Ohio LinuxFest was great, as usual.

There were 5 of us there from Asbury, as well as two other folks (that I knew) from the Lexington area. And, in addition to the 7 of us, there were about 1050 other people, up from just over 700 last year.

I did a new talk – 20 things you didn’t know you could do with your Apache web server – and I had a ton of fun doing it. 20 things is really way too much material for 60 minutes, but even that worked out pretty well, as folks were never given the chance to lose interest. If one of the things wasn’t of much interest, there would be another in 2 minutes. And there was only one person in the audience who claimed to know as many as 10 things, which was very satisfying.

I did cheat a little bit, since a lot of the stuff was from 2.2, and one thing was from 2.3. But evangelizing 2.2 is, I think, pretty important. There’s lots of amazing stuff in it.

Also of great interest was the (as they were introduced) LIVE NUDE PENGUINS! Yes, two penguins came to see us. They were jackass penguins, and did indeed bray like donkies. It was very cool to see them. I’m sure that someone has posted a bunch of photos on Flickr by now.

Other excellent speakers included Chris DiBono, Jeff Waugh, Jay Pipes and Jon maddog Hall.

Jay’s talk, in particular was very valuable. However, by about half way through, he had gone past my ability to understand what he was talking about. This is, of course, one of the things that makes OLF so unique. Zero product pitch. 100% technical talks.

Also very cool was hanging out with Skippy and Owen, and putting together our detailed plans for world domination. (No, I can’t tell. It’s a secret!)

Looking forward to next year’s conference! It will be even better!