Hi folks!

Long-time user here, checking out the new forum software. I wanted to send a brief invite to any and all who are interested to join us for a "Libre Graphics" track at SCALE (that's Southern California Linux Expo) this coming weekend in Pasadena. If you aren't familiar, it's a realllly big, wide-ranging FOSS event that is family friendly.

A handful of SCALE regulars (and LGM people) have taken on collecting talks into a quasi-official "track" several times over the years, but this is the first one we've really done since probably 2020. Main conference site is here: https://www.socallinuxexpo.org/scale/22x/

This year's slate of sessions is a little different; it's going to be on Sunday (the 9th) and it's going to be tutorials: one on Blender, one on Darktable, and one on Godot. Sadly, that's all the timeslots we had allotted to us, or else we would have had something more vector-y. HOWEVER: there are also two other opportunities that same weekend - we have a BoF (Birds-of-a-Feather informal meetup) for Friday, early evening, and will likely wander off for food after that, and there is talk of doing a photo-walk on Saturday, led by a local. That's dependent on interest and weather, etc, of course.

Anyway, I know not everyone can carve out time for these sorts of events, but if you're in the area, please feel free to join us, or even better do tell any friends you know in the creative-arts space (not just the apps in the tutorials! anyone!) so they know too.

Somewhat regrettably, you do have to pay for registration for SCALE, but you do get the whole weekend of (no joke) dozens on tracks, and they do keep it orders of magnitude less expensive than corporate shindigs. If it's still out of your price-range, please feel free to get in touch and you'd be welcome to meet the attendee-folk for the photo-walk or a restaurant jaunt regardless.

I know from previous years there are several Inkscapers and Inkscape-adjacent folks in the area, so please join us if you can make it, or just stop by to say hello. The libre-graphics zone is still kind of small potatoes compared to all the DevOps and SaaS-y content, so we really hope to make some connections and be able to keep growing the presence at this and other local events.

I think ... that's it. Please feel free to ask any questions or just reach out to me if you've got a comment to add. Thanks for reading this far!

Nate Willis