Hello from Salt Lake City! Today was the first full day of BrainShare sessions at the Salt Palace in Salt Lake City, Utah.

First thing this morning I went to the General Session (a.k.a. “keynote”) with Ron Hovsepian, Jeff Jaffe, John Dragoon, and Jim Ebzery. (If you couldn’t make it, or just want to relive the experience, the vids are already up on the BrainShare site here.) The room was packed — not sure how many people were at the general session, but it was a huge room, and looked quite full from where I was sitting.

Jeff talked about Novell’s Fossa project, which is about “computing and collaborating with agility.” (The fossa is a particularly agile animal that’s native to Madagascar.) Jeff spent a fair amount of time talking about Linux and the importance of open source to Novell’s strategy.

Even though I knew that already, it’s good to hear it articulated during a major keynote like this — and, of course, it’s important to talk about with Novell’s partners and customers. One of the things I’m enjoying at BrainShare is the opportunity to talk with people who’ve been using Novell stuff for years and years, and who are getting excited about Linux and open source. It’s also fun to get to talk about openSUSE with BrainShare attendees.

I had a chance to wander backstage after the keynote… I don’t mind saying that Novell really has some grade A showmanship going on. Seriously — I’ve spent quite a lot of time attending trade shows as a journalist, and I don’t think that I’ve been to any other shows that are quite so well-produced. (The Salt Palace, by the way, is huge — I wonder if I can rent a bike for getting from the Technology Lab to the Press Room…) After the session I spent a fair amount of time catching up with fellow Novell employees that I typically only interact with over the phone, or via email and IM, and spending some time at the openSUSE counter in the Technology Lab.

Tomorrow Adrian and I will be giving a presentation on KDE4 at 4 p.m. We went over it this afternoon, and I think it’s going to be a good session — many thanks to Will Stephenson who put the presentation together originally, but was unable to be at BrainShare to do the presentation himself.

If you’re at BrainShare, be sure to stop by the openSUSE booth in the Novell Technology Lab. We’re showing off openSUSE Factory and answering questions about openSUSE development and the build service.

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