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What is the Flourish Conference About?

The goal of the Flourish Conference is to promote the use and adoption of Free Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) by demonstrating the practical applications of FLOSS in the business and academic world. While everyone is familiar with businesses that focus on creating non-free proprietary software, the same cannot be said for those who specialize in developing and supporting FLOSS software and Open Culture. Attendees of Flourish have an opportunity to see how using, creating and supporting FLOSS software can enhance their careers, businesses and academic aspirations.

Flourish Conference 2008 was held on April 4th and 5th at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Flourish 2008 featured influential and technical speakers, social events, an exhibition area, a development hack-a-thon and more. Attendees had the opportunity to network and socialize with the Chicago open source community as well as open source enthusiasts from other areas of the country. Flourish 2008 had over 250 attendees, seventeen tables at the Mini Expo and sixteen speakers. Flourish Conference 2008 was a huge success!

History of Flourish

What happens when you put Microsoft and a penguin together?  Would you believe Flourish got its roots from this odd couple pairing? It's true!  

In the Fall of 2006, the University of Illinois at Chicago Linux Users Group (UIC-LUG) were distributing GNU/Linux CDs outside the Microsoft Internship Information Session on campus. Many students accepted our CDs and many more got a good laugh from our mascot, a UIC-LUG member dressed in a full body Tux the Penguin costume.

After the information session had started, a man walking by commented about wondering why Microsoft would arrange to have a person dressed as a Penguin outside their information session. The student dressed as Tux explained to the man that we were not from Microsoft and that we were there to spread awareness of GNU/Linux and FLOSS software. The man then asked us a very good question, “Does Linux bring jobs to UIC?” In response to the man's question, the UIC-LUG decided to organize a conference to explore if FLOSS trully provides jobs and opportunities for growth.  As a result, our annual Flourish conference was born.

Flourish 2007 

Our first annual Flourish conference attracted over 180 attendees, nine industry speakers, a large social event at the IBM Innovation Center and a Mini-expo featuring companies demonstrating their Open Source Software based products. Overall, the first annual Flourish was extremely successful. More information on the first annual Flourish can be found on the Original Flourish Website.

Links about FLOSS (Free Libre Open Source Software)

Please refer to the following sites for more information about Free Software and the Free and Open Source Software Movement:

• The Free Software Foundation's Introduction to the Free Software Movement
• Wikipedia's Page on the Free Software Movement
  
• FOSS and FLOSS definitions (Wikipedia)
  
• Open Source (Wikipedia)