The new year has been no less hectic than the old one, which is actually a good thing, I guess.

Yesterday was my 44th birthday. It was pretty much just another birthday, with the only somewhat interesting thing is that now my age starts and ends with the same numeral. It is also the cost in US cents for a first class postage stamp (which has been the case with my age since 1998).

Anyway, I did get a delightful and unexpected present. The gang at the Southern California Linux Expo (SCaLE) issued a press release announcing that I have been named one of the two keynote speakers for the conference in February.

This is pretty cool, and I am both honored and humbled by their decision. I will be presenting a talk about what it is like to start and run a business based on open source software. One reason I write this blog is to both inform, and perhaps inspire, others to take the risk and start their own business, and to be able to talk about this in front of the SCaLE attendees is pretty exciting. It has been one of my favorite shows since we first attended. OpenNMS will also have a booth where you can see the latest stuff we are working on, as well as to meet some of the folks from the community.

This will be my first ever keynote, if you don’t count last year’s inaugural OpenNMS Users Conference in Frankfurt, and speaking of that, we had so much success last year that we are doing again. The 2010 Users Conference will be back in Frankfurt, and we’ve extended it to two days to include a day of workshops. Nethinks is once again a major sponsor along with the OpenNMS Group, and we will hold it on 6-7 May. If you are interested in being a sponsor, please drop me a note.

We’ve had a great response to our Call for Papers, but if you are interested in presenting, there is still time as it doesn’t close until 31 January. Accepted speakers will receive two nights in the hotel and all meals, but you will be responsible for getting there. We are looking for both presentations on any aspect of OpenNMS as well as workshops.

I’ll post more information on attending once we’ve settled on the agenda.

Finally, we’ve added new training dates in April (the January training is booked). If you are finding OpenNMS a little daunting, consider coming to metropolitan Pittsboro for one of our training courses. They’re useful and a whole lot of fun.