I mentioned the Gartner conference among a few of the upcoming open source events this fall. I've been to the past versions of this conference in Phoenix and in Orlando and it's a very good event for managers and newcomers to Open Source. It's not a hardcore technical conference like OSCON or the MySQL conference, but it's very good for its audience. Gartner has come a long way in recent years in helping IT orga I mentioned the Gartner conference among a few of the upcoming open source events this fall. I’ve been to the past versions of this conference in Phoenix and in Orlando and it’s a very good event for managers and newcomers to Open Source. It’s not a hardcore technical conference like OSCON or the MySQL conference, but it’s very good for its audience. Gartner has come a long way in recent years in helping IT organizations ramp up their use of open source with a carefully considered “best practices” approach backed by good research and thorough analysis. The Gartner guys that I’ve met have a good understanding of where open source fits and how to start using it without getting burned. They’re also objective in their findings. It’s not just about using open source because it’s the hot thing. They understand that in IT if things fail heads can roll. So they may be a bit more conservative than others, but it is with good reason. And finally, you can’t buy your way into a Gartner recommendation. So to me it’s pretty compelling when Gartner says open source databases are the fastest growing segment. Last year in his presentation on open source databases, Donald Feinberg reported that by 2008, 70% of organizations would be deploying an open source database and that 56% of companies surveyed planned on switching to Linux as their database platform. Pretty interesting trends.At this fall’s event in Las Vegas there will be presentations by Mark Driver, Donald Feinberg, Nikos Drakos, Ray Valdes from Gartner as well as presentations by Michael Tiemann from Red Hat, Tony Wasserman from CMU West and others. Tracks include “Optimizing Open Source Investments,” “Managing the Open Source Roadmap,” “Practices of Mature Users” and “Open Source & Elvis”. (Ok, I am making that one up, since it’s Las Vegas.) There are sessions on Security, Linux, Open Source Stacks, Databases, GPL, Web 2.0, My only regret is I will need to leave early Friday morning to catch a flight to Germany for a MySQL developer meeting we’re having in Heidelberg. Open Source