Free Beer Sessions

Discuss industry trends, network with peers, and learn cool stuff... and the beer is free.

Bringing open source enthusiasts and users together and yes, the beer is ABSOLUTELY free.

In the true spirit of Open Source, Obsidian proudly sponsors Free Beer Sessions to promote the Open Source community dialogue, information sharing and to provide a networking opportunity.
Obsidian is the name that has become synonymous with providing peace of mind when it comes to Open Source Software (OSS) requirements.With two decades of knowledge and experience in the OSS realm Obsidian understands how open source can be utilised, modified and succesfully implemented in today’s business world. Regardless of your company’s core focus, OSS can play a valuable role in reducing long-term IT expenditure and increasing efficiency, all the while ensuring complete control and ownership of your valuable data. Whether it is identifying the most appropriate places in your business to implement OSS solutions, or assisting with those mission critical implementations and back-up services, Obsidian can help you.
It is Obsidian’s mission to provide OSS and its accompanying services (including the Linux operating system) to the African continent.
As a partner to businesses and the consumer community, Obsidian provides consulting on how open source can benefit anybody from home users, through small and medium sized businesses, to large corporations. Obsidian can help anybody to optimise their existing IT investments through the proper use of OSS.
Professional support for OSS systems and applications remains a point of concern for many IT decision makers. Obsidian has been providing professional telephonic, remote and on-site support on contract and per-incident basis for more than a decade. During this period, Obsidian has implemented and maintained OSS in business areas ranging from the infrastructural level to back-end solutions, as well as custom developed solutions. As one of the first OSS solution providers in South Africa, Obsidian has forged strong partnerships with some of the IT industry’s top players. These partnerships offer Obsidian access to a wealth of knowledge that is vital in providing the very best open source solutions to our clients.
Key to Obsidian’s success over the past decade has been the emphasis we place on having skilled internal resources available. Extending this opportunity to our clients flows directly from a deep understanding of the value of training and knowledge transfer.

As important as having highly skilled technical resources at your disposal, is having end-users that are properly trained. With this in mind, Obsidian also provides end-user training on popular open source applications, with a strong focus on cross platform applications. For more information visit us at www.obsidian.co.za.

Past Speakers

Jan Wildeboer

EMEA Evangelist
Red Hat
02/10/2014Open source inspires

Riedwaan Bassadien

Platform Strategy Manager
Microsoft
02/10/2014Open source and microsoft

Brenda Mey

Head of Infrastructure & Operations
Standard Bank
01/11/2018TBC

Karl Fischer

Technical Consultant
Obsidian Systems
01/11/2018Karl's Camp Fire
02/03/2017TBC
29/05/2014Partly cloudy
31/10/2013Android, now and tomorrow
30/04/2020Legendary Speakers
30/04/2020Lockdown Catchup

Paul Thompson

Senior Technical Consultant
SUSE
30/06/2015Achieving zero downtime

Schalk Neethling

Mozillian
30/06/2015Open web for all

Philip Booysen

Internet Entrepreneur
12/05/2016A Story of Enhancement featuring Raspberry Pi
01/01/2013Combining open source software, open source hardware like arduino, your idea and collaborative intelligence

Eddie Dunckley

Snr Strategist and Web Manager
12/05/2016A new way to do Web applications

Tim Haak

Let's Talk Geek
12/11/2015Talking About the Whale in the Room - Docker

Ben Rudall

Hortonworks
12/11/2015Starting A Spark for Hadoop

Charles Ash

Scifi Systems

Doug Hoseck

Expert
Wordpress
13/10/2016War of the websites

Grant Bingham

Autumn Leaf
13/10/2016Big data in AWS using Hadoop & ELK

Candice Herodotou (Née Mesk)

Organiser
DUG & DevConf
14/06/2018DevOps Culture: Are you ready?

Quintin de Kok

Netstar
14/06/2018Scaling Up and Out with Open Source at Netstar

Willie Engebrecht

Hortonworks
16/11/2017A Sexy Apache NiFi Demo

Joe Drumgoole

MongoDB
16/11/2017Event Sourcing

Adam Piskorski

Organiser
PyCon
19/09/2018A PySpective

Johann Els

SUSE
19/09/2018Open Source

Robert Graham

Technical Consultant
Obsidian Systems
02/03/2017TBC

Jonathan Carter

Open Source Technologist
02/03/2017TBC

Graeme Lockley

Developer
Investec
20/02/2014Open source magic in the financial sector

Len Weincier

Founder
CloudAfrica
20/02/2014There is never enough time (trying to understand why we fail and software gets worse)

Andy Hoiles

IBM META Region
25/02/2016The Power of LinuxOne

Richard Banks

Founder
Codaptive
25/02/2016The PHP Renaissance

Keutlwile Leso

Client Technical Advisor
IBM
27/08/2015The Secret Source: Govern, strategise, and architect before you open

Mark Clarke

Solutions Architect
Jumping Bean
27/08/2015The Internet of Things and Security

Guillaume Belrose

Principal Software Engineer
Quantel
27/08/2015DevOps made simple with Ansible

Monique Afonso

Managing Director
eConsultant
24/05/2014Open leave, open salaries - open everything!

Manoj Chiba

Senior Principal Consultant & Data Scientist
GIBS
31/10/2017Effect of Big Data on Business- the fundamental tactical and strategic shift

Donovan Austin

Cloud Architect
Internet Solutions
31/10/2013Implementation of Openstack / Ceph infrastructure at IS

Gavin McDougall

Solution Architect
Red Hat
08/10/2013Implementation of Openstack / Ceph infrastructure at IS
31/10/2017Once upon a time a young man experienced Linux for the first time.... and what happened next

Dave Rampersad

SNIPR
08/03/2018The intelligence of AI: using AI in business & security.

Thomas Lee

Wingu
08/03/2018OpenStack Demystified

Anton de Wet

01/01/2013Spiral economics and open source

Muggie van Staden

Managing Director
Obsidian Systems
01/01/2013The bee keeper - a description of professional open source business models

Garren Smith

Founder
Red Comment Labs
01/01/2013The use of open source software tools to power your start-up

Guy Taylor

Analytics Architect
TYME
01/01/2013How technology is changing journalism

Jason Norwood-Young

CEO & Founder
10Layer
01/01/2013Practical infrastructure scaling for millions of users in the cloud

Johan Lamprecht

Founder
Frostnet
01/01/2013The history, security and legalities behind local news (nntp) indexing services ~ the local pirate bay

Klaus Bergmann

Technical Sales Support
IBM
01/01/2013The history, status and outlook of linux on the mainframe

Lee Taylor

Telementa
01/01/2013Cubieboard introduction, bigger brother of the raspberry pi.

Merritt Krakowitzer

Puppetmaster
FNB
01/01/2013Datacenter automation with puppet

Peet Gouws

IT Security Manager
Discovery Holdings
01/01/2013Discovery's experience with deploying open source solutions

Paul Furber

Group Senior Write
ITWeb and Brainstorm
01/01/2013The rise of the small but great linux machines

Nicolaas Coetzee

Solutions Architect
FNB Connect
01/01/2013Fnb's experience with deploying open source solutions

Philip Stander

Co-founder
GlobeTOM
01/01/2013The use of open source technologies in demanding middleware environments

Pria Chetty

Associate Director
PwC Southern Africa
01/01/2013Solving for x: why the intellectual property in software question keeps us guessing?

Rachel Laycock

Lead Consultant
ThoughtWorks
01/01/2013Continuous delivery

Rob Enslin

Senior User Experience (UX) Design Consultant
ThoughtWorks
01/01/2013Designing products that work. But first we need to test them with users.

Schalk Heunis

Demand Intelligence Specialist
Enerweb
01/01/2013Combining open source software, open source hardware like arduino, your idea and collaborative intelligence.

Stefan Lesicnik

Technical Director
Linux System Dynamics
01/01/2013 Open source trends affecting SA and what can be expected in the coming year

Willem van Straaten

Founder
eConsultant
01/01/2013The Justin Bieber of content management systems

Yossi Hasson

Managing Director
SYNAQ
01/01/2013Open vs closed source: which is more secure?