Thank you to everyone that attended Linux Plumbers 2022 both in person or virtually. After two years of being 100% virtual due to the pandemic, we were able to have a very successful hybrid conference, with 418 people registering in-person where 401 attended (96%), and 361 registered virtually and 320 who actually participated online (89%), not counting all those that used the free YouTube service. After two years of being 100% remote, we decided to keep this year’s in-person count lower than normal due to the unknowns caused by the pandemic. To compensate for the smaller venue, we tried something new, and created a virtual attendance as well. We took a different approach than other hybrid conferences, and treated this one as a virtual event with an in-person component, where the in room attendees were simply participants of the virtual event. This required all presentations to be uploaded to Big Blue Button, and the presenters presented through the virtual platform even though they were doing so on stage. This allowed the virtual attendees to be treated as first class citizens of the conference. Although we found this format a success, it wasn’t without technical difficulties, like problems with having no sound in the beginning of the first day, but that’s expected when attempting to do something for the first time. Overall, we found it to be a better experience and will continue to do so in future conferences.
We had a total of 18 microconferences (where patches are already going out on the mailing lists that are results of discussions that happened there), 16 Refereed talks, 8 Kernel Summit talks, 29 Networking and BPF Summit track talks, and 9 Toolchain track talks. There were also 17 birds-of-a-feather talks, where several were added at the last minute to solve issues that have just arrived. Most of these presentations can still be seen on video.
Stay tune for the feedback report of our attendees.
Next year Linux Plumbers will take place in North America (but not necessarily in the United States). We are still locking down on locations. As it is custom for Linux Plumbers to change chairs every year, next year will be chaired by Christian Brauner. It seems we like to have the chair live in another continent than where the conference takes place. We are hoping to find a venue that can hold at least 600 people, where we will be able to increase the number of in-person attendees.
Finally, I want to thank all those that were involved in making Linux Plumbers the best technical conference there is. This would not have happened without the hard work from the planning committee (Alice Ferrazzi, Christian Brauner, David Woodhouse, Guy Lunardi, James Bottomley, Kate Stewart, Mike Rapoport, and Paul E. McKenney), the runners of the Networking and BPF Summit track, the Toolchain track, Kernel Summit, and those that put together the very productive microconferences. I would also like to thank all those that presented as well as those who attended both in-person and virtually. I want to thank our sponsors for their continued support, and hope that this year’s conference was well worth it for them. I want to give special thanks to the Linux Foundation and their staff, who went above and beyond to make this conference run smoothly. They do a lot of work behind the scenes and the planning committee greatly appreciates it.
Before signing off from 2022, I would like to ask if anyone would be interested in volunteering with helping out at next year’s conference? We are especially looking for those that could help on a technical level, as we found running a virtual component along with a live event requires a bit more people than what we currently have. If you are interested, please send an email to contact@linuxplumbersconf.org.
Sincerely,
Steven Rostedt
Linux Plumbers 2022 Conference chair
