Linux 10 year anniversary party

Saturday, Auguest 25th 2001, SVLUG had a big barbecue in Baylands Park in Sunnyvale to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of linux.

Introduction

So how did this start?
Ian Kluft was the SVLUG member who came up with the idea to find a date for the 10 year anniversary of linux and have some kind of celebration.

Ian picked August 25th as it was the day, ten years ago, when Linus announced his first version os linux on comp.os.minix (see the history page on the linux10.org web site), and it conveniently was a saturday in 2001.

After some discussion on the SVLUG list, people agreed that doing a barbecue would be a good idea. Drew Bertola teamed up with Ian to setup the linux10.org web site, a mailing list, recruit more volunteers and made the whole thing happen.

Setup

After:

several weeks of planning on the mailing list
finding and reserving the park
printing T-shirts to raise funds
finding sponsors to further help us fund the event (fees for reserving the park, lots of money to buy all the food necessary, and various other things we had to pay for)
making estimates on the food, revising the estimates several times as the RSVP list went from 50 to 750
planning random other things, and doing franzy last minute shopping

The day came, and it was time to setup the event.

[event picture]

thanks for hanging some protection so that ...

... the burgers got cooked, but not our chefs

and thanks to Ian being a HAM, we got a lot of HAM volunteers, who set up a base relay station in the park... ...and helped relay communication between the volunteers and the shuttles we had between the lightrail and the park

BBQ

"If you build it, they will come", and sure enough, they came

[event picture]
Hi, welcome to linux10. Can I interest you in a T-shirt?

Ian, "running" around with his bike, making sure that everything was running smoothly

Once again, Rick Moen won the obnoxious shirt contest (we had hopes for Josh Neal, but he flaked out)

Activities

To work out some of the food, we had several activities planned, from a PGP keysigning (ok, maybe that one didn't burn too many calories

, but you can then boast that your key has more signatures, and that it was signed by Dmitriy). Others played ball and various other games, biked around neighbouring trails, and the Frenchies (myself included), went for a few games of Pétanque

[event picture]

Wrapup

After a long fun day, Don Marti and Tabinda had a few words to thank our sponsors, announce that the money left over was going to the EFF, thank everyone involved for their great work, and wrap up the event.

[event picture]
"What do we want? Free Dmitriy! When do we want it? Now!... Err, I mean, thanks for coming to the BBQ"

The food left over wasn't lost, I had made plans with SART in Sunnyvale to drop off the excess food we'd have, and they got a truck full (plus whatever I could fit in my Miata

)

[event picture]

The event was a great success, the park people were impressed and said that we "really had our shit together", Drew is happy because he managed to sell more than 330 shirts (there are 20 or so left, get yours now), good times were had, and people went home happy.

To sum up, here are a few words, for Ian Kluft, the event organizer:


Everyone -

Wow!  Linux10 was a great success.  Yeah, the attendance estimate was off
a bit.  I know some friends and co-workers of mine who couldn't make it at
the last minute.  I'm sure there were other stories like theirs.

But what did we accomplish?
* Everyone was fed and happy.  And the lines I saw weren't too long.
* The First Aid crew reported that no one needed assistance.
* There turned out to be no problem entertaining all the people -
  they just talked.  Many went for walks around the park.
* Bikes had convenient parking, even though the park provides next to none.
* Transit users were able to conveniently get to the event.
* Our Ham Radio volunteers liked it.
* The park staff thought we were great.
* We left the place clean.
* Donations covered all volunteer out-of-pocket expenses.  We'll be
  presenting a check to EFF this week at LinuxWorld Expo.

A lot of people came to me wanting to thank me as the coordinator.  I turned
all these conversations around, letting them know how many people put in
their time to do their part well, and got them to ask me to forward their
thanks to the team.  So, on behalf of many guests I spoke with, thank you
for doing such a spectacular job!

Actually, I probably can't thank all of you enough.  From mid-afternoon on,
I was hearing non-stop compliments from guests.  It goes to show how much
all of you did.  The Food Crew's level of preparation impressed everyone.
The radios seemed to impress people a lot more than I expected.

[event picture]

Thanks all those who came, and see you all next time.
You want to see all the pictures?
back to other linux events

Marc MERLIN (marc_web@merlins.org)

Email
Link to Home Page

2001/08/28 (01:19): Version 1.0
2001/08/29 (00:08): Version 1.1. Temporary disabled links to IDS (way too slow during slashdot effect), added tuxcake
2001/08/30 (20:19): Version 1.2. Reopened the link to IDS now that most of the slashdot effect is over
2001/09/05 (01:30): Version 1.3. Pointed pictures to RIG