IP Voice 2008 (http://www.ipvoice2008.com/eng/index2.php) will be held in Lisbon, Portugal on March 5th to 6th, 2008, and with the main audience of this conference being targeted to enterprise customers and communication carriers.

There have been a number of Open Software Phone projects that have happened in the past year and which continue to move forward:

Unlike a lot of the events that I discuss in my Blog, the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit is a "by invitation only" event with a twist. Normally for "invitation only events", the potential attendee sits by the phone with their prom clothes on, waiting for the call that may or may not come.

After speaking at the Florida Linux Show on February 11th, I return ever-so-briefly to the New England area to re-pack my bags and head for Sao Paulo, Brazil to attend Campus Party (February 11th to 17th, 2008).

February 11th, 2008 will see the Florida Linux Show (www.floridalinuxshow.com), a one-day event aimed at business people and systems administrators who are trying to learn about the latest in Free and Open Source trends. The event will be held at the University of North Florida, University Center at Jacksonville, and the admission charge is ten dollars.

Bombay, India. While the official name of the city is now "Mumbai", the name "Bombay" is still used by a lot of the inhabitants, and its use draws images of one of the world's largest cities, a gateway to the sub-continent. Therefore an invitation to speak at Techfest 2008 (http://www.techfest.org/), a large student-organized technical showcase, was impossible to turn down.

I was eating breakfast in my favorite restaurant today and I noticed a sign up on the wall that said: "Free Range Eggs, $4.00 per dozen"

Now at first I had the common knee-jerk reaction to the word "Free" that everyone does, thinking of the concept of "gratis". Then I realized that the word "Free" was related to "Range" and not the price of the eggs.

This year a combination of travel and snow storms influenced me to stay at home on New Year's Eve. I had returned to my home from a night out in Boston the evening before, and after battling a snow storm while returning home I did not feel like going out again. A fire in the fireplace and my favorite beverage in my hands was all I wanted on the last night of 2007.

In the spring of 1983 I went to work for Digital Equipment Corporation. At that time Digital was mostly providing support for different flavors of Unix on their PDP-11 and VAX lines of computers for the telephone company and universities that were using them.

When you travel a lot, once in a while it just seems that you are on "The Trip from Hades", and you wonder why you travel as much as you do.

October 13th is the first-ever Ontario Linux Fest. John Van Ostrand and Richard Weait, both long-time FOSS advocates, have gathered a great organizational team, and are modeling this after the long-running Ohio Linux Fest of last month.

The Brazilian winter was almost over, and while the mild winters in Florianopolis allowed me to work on the Agape, the coming of spring meant that it was time to set sail for new adventures.

Grayson, the youngest of the Pollywogs, showed up early in the morning at the dock, as I got ready to sail. "What are you doing?", he asked. "I am getting ready to study algae", I answered. "Algae!", he exclaimed, "why are you looking for that?"