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Why Go?

Something for everyone

Last June, more than 800 people gathered in New Orleans to enjoy the first-ever Red Hat Summit. Business executives. System administrators. Educators. Students. Everyone and anyone with an interest in open source, Linux, and the future of enterprise technology.

Each morning, there were visionary speeches. Executives from industry giants HP and IBM, as well as inspiring presentations from outside-the-box sources: art and design, humanitarian aid.

Afternoons offered more personal instruction: five hours of lecture sessions spanning six tracks including security, desktop administration, clustering, and application development. Something for everyone, from students to CTOs.

But enough with the marketing spiel. See what the people who attended have to say.

What others say

"You did have good access to executives—really appreciated that."

"I was very impressed by the professional, seamless production of an inaugural event."

"We attended the Red Hat Summit last week—what a great time we had!!! Red Hat really 'rolled out the red carpet' for us and I came away understanding a lot more about the company's vision and products."

"Everything was excellent."

Video samplers:

Summit 2005 Keynote

Mark Webbink
Deputy General Counsel and Secretary, Red Hat

Last year, Mark Webbink discussed patents and innovation in both proprietary and open source technology. He spoke about Red Hat's desire to open projects such as eCos, Red Hat Global File System, and the Fedora/Red Hat Directory Server. [26 mins 55 secs]

Quicktime | Real | Real Stream

Summit 2005 Highlights

Three days. 800 attendees. Hundreds of activities. All in the Big Easy. If you were there, relive the fun and excitement. If you were not, see what you missed. [2 mins 21 secs]

QuickTime | Real | Real Stream | Ogg Video

Sound good? Wait, there's more:

  1. Red Hat Summit offers the opportunity to interact with core development engineers from Red Hat and the Linux community. Learn about the progress and plans for critical drivers and applications. Ask questions about your existing solutions, and get answers straight from the source.
  2. Each day brings keynote speeches from Red Hat executives and prominent partners. These visionary addresses focus on industry progress and plans. The only way to find out more would be to bug the boardroom*.
  3. Summit sessions cover a wide variety of topics applicable to your business, and are hosted by experts. Learn about cutting-edge security advancements, the modern desktop, custom application development, or patent and licensing issues from the people who are making it all happen. Question-and-answer sessions let you ask the burning questions.
  4. Even your downtime is learning time. Our evening events are an opportunity to network and share techniques with hundreds of peers. With this many bright people in one place, there's bound to be someone with similar architectures, similar technology goals, and new and innovative ideas for improving performance, stability, or TCO.
  5. Red Hat Summit is a great return on your investment. $1199 buys 3 days and 3 nights at the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center. This includes admission to all conference sessions, meals, and evening entertainment.

Red Hat Summit 2005 customer testimonial

Patrick Geddes is the IT Manager for a large mortgage company based in Mt. Laurel, New Jersey.

Geddes attended the Red Hat Summit in New Orleans, and was so impressed by Red Hat's offerings that his team deployed Red Hat Enterprise Linux throughout the organization.

"While researching Red Hat through their website, I came across information on the Red Hat Summit. I looked over the agenda, the price, the location, and decided to attend to gain more information on Red Hat and open source," Geddes said.

The mortgage firm was primarily a Sun® Solaris™ shop, but had been experimenting with Red Hat Enterprise Linux since 2003. The company was seeing terrific performance gains using Intel® hardware and Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

"I wasn't sure what to expect at the Summit, but I am so glad that I attended because I made some great contacts and the sessions were very informative," Geddes said.

The content and scope of the presentations also impressed Geddes. "The most useful session that I attended focused on the Red Hat Network Satellite Server. The session got me thinking about how I could better use Red Hat products to advance the goals of my company's IT department," Geddes said.

Right after the Summit, Geddes and his team decided to migrate their mission-critical applications from Sun Solaris to Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Intel hardware. Red Hat worked with the company to deploy the best solution.

"Red Hat Network Satellite Server initially piqued our interest, but there was so much more that we could do with Red Hat products. We are now using Satellite Server for provisioning and have found Red Hat support very helpful in deploying Red Hat Enterprise Linux throughout our enterprise."

With the firm's new Linux infrastructure, Geddes will certainly be a repeat attendee--but it's not just the corporate expertise bringing him back.

"I am looking forward to Red Hat Summit 2006 in Nashville not only for the technical presentations, but also to hang out with all of the cool open source folks!"

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* /s/boardroom/golf course