AlmaLinux Day: Vancouver took place in August, and what a great event it was! As our virst time in Vancouver, and our first event adjacent to SIGGRAPH, we had no idea what to expect, but it was a blast! Keep reading to get a full rundown of what went on at the event.
Event Preparation
We had a wonderful team of volunteers help us with the set up, including prepping the swag giveaways, setting up the event space, staffing the check-in desk, and helping with teardown at the end. We can’t thank them enough!
I also want to give a special shout-out to @Tristan Theroux for all his efforts to make this event a success. He was also the brainchild behind the ALDV penguin bobblehead (more on that below!). And his team at @SHED also deserves major props for creating a magical animation of the ALDV penguin riding a moose.
[Insert moose animation maybe?]
Event Activities
Speaking Sessions
We also had an amazing group of speakers! Thank you to everyone who submitted a talk, and to the incredible folks who helped make the day great!
Watch the individual sessions below, or find the full AlmaLinux Day: Vancouver playlist on Youtube.
Swag
We had a lot of AlmaLinux swag to share with ALDV attendees, including stickers (with some new ones that went like hotcakes!), an ALDV bag, t-shirts, pins, sunglasses, and pens.
Beyond the swag, we did a raffle for some prizes! Congrats to the ALDV attendees who got to bring these LEGO sets home. (That sun was killing us all - I promise they were happy!)
For the first time ever, we also had a themed penguin bobblehead! Shout-out to Impressions trait d’union for bringing Tristan’s dreams to life. This penguin bobblehead was an exclusive giveaway at ALDV and SIGGRAPH, but this is likely not the last time we’ll be doing something like this…
Thank you to Lenovo!! Showcasing the NVIDIA RTX 6000 Blackwell Max-Q GPU
Jonathan Wright and Neal Gompa showcased how much easier and more robust the installation of NVIDIA’s new open-source drivers has become, while also demonstrating HDR running smoothly on KDE — a breakthrough for Linux desktops. None of this would have been possible without Lenovo’s support, providing the powerful P8 Workstation, a Lenovo Mobile Workstation laptop, and the NVIDIA RTX 6000 Blackwell Max-Q GPU that made these advancements shine.
What’s Next
Future AlmaLinux Days
We are definitely planning to bring AlmaLinux Day back to SIGGRAPH and to more locations around the world. If you are interested in joining us in the future, stay tuned for the announcements!
Coming Soon: A New SIG!
Another exciting update to come out of ALDV is the plan to create a new SIG around Media & Entertainment! Watch for that announcement soon!
More AlmaLinux days? Keep in touch, and get involved!
If you have event planning experience and want to help us, we’re always looking for help! Just join the Marketing room on chat.almalinux.org, and we’ll get you up to speed!
If you want to stay up-to-date, follow us on all of the various places: our forum, Reddit, X, Mastodon, LinkedIn, and YouTube. We also launched a newsletter this year, which you can subscribe to on LinkedIn or via email on our mailing list.
