OpenExpo Bern 2008 enjoys record audience and makes makes Bern the Swiss open source capital
Doubled audience and great interest in the Swiss Public Administration's Open Source Software Conference integrated into OpenExpo
Bern, March 14, 2008
OpenExpo, the two-day trade show and conference on Open Source Software has confirmed its strong position, more than 1200 participants visited the 54 exhibitors and 51 presentations, which is more than double the audience compared to last OpenExpo in Zürich. The combination of strong community presence and prominent vendors proofed to be compelling again: With topics such as Ubuntu, OpenOffice.org, OpenMoko or OpenStreetMap as well as business applications like SugarCRM, SQL-Ledger, Typo3 or Apache OFBiz OpenExpo once again attracted a broad audience made up from individuals, businesses and the public sector alike.
Engaged participants, successful exhibitors
The presentations in the categories Business, Technology and Government turned out to be major attractions, both very technical and rather broad topics such as Open Source Groupware or the open mobile platform OpenMoko were very successful indeed - and for the keynote of Alan Cox, one of the most important Linux kernel engineers, even the all-standing conference room could not take up the impressive crowd.
Recordings of most presentations can be found on the OpenExpo website.
At the fully booked Install Zone, the free Linux installation support was made use of extensively, more than 80 installations were carried out with great success for a delighted public of all ages.
Open Source Software fulfils needs - and is a true business: makers across the board turned out satisfied by their audience's response, both lead quality and recruiting contacts were reported to be outstanding.
The Swiss Public Administration's Open Source Software Conference
Under the slogan «Develop once, use without limits» on 13 March the fourth Open Source Software Conference for the Swiss government took place as a core component of OpenExpo. More than 150 decision makers from the federal administration, the cantons and municipalities took part in the event, which was co-organized with the Federal Strategy Unit for IT, supported by Schweizerische Informatikkonferenz (SIK), the Swiss Open Systems User Group (/ch/open) the federal authorities' Open Source community.
The conference demonstrated the potential already realized in projects from Switzerland, Germany and the EU commission and was opened by Vaud's cantonal councilor François Marthaler. Presentations by the towns of Munich and Freiburg, the canton Solothurn and the Swiss federal court revealed vantages and resistances in migrating towards an OSS working environment, all while the cities of Bern, Bienne, Lucerne, St. Gallen and Winterthur investigated the business efficiency of Free Software desktops, underlining the common search for meaningful benchmarks.
One of the highlights certainly was the closing panel discussion with participants from business, government and academia, among others the EU commission, Microsoft, cantonal authorities, IBM and ETH Zürich. The experts outlined the properties of Open Source as a modell allowing for high yield with limited investment and where perfectly unanimous on the topic of Open Standards - while still disagreeing on their actual implementation. The panel generally claimed for a transparent and affordable IT supporting innovation in administrations, with less vendor lock-in, based on true open standards and broadly supported by well-coordinated OOS communities in which government agencies, vendors and and service providers participate alike.
Next OpenExpo in fall 2008
The fifth OpenExpo will take place on September 24/25, 2008 in Zürich (Winterthur).
Contact OpenExpo
Matthias Stürmer
contact@openexpo.ch
Mobile: +41 76 368 81 65
Organized by:
/ch/open
Swiss Open Systems User Group
POB 2322
8033 Zürich
www.ch-open.ch