Archive for June 3rd, 2008

Posted on June 3, 2008 - by jono

LugRadio Live UK 2008

Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls, I am pleased to announce the first collection of confirmed speakers for the legendary LugRadio Live UK 2008 that is happening on the 19th and 20th July 2008 at The Lighthouse Media Center, Chubb Buildings, Fryer Street, Wolverhampton, WV1 1HT – astute readers may have noticed the venue has changed – thats right, we are now back at The Lighthouse.

If you are unfamiliar with LugRadio Live, where have you been living? LugRadio Live is the leading open source, free software and free culture event in the UK, and every year brings together three stages full of incredible speakers, a raft of exhibitors and a lot of fun. LugRadio Live is a very different event, and something often described as a “rock conference” – it presents an incredibly social and fun event where the focus is on meeting cool and interesting people and having a great time. And all of this costs just Â£5 for the full weekend to get in.

First Confirmed Speakers and Exhibitors

So, lets get started with the first batch of confirmed speakers and exhibitors. Work is progressing apace to continue, but we can announce the following so far:

Speakers:

Chris DiBona (Google)
Max Spevack (Red Hat) – The Fedora Project
Christian Schaller (Collabora Multimedia) – GStreamer
Steve Lamb (Microsoft) – Green IT
Robert Collins (Canonical) – Bazaar
Benjamin Otte (GNOME) – swfdec
Rob McQueen (Collabora)
Edward Hervey (Collabora Multimedia) – PiTiVi
James Hooker – Taming the Dragons
Kevin Sandom – Grouphug â€“ Clustering with an evil twist!
Barbie (MessageLabs) – Understanding Malware
Daniel James – Mobile multimedia production with Free Software
Emma Jane Hogbin – Form an orderly queue, ladies
Bruno Bord – Baguette on Snails
Ben Thorp – Supporting World Domination
Rufus Pollock – FFFI
Sam Birchall – Philosophy and AI: Modelling Human Cognition
John Carr – Laying Down the Pipes: connecting your desktop with Conduit
William J Giddings – Tcl/GTK bindings, using the GNOCL extensions for Tcl
Agostino Russo – Wubi, the Windows Ubuntu Installer
Martin Meredith – Keysigning Party
…and another 10 or so to confirm…

Exhibitors:

Bytemark
Icculus
Ubuntu UK
Open Rights Group
www.tinker.it
KDE
Linux Outlaws
64 Studio
Linux Emporium
Chris Hayes
…and many more…

Call for speakers and exhibitors is still open – contact us at show AT lugradio DOT org if you would like to speak or exhibit, but get in quick, space is filling up. Oh, and exhibiting is completely free, just in case you wondered.

Other Fun Stuff

Not only do we have a rip-roaring schedule of speakers and a juicy collection of exhibitors packed into the venue, but we have lots of other fun stuff too such as:

<to be announced’s> Lightbulb Talk Gong-a-thong Extravaganza – following in the fine footsteps of Adam Sweet and Aaron Bockover, we have another Open Source celebrity MCing a collection of short lightning talks while stood in front of a large gong in a very small pair of underpants.
The Mass Debate – again we will put together some leading lights in the free software world to bang heads and debate the important topics that you can ask about.
LugRadio Live and Unleashed – the LugRadio team will again present a live show in front of the LugRadio Live UK 2008 audience, and in this show…anything can happen!
Nutsacks – becoming something of a staple part of LugRadio Live, we will again provide bags of incredible swag that you get for free when you enter the venue. We are working on some excellent nutsack fun and games.
Partaaaay! – on the Friday and Saturday evenings there will be parties in which you can have a few drinks, talk to other attendees and get to know the speakers, the LugRadio presenters and the crew.
LAN Gaming – we will have a large LAN gaming setup where you can go and blow the crap out of other geeks…
Much, much more – we have lots of things up our sleeves, rest assured…you will have a great time…

Travel and Hotels

If all of this is sounding like a lot of fun to you and you want to come along, thankfully Wolverhampton is a pretty easy place to get to. It is very well connected by trains and has an airport (Birmingham International) 30 minutes away. There is also a large car park opposite the LugRadio Live UK venue which makes parking very convenient too.

in terms of accommodation, we have a raft of hotels, most of which have special deals for LugRadio Live UK 2008 visitors. Go and see this page for more details.

Spread The Word!

LugRadio Live UK 2008 is very much a community event, and we are looking for as much help as possible to spread the word about it – if you are planning on coming along, put one of these rather nice buttons on your website and link it to http://lugradio.org/live/UK2008/: