Learning & Presenting at SCaLE 12x

Last weekend, I lead a workshop on game development at the 12th installment of the Southern California Linux Expo (SCaLE) — a community-run, open-source, free software conference held annually in Los Angeles. SCaLE has grown to 2500 attendees, 100 exhibitors, and 80 sessions and tutorials.

scale_keynote

Having attended SCaLE in the past, I had high expectations. This year definitely exceeded them. Being a Linux / general open source conference, SCaLE has a wider variety of technologies and people than most. I met Ubuntu experts from Canonical, engineers from Disney, and even a recruiter at the Apple booth!

Along with breadth of technologies and people, the sessions were incredibly diverse. To illustrate my point, here are some of the sessions I attended:

  • Motivational keynote by Lawrence Lessig on corruption in government
  • In depth comparison of performance in Linux vs Solaris
  • Chef for OpenStack
  • Overview of docker.io and Linux containers
  • Using Cylon.js to program robots
  • Teaching kids to program using KidsRuby
  • Being a better human: Check your privilege
  • Game development in Ruby (by yours truly)

There were also three great keynotes, which you can watch online:

Between the people, the technology, and this eclectic mix of sessions, SCaLE was well worth the trip to L.A. Lots of good information with a diverse crowd; sign me up for next year.

For the curious, here’s a link to the game we build in my workshop using Gamebox:
game sourcecode and slides