Exhibitions for Africa has announced the confirmation of four, world-renowned speakers in the fields of Linux and open source who will be addressing visitors to the Sandton Convention Centre for LinuxWorld 2006, being held from 16 to 19 May in conjunction with Futurex and Equip. LinuxWorld keynote addresses will take place on 16 and 17 May and, for the first time, will be free to the public.
The four confirmed speakers are Jon “Maddog” Hall, Chris Pratt, Jeff Waugh and Nat Friedman.
Executive Director of Linux International, Jon “Maddog” Hall delivered a keynote address at LinuxWorld 2005 in South Africa and has been invited back for 2006’s event. Linux International is a non-profit organisation of computer vendors who support and promote the Linux operating system.
One of the most prominent and out-spoken figures in the Linux community, Hall’s thirty-year career includes work as a computer programmer, systems designer, systems administrator, product manager, technical marketing manager, author, consultant to local, state and national governments worldwide and college educator. He also serves on the boards of several companies and non-profit organisations, including the USENIX Association.
Chris Pratt is the Manager of Strategic Initiatives for IBM Canada. As such, Pratt is responsible for managing the company’s activities in the strategic areas of Linux, Grid, Virtualisation and Deep Computing.
An insightful speaker, Pratt has enjoyed a 25-year tenure with IBM, during which time he has been involved in numerous areas of information technology provisioning. Chris has a deep technical and business background in diverse environments and has worked in project management and support of large organisations in the deployment of leading-edge technology. Most recently, Pratt focused on IT optimisation and was a founding member of IBM’s Worldwide Server Consolidation Group where he obtained a patent as co-author of IBM’s ALIGN Methodology.
Jeff Waugh works on the business and community development of the Ubuntu Linux distribution for Canonical. A highly active member of the open source and Linux community, he is also currently director of the GNOME Foundation Board and was a GNOME Release Manager committee member; president of the Sydney Linux Users’ Group; won the Google/O’Reilly Open Source Award for Best Evangelist, plots the open source blogging explosion with Planet (www.planetplanet.org) and is a member of Linux Australia.
Finally, Nat Friedman will also be delivering a keynote address at Linux World 2006. Nat is primarily a programmer who co-founded Ximian with Miguel de Icaza in 1999. The company was responsible for initiating such projects at the Evolution workgroup client and the Ximian Desktop before being acquired by Novell in 2003. He is currently vice president: Linux Desktop for Novell.
Aldean Prior, Director at Exhibitions for Africa says, “We are extremely excited to have yet again secured a world class list of keynote speakers. This is a rare opportunity for the South Africans business and technical communities and with all the keynotes being open to the public, we are expecting a massive response.”
Press Contacts:
Aldean Prior; Director: Exhibitions for Africa; (011) 886-3734; aldeanp@exhibitafrica.co.za
Craig Rodney; Emerging Media Communications; (011) 792-4378; craig@emergingmedia.co.za”
