SeaGL 2025: A Community-Driven Linux Weekend

The Seattle GNU/Linux Conference returned to the University of Washington from November 7 to 8 for its thirteenth edition. SeaGL has always been a proudly community-driven, completely free event — as in the freedom to not need to register or submit any private information to attend — a grassroots technical summit as easy to attend as dropping by the weekly local farmers market! This year continued that tradition with two full days of talks, discussions, and activities across the University of Washington (UW) HUB, and a couple of local events in the surrounding Seattle neighborhoods. The event is completely organized and supported by volunteers (including some from Bellingham, 2 hours north of Seattle), students, and local open source groups.

Jon “maddog” Hall and I were both there representing the Linux Professional Institute, and we each delivered presentations during the Sunday program. All talks were recorded, offered hybrid participation, and were followed by active discussion channels on SeaGL’s Matrix spaces for both speakers and attendees. Our presentations will be made available online when the SeaGL volunteers are able to process the videos that were recorded.

Thursday: Arrival and a Visit to the Local Hackerspace

I arrived in Seattle around midday on Thursday, picked up a rental car, and settled in at the University Inn, which is about a 15 minute walk from the UW HUB and one of the closest hotels to the event. In the early evening I visited the dev/hack community space near the UW campus, where members of the Seattle Community Network (SCN) as well as other community dev/hack folks were already at work on various open source networking and audio projects. The Seattle dev/hack space brings together students, researchers, community folk, volunteers, and local professionals, including one who was a local therapist, not specifically in tech.

Later that evening, Garth Johnson, LinuxFest Northwest (LFNW) Board Member, and Michael Gan from Cascade Steam arrived with a group of LFNW student volunteers from Bellingham. They received a warm welcome and a tour from the dev/hack folks of the multi-floor dev/hack building, where the Seattle Community Network shares residence with other community groups in the space. This was extremely interesting to Garth and Michael, as their Cascade Steam project in Bellingham also has a space for communities to work with and share in maker and open source projects.

After the tour, we headed out to pick up maddog from the airport, which was a treacherous drive caused not only by the standard Seattle traffic, but by a traffic mess at the airport due to construction. maddog was in relatively good spirits, despite the delays, and we had a late dinner in the U-District.

Friday: SeaGL Opens

We met early at Café On the Ave for breakfast with Garth, Michael, and the student volunteers, then walked to the UW HUB to set up our LPI table. Thanks to maddog’s tablecloth and materials, and a large bowl of post-Halloween candy, our table had a steady flow of visitors. Many attendees stopped to learn about LPI certifications, take photos of the 20 percent voucher QR code, and ask questions about our membership programs. Or just to chat, which was always welcome because our goal is to meet new folks in the Linux and open source communities.

Friday offered full tracks of presentations across several UW HUB floors, with plenty of time for hallway conversations. Around 20 percent of visitors were new to SeaGL or simply curious students walking in to see what a free, open conference looked like.

That evening’s social was hosted at Ada’s Technical Bookstore, complete with free pizza provided by SeaGL, and a free live jazz concert performed by the band Si Tu Savais, fronted by SCN founder Esther Jang, and a fundraising auction for SCN. It was a full house and a great way to close the first conference day.

Saturday: Talks, Visitors, and a Busy LPI Table

Saturday began again at Café On the Ave before we returned for the second conference day. Both maddog and I gave our talks, and attendance across the sessions felt even stronger than Friday.
I attended the Saturday keynote presentation by Esther Jang, a recent PhD graduate and current Postdoc at UW who founded the Seattle Community Network (SCN), which I also volunteer for. Esther described the Community ISP network stacks and supporting applications, which utilize open source solutions for providing wired, WiFi, and cellular access to several communities throughout Seattle who would not have internet access without SCNs networks.

Nadya Peek, an Associate Professor in the UW Human Design and Engineering department at UW presented the second keynote, and discussed projects relating to digital fabrication, individual creativity, and how open source solutions allow for easier maintenance of the machines, and software used by the machines (https://depts.washington.edu/machines/).

Even during the presentation blocks, our table remained busy with students, researchers, educators, and local professionals interested in Linux, certifications, and career development. The questions ranged from fundamentals to new topics such as our DevOps and security certifications.

After a long day we skipped the second social event. maddog and I had early flights on Sunday, so we had a casual dinner with Seattle local and SeaGL regular, Andrew Puch and Samuel Henrique at a nearby restaurant called The Dough Zone, a rising West Coast chain specializing in casual Dumplings and Noodles.

Samuel works for AWS and is a long time contributor to the Debian community. As Samuel recently moved to Seattle from Brazil, via Ireland, we joked that it was a loss for the other countries for a large US company to be able to employ someone of Samuel’s talents.

Andrew provided valuable tips for navigating around the city. The casual dinner was another reminder of how skills developed from Community projects like Debian linux, have transformed to skills that are running systems powering many of the largest companies and enterprises.

Community and Continuity

One of SeaGL’s strengths is its strong sense of community. Throughout the weekend, we met attendees who had also been at LinuxFest Northwest, All Things Open, and other events where LPI participates. The overlap of volunteers and organizers between SeaGL and the Bellingham open source community strengthens these ties and keeps participation lively.

SeaGL maintains an active Matrix space, and in the days after the conference many attendees shared that this was the best SeaGL they had attended, or that they were already looking forward to returning next year. Their Matrix also includes “rooms” for each of the presenters, so they can hold discussions before, during, and after their presentations. As far as I know, SeaGL is the only conference that offers such spaces.

Additional activities included an active “Disco-Tech” area focused on helping users shift from proprietary tools to free software alternatives, from a local group called Resist Tech Monopolies (RTM), which I believe has a slightly mis-leading name, in that they are supporting co-op clouds and free software alternatives, but still acknowledge that many users benefit from public clouds and technologies that originated from big tech. RTM had friendly and helpful people staffing their tables, and provided informative lists of free and open source alternatives to closed software. Also, there was an informal GPG key-signing gathering, led by one of SeaGL’s founders, Adam Monsen, to build personal webs of trust.

SeaGL… you again!

SeaGL is not a large event, but it consistently brings together people who care deeply about open source, education, and community collaboration. For LPI, it is a space where we meet learners, volunteers, educators, and long-time contributors in an informal and open environment.

For me personally, It’s refreshing to attend conferences that welcome any and all interested in free software and Linux. It’s one of the things that makes SeaGL really special. Also, the UW campus is special to me, as my daughter graduated from UW, and my son is currently in a PhD program there.

As for the ’80s band Flock of Seagulls, they’ve probably hung up their signature hairdos by now. But SeaGL? It keeps welcoming new and returning “Flockers” with open arms every year—no mullet required.

The weekend offered valuable conversations, strong visibility, and a chance to connect with the Pacific Northwest free software community once again.