Don't Miss SouthEast LinuxFest this Weekend in Charlotte

SouthEast LinuxFest (SELF) will be held this weekend, June 20-22, in Charlotte, North Carolina. Now in its sixth year, you won't want to miss this community run conference for open source enthusiasts of all skill levels.

Registration to attend is free, but if you want to get the official t-shirt, Saturday lunch, and drink tickets for the parties, go with the $65 Supporting Attendee registration option. That's still a great deal for three days of conference talks, hallway tracks, and networking.

On Friday, our team will present three talks:

• What Communities Can Learn from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Rikki Endsley): The cast of characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer offers many lessons for open source communities. For example, Buffy (a.k.a. the Chosen One) grows into her leadership role. Documentation saves lives. Mentors help turn Willow from a shy student into a powerful witch. Toxic personalities (I'm looking at you, Glory) can demotivate teams and drive away contributors. Communication is a learned skill (even though she's blunt and literal, Anya is quite endearing). And, despite their name, The Gentlemen illustrate that you won't always see harassment or hear about it. What Communities Can Learn from Buffy the Vampire Slayer slides are available online.

• Raspberry Pi Hacks (Tom Callaway and Ruth Suehle): The authors of the Raspberry Pi Hacks book (O’Reilly, December 2013) will offer technical tips for hardware and software hackers who want to build around the Raspberry Pi computer. They'll start with some tips, such as how to add a power switch, and then they'll share fun projects, such as costume builds, radios, and light displays.

• Systemd (Tom Callaway): Come learn about systemd, the new init system in Fedora 20 and RHEL 7. Don't be afraid of systemd; just because systemd is different doesn't mean it's evil. Systemd is clever, well documented, and helps Linux continue to evolve. Learn why Red Hat uses systemd, and why you might want to as well.

And on Sunday, June 22, we'll have one more:

• You Know, for Kids! 7 Ideas for Improving Tech Education in Schools (Rikki Endsley): This talk examines how raising confident daughters with access to technology and mentors isn't enough. We'll discuss how a high school programming class is a microcosm of the open source tech world, and how these negative experiences early on are enough to turn girls away from pursuing tech careers later. The talk is based on a 2013 article, Open letter to my daughter’s high school programming teacher, and the slides are posted online.

See the SELF '14 site for the full conference schedule, and follow @SELinuxFest and @RedHatOpen on Twitter for updates. We hope to see you in Charlotte this weekend.