I must start by saying a big thank you o Linux Foundation who gave me a free ticket after I won a competition over twitter. I was offered my choice of tickets and I chose Europe as I could see good friends in Scotland, visit Edinburgh where I have lived before and it lined up with MozFest which I was wanting to go to. Linux Con Europe Edinburgh 21 -23
I ended up taking a student friend of mine from Glasgow it was his first Linux Con too. I have been to LinuxConf Australia before but this is different. It was my first time seeing Linux talk on stage aswell as normally I just see him walking around LinuxConf au 
The conference was fantastic three days of awesomeness and there was way too much information to take in. The first night there was networking drinks in the exhibitor’s booth display area. This was good as it made you actually get around and see some of the booths and technologies on show. Oh course to collect stickers and a really cool black duck rubber ducky.
Also found myself bumping into quite a few Australians who were there on work related trips. It was nice to see a lot of familiar faces around the conference and as always great to catch up with friends.
The Tuesday morning on the second day there was a Women in Linux breakfast which was fantastic. I did not realise just how many Linux Kernel developers there were at the conference, for me it was a bigger number then I had seen before I counted over 18 and whilst small for me that is a large number I was very impressed by their stories. When it came to my turn to share my story I think I was still in awe lol It was a great breakfast and saw some old faces there which is always nice. We all discussed what we did and who we were and then chatted whilst eating a very yummy breakfast sponsored by Linux Foundation.
The second night we were lucky enough to have a special guest invitation to the VIP party. This was held in the old Ghillie Dhu in Edinburgh NewTown. This was amazing the food was fantastic three courses of sheer delight and a good choice of ale and larger.
The third day was fanastic there was the keynote discussion with Linus on the state of the Linux Kernel which was everything from community management questions to kernel ones. There was also a talk by Mikko Hypponen on “the surveillance state” which was thought provoking and fantastic to say the least. I also managed to get a talk in every session on the Wednesday which was great, my two favourites where probably “What’s coming up in the Kernel” and “Apache 2.4 changes” these two where ones that I took the most out of for my work and play. I was excited to hear about the possibility of page_size changes in newer kernels, major win for memory management there. Also the fact that in Apache 2.4 apart from removing a lot of legacy code they made mod_rewrite human eligible 
this means that regular expressions are no longer needed when writing rules. I also enjoyes Sarah’s panel discussion where she presented winners from the FOSS outreach program for Women. This was interesting to hear there stories also because they where so different and all jumped onto kernel development only one had prior experience with kernel development. It surely did make me leave the talk going if I had access to a mentor I could also contribute code to the kernel and this program is not just goof for graduates but also old timers like me lol never to old to learn to contribute to the kernel.
The final night sadly ended with drinks and nibbles inside the Scottish Natural Museum. Where we had some of the exhibitions opened for us to walk around in. There was also the Technical Advisory Board voting which occurred for the foundation. It was fantastic to be able to take part in this event as you need to be present to vote and this was my first time I could be physically present.
All and all this was a fantastic event and I look forward to being able to come to another Linux Con. For students with the reduced ticket price I would recommended my friend got a lot out of it and also discussed the possibility of a new role and thanks Linux Foundation for your on-going support of Linux based industry and events.