Staff Report
Published April 3, 2009

Open-source software leaders from throughout the Southeast will convene April 18 at USC’s Swearingen Engineering Center in Columbia for the second annual Palmetto Open Source Software Conference.

Organizers tout open-source software as one of the most important and relevant topics in IT today. They say it presents opportunity for organizations of all sizes to reduce their IT budgets because open-source coding allows for functionality, security and scalability.

The conference’s keynote address will be given by Lee Congdon, chief information officer for Red Hat. Presentations will be given by other noted IT and business leaders including Ravi Ravindra of BlueCross BlueShield, Keith Bergelt of Open Inventors Network, Greg DeKoenigsberg of Red Hat, Tom Persons of The S.C. Technology Council, and Lonnie Emard of The Consortium for Enterprise Systems Management.

There is no charge for attendance, but seating is limited. Registration is available online.