FOSE Review

So yesterday a coworker came up to me and asked if I wanted to go to FOSE- I have a vague idea it was a government tech convention, but that’s about it. Since I have a Gov’t ID badge, I was able to get in for free.

So Cris(the boss), David and Terrance went into DC in search of the washington DC convention center. It should be noted that this is not the MCI Center, Metro Center, or the Verizon Center- it’s a completely generic convention center with a completely generic name. Makes it fun to track down when you see signs pointing to “Convention Center” but not specifying which one.

We got off in china town and then proceeded to walk a long distance down 7th street from G to L St.- I didn’t think it was too bad, but Cris wasn’t too happy. We got there, got though the registration process, and found it- it was huge- filled this giant 50 foot tall basement that was like a city block in size. The other three made a B-line to the Advocent booth because we’re getting ready to implement/look into a setup they had on display. Looked sorta cool, but it wasn’t my cup of tea, so I ran off. I checked out pretty much the entire thing, but since it was 3 hours before shutdown on the last day, it was very dull. Very few free goodies.

I did manage to snag a copy Linux Journal archive from 1994-2003, an Ubuntu Disc and an Open Suse disc. Ran into a decent guy working the Tux.org booth- I’ll call him the Ubuntu Kid because he was very tall and scrawny, entirely too excited to run into another linux geek, and loved ubuntu. We talked for a while, then I asked him about other open source booths- he took me over to the redhat booth where he picked on the redhat lady. He kept saying things like “I don’t think I could use Fedora because it still uses those nasty RPMs,” “Have you ever heard of CentOS?” and “You should really try ubuntu.” I’m sure she found it annoying and childish, but I was plenty amused. She gave me a redhat pen before I stumbled off to find my coworkers.

Afterwards, we hit this pub/bar type place and we got a big thing of uber nachos, and I got a club sandwich. Boy was that Chili on the nachos angry at me last night.

All in all, it was pretty boring actually, but it was nice to have been to one. Perhaps next time I can go the first or second day to get better goodies, or go to another expo/convention alltogether.