You’d expect LinuxCon content to be centered around Linux — and of course the ten tracks we have between LinuxCon and CloudOpen will feature the latest in developer and SysAdmin/DevOps technical topics such as Linux kernel development, virtualization, containers and open cloud technologies. (Plus a keynote speaker you may have heard of: Linus Torvalds.) But it’s been inspiring to see the principles of Linux and open source — open collaboration, meritocracy, crowdsourcing — spread to other areas of society, from education to 3D printing to medical devices and cars.

This year’s LinuxCon and CloudOpen will showcase this important work.

Anant Agarwal, CEO of edX, will talk about how the organization and its members are reinventing education through massive open online courses (MOOCs). Our Intro to Linux MOOC has already received 100,000+ registrations. We’re excited to hear what Anant thinks about the appetite for Linux knowledge and how the course can help meet demand.

Eileen Evans from HP will advance the conversation around education by talking about what she calls “the new open source professional” and the skills and knowledge they need to be successful.

Solomon Hykes, founder and CTO at Docker, will talk about the hot area of containers and how they’re changing the virtualization landscape.

Jonathan Kuniholm, president, Open Prosthetics Project will talk about using open source to produce innovations in the field of prosthetics. You can watch his TED talk here.

Anthony Moschella, vice president at MakerBot, will discuss the sharing of open source designs for 3D printing. If you haven’t read about this amazing group, get an intro from Libby Clark on Linux.com.

Jay Rogers, CEO and co-founder of Local Motors, will share how open collaboration is fostering a new era in vehicle development. Open source runs the car and the crowd designs the car.

And, in an effort to keep offering diverse opportunities for learning, we’ve invited Ubuntu community manager Jono Bacon, author of ‘Art of Community,’ to host a community management training class. It will cover how to build and grow a community, including building collaborative workflows, defining a governance structure, planning, marketing, and evaluating effectiveness. These best practices can apply to any projects, software related or not.

I hope to see you in Chicago.