Another LinuxDays conference took place over the weekend, and we couldn't miss it.
LinuxDays was really big this year: over a thousand visitors registered, and a lot of them came. We promoted our association with a stand and three talks.
I owe a big thank-you to the guys at the stand. Tomáš Laštůvka and Petr Kulich were there both days, chatting, handing out chocolates and, above all, doing an excellent job of explaining and showing people who we are and what we can do. Jakub Jelen, David Karban and Věroš Kaplan also helped out throughout.
The groups chatting and the steady stream of interested visitors showed that people care about this topic. We had new roll-up banners and tablecloths, and I think the stand looked presentable. See for yourself in the photos in our gallery:
Nobody became a member at the stand itself, but that's probably to be expected. The "conference effect" is undeniable, though: compared with last year, far fewer people shook their heads and said they'd never heard of us. Its momentum lasts a very long time, and over the coming months we'll watch new members arrive as they remember us at the right moment.
We also gave three talks in the main hall. Again, hundreds of people listened, and Twitter helped too, with our posts appearing on the screens during talks. Most importantly, the talks were recorded, so people will keep watching them long after the conference.
First up, wearing a vpsFree.cz T-shirt, was Jakub Jelen. He covered SSH security and its new and lesser-known features, and the room was packed.
I spoke on Sunday, hoping to introduce the association in an interesting way. Rather than bore the audience with an awkward sales pitch, Jakub Skokan and I dug a lot of interesting data out of our servers. We'll be publishing it here on the blog over time.
The final vpsFree.cz talk was by David Karban, an Ansible expert. He described the benefits of automatic server configuration and explained that if you're still doing it manually, you're doing it wrong. His examples used four of our VPSes, which we started at his request.
LinuxDays is over, but it certainly isn't this year's last conference. In a month we'll be at OpenAlt in Brno, and a few days later I'll visit Karviná for Open source řešení v sítích. Spring conferences are already being planned too; we've been invited to Bratislava, for example. Come and see us!