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POSSCON 2009 was a tremendous success – thanks to you!

Thanks to everyone for making the 2009 Palmetto Open Source Software Conference tremendously successful!  We had more than 200 people attend and sixteen (16) speakers gave insightful presentations on a variety of topics.  Next year’s event has already been scheduled for Saturday, April 17, 2010.  We sincerely hope you can be with us as we continue to get bigger and better!

We’d like to specifically thank a few people and sponsors – without them it wouldn’t have been possible:

All attendees – thank you so much for attending!  You could have been a thousand different places on Saturday, but you chose to be with us.

The POSSCON Planning Committee, comprised of:

• Dr. Bob Brookshire
• Dr. Duncan Buell
• Kristine Hooker of BlueCross BlueShield SC & the Consortium for Enterprise Systems Management
• Todd Lewis of Palmetto Computer Labs.

All sponsors, including

• The University of South Carolina
• the Consortium for Enterprise Systems Management
• IBM
• BlueCross BlueShield of SC
• TM Floyd & Company
• Palmetto Computer Labs.

All partners, including:

• Red Hat
• Open Invention Network
• Time Warner Cable
• Catamorphic Labs
• O'Reilly Media

All speakers – without them we would have no show.  For a complete list click here

A special thank you to the following individuals & groups:

• Barb Ulrich for her time in helping coordinate tables, chairs, the tent, displays, etc.
• Kenley Dick with USC for program layout, design and printing
• Elikia from BlueCross BlueShield for video services
• All student volunteers from Dr. Bob Brookshire's program at USC
• The Columbia and Upstate Linux User Groups – great job guys!
• Matt Hudson for all graphic development & wed-related work
• Anyone else that volunteered or helped out in any way – sorry if anyone is left out!

A few of the highlights from POSSCON 2009:

Red Hat CIO Lee Congdon gave an excellent Keynote Address and stayed over to answer questions from attendees.  He was treated like a rock star.

Columbia Mayor Bob Coble and South Carolina Lt. Governor Andre Bauer attended to welcome everyone to Columbia and learn more about open source technology.  When politicians of this magnitude are attending an open source conference, that’s a good thing!

Attendees from four (4) states were treated to two separate tracks this year – Developer and Business.  The Developer sessions were standing room only as Greg DeKoenigsberg, Chris Eargle, Stuart Anderson, and the guys at Catamorphic Labs covered everything from the Haskell, Erlang, and Clojure languages, to Linux Trusted Platforms, contributing to the Red Hat community, and Open Source Tools for Microsoft Developers. 

Keith Bergelt opened a lot of eyes when he discussed the Open Invention Network and its fight to keep open source open with the second keynote address of the day.  Many, many attendees approached us afterwards and commented what a strong presentation it was and how they were unaware of the Network resource before POSSCON.

Business track attendees were provided valuable insight by way of presentations about a variety of topics, including open source alternatives to proprietary solutions, a Linux transition case study, a business roundtable discussing open source implementation experiences, information about the Consortium for Enterprise Systems Management, and why IT is so important to the State of SC.

Everyone was provided a GREAT opportunity to network.  Many, many business cards and ideas were exchanged, which is the real benefit of an event like this.