two on Saturday.  A fee of $75 was required to take the exam.

The BSD Certification Group is a non-profit organization committed to creating and maintaining a global certification standard for system administration on BSD based operating systems. The BSDCG works with the BSD and sysadmin communities in order to provide a practical and relevant certification.

Flourish Mini-expo

Main Page: Flourish Mini-expo

The Flourish 2008 Mini-expo was the perfect place to reach out to the open community and show what your company, project or organization is doing or has to offer. Flourish 2008 had exposition tables available for open source related companies and organizations to show off whatever they wanted. Companies or organizations represented at the Mini-expo include GNOME, Red Hat Linux and Sun Microsystems.  A full list of organizations represented is located on the Flourish Mini-expo main page.

This year the Flourish 2008 mini exposition area was located in close proximity to the talks, food and beverages.  This resulted in lots of cross traffic which ensured that nearly every Flourish attendee got exposure to every exposition table.

WAFD Rumble

Flourish Conference 2008 planned to host a Web Application Framework Development (WAFD) Rumble competition where representatives from different open source web framework projects would have the opportunity to compete to see who can develop the best website in the shortest amount of time.  Due to scheduling constraints, the WAFD Rumble was rolled into the Code for a Cause Hack-a-thon.  Please refer to the Code for a Cause Hack-a-thon page for more information on that event.

BARcamp Mini

BARcamp Mini was a free form space for smaller and/or spontaneous activities to occur. The space was available for groups or individuals to give their own talks, hold group meetings or any other open culture topic.  The idea behind BARcamp Mini was to give Flourish 2008 attendees a opportunity to voice their own opinions and views of open source software or host their own mini events without the burden of having to draw a large audience.