Contents 

Jon "maddog" Hall
Talk - The Use of Free and Open Source in Education
Talk - Ubiquitous Internet: More than "The Last Mile"
Panel Discussion
Media

Jon "maddog" Hall 

Jon "maddog" Hall is the Executive Director of Linux International,  an association of  computer users who wish to support and promote the Linux Operating System.  During his career in commercial computing which started in 1969, Mr. Hall has been a programmer, systems designer, systems administrator, product manager, technical marketing manager and educator.  He has worked for such companies as Western Electric Corporation, Aetna Life and Casualty, Bell Laboratories, Digital Equipment Corporation, VA Linux Systems and SGI.  He currently works as an independent consultant. Currently Mr.  Hall is also the CTO and World Ambassador to WorksEverywhere, the Canadian-based firm that produces the Koolu brand of equipment and services.

Mr. Hall has worked on many systems, both proprietary and open, having concentrated on Unix systems since 1980 and Linux systems since 1994.  His interest in Linux began when he first met Linus Torvalds recognizing the commercial importance of Linux and Free and Open Source Software.

Mr. Hall has consulted with the governments of China, Malaysia and Brasil as well as the United Nations and many local and state governments on the use of Free and Open Source Software.  He serves on the boards of several companies and several non-profit organizations.

Mr. Hall has traveled the world speaking on the benefits of Open Source Software, and received his BS in Commerce and Engineering from Drexel University, and his MSCS from RPI in Troy, New York.  He is the author of numerous magazine and newspaper articles, many presentations and one book, Linux for Dummies.  Mr. Hall has taught at Hartford State Technical College, Merrimack College and Daniel Webster College.  He still likes talking to students over pizza and beer (the pizza can be optional).

In his spare time maddog is working on his retirement project:  Maddog's mansion for math, music, microcomputing and microbrewing.

Talk - The Use of Free and Open Source in Education

From the early days of computers the best instructors in computer science believed that the best way of teaching students was to show them how others wrote good code.  "A picture is worth a thousand words" is not only applicable to photography and art.  This talk illustrated concrete reasons why and how FOSS should and can be used to propel students to learn faster and easier in the area of complex systems, and why the use of closed, proprietary code is dead and dying.

This talk took place on Friday, April 4th, 2008.

Talk - Ubiquitous Internet: More than "The Last Mile"

Today we talk about trying to bring the Internet to everyone. But bringing the Internet to everyone is more than just WIMAX and laptops.  There are some other serious challenges that need to be considered.  Free and Open Source Software is the best solution for the next five billion computers, whether the "last mile" is in Ethiopia or inner city Chicago.

This talk took place on Saturday, April 5th, 2008.

Panel Discussion

John 'maddog' Hall was also a panelist in the Flourish 2008 Panel Discussion. More information can be found on the Flourish 2008 Panel Discussion main page.

Media 

Embedded video of The Use of Free and Open Source in Education:

Downloads from The Use of Free and Open Source in Education:

• Presentation Slides (ODP) (3.29 MiB)
• Xvid Video (AVI) (328 MiB)

Embedded video of Ubiquitous Internet: More than "The Last Mile":

Downloads from Ubiquitous Internet: More than "The Last Mile":

• Presentation Slides (ODP) (3.42 MiB)
• Xvid Video (AVI) (477 MiB)
  

Photos:

• Jon "maddog" Hall
• Panel Discussion
• Ubiquitous Internet: More than "The Last Mile"
• The Use of Free and Open Source in Education