Well, I’m sad to report that the rumors about OSCON‘s departure from Portland’s 2009 summer tech event line-up have been confirmed.
It’s true. OSCON is gone.
After six years, O’Reilly has decide to move its anchor conference of the summer—and the leading venue to discuss all things open source—to San Jose, California.
And I’m not alone in my unhappiness over this announcement, if Twitter is any indication.
Worse yet? This comes on the heels of O’Reilly’s decision to move RailsConf—which has also called Portland home—to Las Vegas, next year.
As I’ve mentioned before, the departure of these two O’Reilly events leaves a decided gap in our summer geek activities around here. After WebVisions wraps.
And I have to imagine that the Portland tourism industry is crying openly into its microbrewed organic beer at this point.
It makes me wonder if we shouldn’t be courting another event or two. (BlogHer?I ain’t too proud to beg.)
Or maybe, just maybe, stage one of our own.
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GOSCON 08 is another technical conference that is still in town for at least one more show.
Government Open Source Conference
http://goscon.org/
October 21-22
If you are going to this or the Linux Plumber’s Conference that would be a great time to advocate Portland as the continued location for these conferences and articulate why we make a good home for these gatherings.
@Steven I like your optimism! And I’m really glad to hear that Recent Changes Camp will be coming to Portland. Thanks for the heads up!
I agree that it’s a major loss for Portland to see RailsConf and OSCON gone.
But, looking on the bright side, Recent Changes Camp (the wiki unconference) is firmly set in Portland this year, likely in February or March. We should have a planning wiki set up for RCC 09 in the next few weeks.
@Sean Yes, but will it be here next year? Please say yes.
Here is a technical open source conference coming up that is still in Portland.
Linux Plumbers Conference
17-19 September 2008
Portland, Oregon USA
http://linuxplumbersconf.org/
I would love to see a con focused on the use of new tech by the humanities and science, journalism and exploration.
If you start begging blogher to come our way let me know… I’m willing to say pretty pretty please with sugar on top.
@J-P is right to volunteer me. I’m pretty fired up today.
I shed no tears for the passing of OSCON from pdx. It was too damned expensive for a conference about *free software*. With that said, I do feel the absence and the impact of OSCON being displaced and I would love to be able to go to a serious tech event in pdx that was affordable, broad, engaging, and has some soul to it.
As I told J-P, I want an OSCON meets SXSW, but affordable. If anyone wants to work on a con for ’10 (or wants to tell me why it’s a crap idea) hit me up: matt@youell.com or @built on twitter. thx.
Bram Pitoyo, Matt Youell (continuing to just arbitrarily volunteer Matt) and myself are all up for creating something OSCON-esque but with a closer connection to culture and artistic buckets. Feeds into the emerging conversation about “creativity” and the connection to engineers.
Seems an open opportunity for Travel Oregon (the old Portland Oregon Visitors Association) to get involved. If they want PDX to keep it’s cool, they need to chip in some marketing to keep (too late!) and bring the right mix of meetings to PDX. Can we wake them up from their lumber days slumber?
This is truly very sad. OSCON lit up my summer. It’s okay that it is gone…but we do need a replacement.
O’Reilly of course have no reason to keep putting on these events in Portland, but the lack of communication as to why is a little troubling.
That said, we don’t need O’Reilly to have a convention, or un-convention, around open source. In the tradition of BarCamp and OSCamp I’m convinced that the community could organize to put on their own event in the same vein, and also attract corporate sponsors to help foot some of the bill.