With all the recent hubbub about OpenStack, CloudStack, Eucalyptus and other open source cloud computing platforms and tools, it's no secret that the open source community will help drive cloud computing for years to come. Perhaps with that idea in mind, The Linux Foundation has just announced a brand new event: "CloudOpen, a technical conference that will bring together in a vendor-neutral environment the open source projects, products and companies that are driving cloud and big data ecosystems."

This conference is a good idea, and the inaugural event will take place in parallel with LinuxCon North America on August 29-31, 2012 in San Diego, Calif.--a very nice place to visit. Here's more on what to expect at CloudOpen.

Businesses and individuals everywhere have growing stakes in cloud computing, and skills in the cloud are now very highly valued in IT departments. Still, for many people, some cloud computing concepts are difficult to understand -- especially emerging concepts.

If that's true for you, in this post you'll find some excellent introductory material to making sense of the cloud, ranging from tutorial material to a series of interviews we've done here at OStatic with a number of leaders in cloud computing.

With the Big Data trend in full swing--where organizations of all sizes are using sophisticated tools to mine data and yield useful insights--Hadoop has emerged as a star application. From big organizations like eBay and Yahoo to smaller ones, Hadoop has become a remarkable open source success story and has given rise to a number of commercial companies that offer custom distributions of it. Many companies also now offer training for Hadoop, which can be had for very little money, and there is solid evidence that Hadoop skills can be valuable in the job market. Here is a compilation of resources and places you can turn to if you're interested in mastering Hadoop.