Greetings,
Debian will hold its tenth annual DebConf [1] user/developer conference at Columbia University in New York City from August 1-7. There will be a Science Track [2] on the afternoon of Thursday August 5 with presentations and a round-table discussion, including yours truly as a participant.
[1] https://debconf10.debconf.org/
[2] http://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf10/TrackScience
Registration is free, so if you're in the greater New York area, come on by and learn about the Debian/Ubuntu software infrastructure for Elmer, its linear algebra libraries, and other free software for science. Bring questions, feedback, ideas, etc. I plan to stay well into the evening to talk shop on various topics, including of course our favorite PDE solver.
-Adam