Picn*x XV - The Linux 15th Anniversary Picnic
August 19, 2006 in Sunnyvale, California

The Linux 15th Anniversary Picnic, or "Picn*x 15", was held on Saturday, August 19, 2006 from 11AM to 4PM at Sunnyvale Baylands Park in Sunnyvale, California. We'll continue to do this again next year.

This is a celebration of all the accomplishments of Open Source Software in the past 15 years. Participants and enthusiasts of other Open Source software besides Linux are also welcome.

Did you come? Let us know where your pictures are posted!

We estimated about 400 attendees at Picn*x XV. Pictures will be coming as volunteers and attendees post them.

The Linux Picnic RSVP software has been released under GPL. The source code is online.

Other Linux picnics

We were informed that NOVALUG (Northern Virginia LUG) and Tux.Org held a Linux 15th anniversary picnic on the same day with attendees from Northern Virginia, Washington DC and Maryland with about 40 attendees. A good start for their first effort in the area to organize one!

If you want to organize a local picnic for your area, let us know and we'll link to your site.

Celebrating 15 years!

This is a landmark achievement not just for Linux but also for whole the Open Source community. From the first people who sent patches to Linus Torvalds after he posted his experimental OS kernel in 1991, to the heavily-studied processes that exist today about how to use Open Source as an engineering method to make better software, we have a lot to celebrate and even more look forward to. Anyone from the Open Source community should consider themselves welcome.

Wi-Fi at the Picnic!

The Silicon Valley Wireless Users & Experimenters (SVWUX) organized wireless Internet connectivity for the picnic. Many thanks to Finisar who generously provided the Internet connection from their offices across the street from the park.

Volunteers

The Linux Picnic is looking for volunteers! You can sign up to help out with Coordination and Administration, Food Purchasing, Cooking, Setup and Breakdown, First Aid, Communications, Welcome Table, Drivers, and Gopher (primary task is making sure that the Volunteers have enough water). Send an email to the Picn*x 15 Coordinator Jennifer Davis at sigje@sigjeNOSPAM.org to volunteer including your volunteer interests.

Picnic Volunteers mail list

The picnic volunteers mail list is the primary communications method for the picnic volunteers.

Picnic Volunteers IRC Channel

The IRC (Internet Relay Chat) channel is new but you can expect to find some volunteers there monitoring for questions and new volunteers. Sometimes you'll find work getting done too.

Point your IRC client to chat.us.freenode.net on port 8001 and join #linuxpicnic - users outside North America see freenode.net's list of servers for one on your continent.

Link to linuxpicnic.org from your web site

Anyone can help with this. Add a link to linuxpicnic.org on your web site.

Park Reservations

Reservations for the Sunnyvale Baylands Park had Picn*x XV on the "dry side" of the park at the "Eucalyptus Grove," which is convenient to parking. We also have reserved the "Indian Grass Circle" picnic area on the "wet side" reserved if you want to play on the grass. Our total capacity for this year's picnic will be 755, up from 625 in previous years due to the additional picnic area reservation. For details, see the ParkMap page.

How to Use the Wiki

A "wiki" is a user-editable web site. For an introduction about the concepts and traditions of wiki sites, see the article about wikis on Wikipedia.

Our wiki site has a restriction that you must be subscribed to one of the Linux Picnic's mail lists in order to work on it. Please see the UsingThePicnxWiki page.

There is a Frequently Asked Questions and Tutorial online if you need them.

Participating Organizations

The following organizations (listed in alphabetical order) provided volunteers to make Picn*x 15 happen. (Let us know if your organization should be added to the list!)

• BAD - Bay Area Debian
• BALUG - Bay Area Linux Users Group
• BayLISA - Bay Area Large Installation System Administrators
• CABAL - Consortium of All Bay Area Linux
• LUGOD - Linux User Group of Davis
• PenLUG - Peninsula Linux User Group
• sbay.org - South Bay Community Network
• SF-LUG - San Francisco Linux Users' Group
• Smaug - Santa Cruz Microsoft-Alternative User Group
• SVLUG - Silicon Valley Linux User Group
• SVWUX - Silicon Valley Wireless Users & Experimenters

Sponsors

Special thanks to the following sponsors of Picn*x XV

Platinum Level Sponsors
Gold Level Sponsors
Raw Bandwidth
Bronze Level Sponsors
BayLISA
GroundWork Open Source
Splunk
USENIX

Would you like to be a sponsor of the Linux Picnic?
Please see the SponsorInfo page.