LinuxWorld to Help School Project
-- Tradeshow Week, 6/9/2008
IDG World Expo will partner with a company called Untangle to host an Installfest for Schools event at this year's LinuxWorld Conference & Expo.
This will be the second Installfest, an event at which volunteers refurbish older, discarded computers with free software and then donate the restored computers to schools. However, it will be the first with LinuxWorld, taking place Aug. 4-7 at San Francisco's Moscone Center. Untangle, which produces software to enable businesses to simply and cheaply create and maintain IT infrastructures, held the first Installfest March 1 in conjunction with the Alameda County Computer Resource Center at four San Francisco Bay area locations.
Volunteers at LinuxWorld will install Linux and open source software on donated and recycled computers supplied by the Alameda County center. LinuxWorld participants can drop computers off at the front entrance of the Moscone North Exhibit Hall, where an ACCRC truck will collect onsite donations.
The exhibit hall will feature a dedicated Installfest area on the showfloor with 16 to 20 workstations where volunteers can either sign up in advance or simply show up to work on refurbishing the machines. Once completed, the refurbished computers will be loaded back onto the ACCRC truck and transported to local schools.
Melinda Kendall, vice president and general manager of LinuxWorld, said, “Untangle's Installfest program is the perfect opportunity for LinuxWorld to extend its ongoing support of the Linux community. Having created and launched a successful first event in March, Untangle is the driving force behind this initiative and we're glad to be collaborating with them to bring a second Installfest to LinuxWorld. Hosting Installfest at LinuxWorld is a natural and exciting extension of the volunteer work that the open source community has historically undertaken, as well as a great way to give something back to schools in need.”
About 350 computers were refurbished at the first Installfest and Andrew Fife, Untangle's product marketing manager, said that, with LinuxWorld's 10,000-plus attendees, he could only imagine how many more volunteers it would draw and how many more computers Untangle will be able to donate.
Volunteers can help the effort by donating old computers, helping to refurbish computers onsite at LinuxWorld, or organizing events in their own areas.
