Linuxtag

In 1995 a group of students from the University of Kaiserlautern in Germany, decided to make a small meeting to explain the benefits of Linux to other students of their University. With no prior experience of organization, but a good idea on their hands, they held the conference called "Linux in Ausbildung und Studium" (german for: "Linux in education") on the 20th of January 1996, with about 70 visitors, and 5 talks.

A year later, at the 18th of January 1997, the first ever "Linuxtag" was held, which was the new name for this event. Everything became bigger and there was also a small exhibition, where visitors could see the topics covered in the talks in action. About 150 people attended this year, even though heavy snow storms were causing major traffic problems.

To avoid any of these problems, the organizers decided to move the event to the summer. On 14th and 15th of June 1997, about 400 visitors came to Kaiserlautern, to hear talks and tutorials, and get information from 70 exhibitor booths. Once again the event became larger and more professional. The organizers also started to offer a special CD containing papers from the talks and a Linux distribution.

Another year later, Linuxtag'98 was held. This was the first time were big commercial Linux developers were present in the exhibition, such as SuSE, Caldera, Delix, and others. 19 talks were held during the two days of the event (at 26th and 27th of June 1998), and more than 2000 people attended.

Linuxtag'99 was the last one that was held in Kaiserlautern. With about 5000 visitors (there never was an entry fee), the capacities of the University of Kaiserlautern were depleted. During two hot days in late June, people gathered once again on the University campus, to enjoy talks and visit the exhibitor booths. This time the commercial part of the event was getting consideringly large, and was located in it's own exhibition hall.

Linuxtag 2000 (LT2K) marked the move to the trade show halls of Stuttgart/Germany, and the introduction of the slogan "Where .com meets .org". Everything became once again, ultimately larger, and therefore also more commercial, put also more professional. Still the whole organization was done by the same small group of students, who now have gained a lot of experience in this field. The Linuxtag 2000 was once again a big success, with nearly 20000 visitors in 4 days, and numerous talks, by big Linux legends, such as Richard Stallmann, Alan Cox and Rasterman. This was also the first Linuxtag that featured a special business-to-business congress, for commercial Linux developers and marketing people.

On July 5th - 8th 2001, another Linuxtag will be held in Stuttgart. Learn all about it at http://www.linuxtag.org, and if possible join us there.
It will be fun!