A vendor and an end-user on the same stage does more for open source adoption than any case study you could write yourself.

Dan Brown is a Marketing and Communications Director at the Linux Foundation, where he has worked for roughly 12 years across event strategy and marketing for projects including LF Energy, Decentralized Trust (formerly Hyperledger), Confidential Computing, and Linux Foundation Europe. The conversation covers how event video gets repurposed into blogs, case studies, and social clips, and what separates a forgettable event from a memorable one.

What You'll Learn

• Speaker recruitment: Guests are more likely to accept a speaking slot when they know the session video will extend their reach well beyond the room.
• AI-assisted repurposing: Session transcripts can now be turned into blog posts and summaries quickly, making sessions more discoverable to search engines and AI tools.
• The vendor-plus-end-user format: Pairing a vendor with the customer using their tool, such as a utility company, produces case study material more convincing than either party could produce alone.
• Social clipping: Long sessions get cut into short clips for social platforms where attention spans are shorter, preserving the value of a 30-minute talk in a fraction of the runtime.
• Event scale tradeoffs: Smaller events, such as a 40-person gathering in Lyon, allow for deeper engagement than 10,000-person conferences.
• Milestone events warrant bigger production: The 25th anniversary of Linux at LinuxCon Toronto prompted a black-tie, casino-themed evening event to match the significance of the occasion.
• Open source runs media infrastructure: Widely used tools like FFmpeg and the Academy Software Foundation's visual effects tools are open source.
• Career breadth builds better event marketing: Dan's path through PR agency work, event production companies (RSA Conference, VMworld), and in-house Linux Foundation roles gives him a multi-sided view of what makes events work.

Time-Stamped Highlights
00:00 - Cold open: the LinuxCon Toronto 25th-anniversary night

00:27 - Intro & Dan's background: PR and marketing in tech
01:32 - From PR agency to running big tech conferences
02:27 - Going in-house at the Linux Foundation
03:33 - Current projects: LF Energy, Decentralized Trust, Confidential Computing, LF Europe
04:53 - Favorite event: the LinuxCon Toronto casino black-tie night
06:55 - Why small events matter too (a 40-person summit in Lyon)
08:00 - Turning event video into marketing content
09:23 - Vendor + end-user case studies (LF Energy example)
11:15 - Open source runs the world (FFmpeg, Academy Software Foundation)
11:52 - Wrap-up

Guest bio
Dan Brown is a Marketing and Communications Director at the Linux Foundation, where he has worked for approximately 12 years across event strategy for projects including LF Energy, Decentralized Trust, Confidential Computing, and Linux Foundation Europe. His background spans two decades in tech-sector PR and marketing, including time at an event production company running conferences such as RSA Conference and VMworld. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dbrownusc/

About the Podcast
Eventapalooza is a conversation series exploring how event professionals plan, produce, and extract value from live and hybrid events.

Host bio
Tim Arthur has over 20 years of experience producing video around the globe. He works across marketing, technology, production, and event coordination, and is affiliated with E3 Webcasting, which supports event producers and organizations with professional-grade broadcast and streaming production.