Which is exactly what happened last year when a bunch of folks got together with the hopes of building a phenomenal open source conference. The result? Open Source Bridge, the conference for open source citizens.
In Portland, we love the open source. Love it. So much so, in fact, that we’ll do just about anything to have an open source conference around here. Even if it means building one from scratch.
Which is exactly what happened last year when a bunch of folks got together with the hopes of starting a brand new open source conference. The result? Open Source Bridge, the conference for open source citizens.
[Full disclosure: I’m volunteering to help the Open Source Bridge team with marketing efforts.]
Open Source Bridge—a gathering of open source citizens and open source curious taking place in Portland, June 17-19—has been a labor of love for a number of members of our community. And for that reason, it’s really great to see the final pieces of the event begin to fall into place.
Yes, yes. I’ve been helping with the Open Source Bridge stuff as much as I can. I mean, I’m not an open source guy, per se, apart from my ever deepening appreciation for the talented people who make the world of open source what it is.
When it comes right down to it, I’m an observer. And, from time to time, an extremely lucky participant. A respectful tourist in the world of open source citizens.
But every once in awhile, I get to contribute. Today was one of those days. Read More
I was originally going to title this post “Open Source Bridge: We’ve only just begun” but I didn’t want you to get that song stuck in your head.
What’s that? Oh. Oopie.
Anyway, the fine folks of Open Source Bridge—the 100% volunteer run open source conference being held in Portland, Oregon, June 17-19—would like to do two things: 1) Bring you up-to-speed on all of the progress they’ve made and 2) Outline the programs, plans, and volunteer opportunities for the next few months.
One of the challenges we’ve recognized in organizing this completely volunteer run conference is that sometimes it is hard to consistently and effectively utilize all of the willing people who have volunteered to help. We are hoping this town hall meeting will make some of this easier with the opportunity to interact face to face.
If you’re interested in volunteering, we hope to see you there. Even if you don’t want to lift a finger for Open Source Bridge, we’d still love to see you there. Or if you’re unable to make it—or simply immune to our charms—please check out the volunteer page or join the discussion groups.
Portland’s Open Source Bridge, the entirely volunteer run conference for open source citizens, has been quietly amassing nearly 200 proposals to speak at its inaugural conference in June.
They’ve received so many interesting submissions, in fact, that they’ve already selected some of them for the agenda—and they’re all across the board with topics like Ruby, Drizzle, Git, CodePlex, cfengine, Puppet, Opscode, AutomateIT, and bcfg2. (I honestly don’t know half of what I just said, but I know some of you do and that’s what really matters.)
But have no fear, gentle reader. Despite all the wonderful proposals and interesting early selections, there is still time for you to get involved.
No, I kid you not.
The Open Source Bridge call for proposals remains open until 11:59:59 PM on April 10. So that culturally relevant, language agnostic open source talk you’ve been wanting to give? Get on it, tiger. Or maybe that technology specific hack that’s going to wow the open source crowd? No one is going to be wowed if you don’t submit. So get going. There isn’t much time left.
Oh I hear you, “I love me some open source, but I don’t really have anything about which to speak and as such I am feeling somewhat uncomfortable and left out. If not completely disheartened.”
There, there, little camper. There’s something for you to do too. Yes! Seriously!
Because picking the talks won’t be easy. So any and every comment will help. And that’s where you come in. You can provide feedback on the proposals.
What would you like to see? Who would you like to see? Which topics and technologies should everyone see?
I’ve no idea. You tell me. How? Simply head over to the proposal system, log in to your account with your OpenID, and begin providing comments on the talks that you’d like to see.
Not feeling very verbose? Even a “+1” would help the organizers figure out which talks people really want to see.
But the pressure is still on, I’m afraid. Those comments, like the proposals, should be submitted by 11:59:59 PM on April 10.
So scoot scoot, little bug. Get on over to Open Source Bridge and pitch your open source talk or provide your feedback on those who have.
Go! Now! Just think, if you finish early, you’ll be able to tune into Strange Love Live, Friday night, completely guilt free.
Man oh man, those folks over at Open Source Bridge sure are nice. (Not me. The other ones.)
They knew you’d been pretty busy. And you had those things come up. Well and then there was all that work.
Trust me, I know.
March 31 probably snuck up on you. You probably forgot all about the looming Call for Proposals deadline. And the early bird pricing.
But the Open Source Bridge folks, beneficent beings that they are, also knew that you had a great—nay brilliant—presentation on open source dwelling in your soul. One that would bring tears to the eyes of mere mortals. And they knew that having you involved in the discussions in the hacker lounge would happen if and only if you could attend the conference for $175.
It’s Christmas in April, my friend. I hope you’re happy. And I trust you’ll take advantage of the extension Open Source Bridge has offered. Please get that presentation proposal completed and register to attend.
I’ve worked on FOSCON (a free Ruby event that took place during OSCON in previous years), BarCamp Portland, Ignite Portland, WhereCamp Portland, and now Open Source Bridge. The camps (unconferences) were all quite similar to each other to organize, but Open Source Bridge is much bigger than anything else I’ve worked on. There’s a lot of extra planning involved in doing a 1,000-person conference compared to a 300 person BarCamp. You can pull off an unconference in a short period of time, with fairly limited resources, but a big conference requires more structure.
Then the folks at OpenSourcery were kind enough to give us a few minutes to talk about the conference during a packed Lunch 2.0. Unfortunately for me, Jake Kuramoto successfully threw me under the bus again, much like Seattle Lunch 2.0.
Then, little did we know that, while we were enjoying OpenSourcery’s hospitality, something incredibly—well serendipitous—was happening at the same time.
And then he found Open Source Bridge. And then he wrote a post called “An Alternate OSCON?” offering:
Then someone sent me a pointer to http://opensourcebridge.org/ which is in Portland on June 17-19. Now I have an incentive to see if people want to go there. San Jose is closer to Berkeley, so I’d rather go there, but a really open OSCON would be something that’s worth supporting. There are other new projects that don’t have space at OSCON, so maybe we could all get together in Portland and see what happens.
(If you’re not familiar with Dave Winer, you should be. According to Wikipedia, he is “generally credited with the exposition of RSS as ‘Really Simple Syndication,’ now a world-wide phenomenon, and the first to implement the feed ‘enclosure‘ feature, one of several necessary ingredients for podcasting at the time it first emerged.”)
Whoof. That’s a big unplanned day of serendipity.
It’s incredibly gratifying to see the momentum continue to build for this entirely volunteer run conference. It’s good for Portland. And it’s good for the open source community.
Here in Portland, we love the Lunch 2.0. But we can always stand to improve it. So Jake Kuramoto, the Portland Lunch 2.0 guy, has proposed that we take a trip up to Seattle to see how our neighbors to the north handle Seattle Lunch 2.0.
So this Friday, March 6, we’re doing just that.
It’s a diplomatic envoy or something. And it has two goals. The first is partaking in Seattle Lunch 2.0 but the second part? Talking to all the cool open source folks in the Emerald City in hopes of convincing them to come visit us in the Rose City for Open Source Bridge.
Jake, Selena Deckelmann, and I will be heading up for the event. I know that Brian M. Westbrook, who oscillates (wildly, I might add) between Portland and Seattle, will be in attendance, as well.
We’re all looking forward to getting the chance to hang out with our fellow Lunch 2.0 types, like Eric Berto, John DeRosa, Josh Maher, Danielle Morrill, and more. So if you’re from Seattle and debating whether you should be attending or not, hopefully this will be the little push you need to show up.
[Full disclosure: I am on the volunteer committee helping to organize Open Source Bridge.]
As many of you know, OSCON will be held in San Jose, this year. And RailsConf will be in Las Vegas. That left Portland—arguably the de facto hub of all things open source-y—strangely devoid of a major open source conference until Linux Plumbers Conference in September.
You see, if there’s one thing I love about Portland, it’s our entrepreneurial spirit. We weren’t just going to sit around and cry in our microbrewed beers about it. We Portlanders are going to figure out how to do something else. We’ll show them.
And true to form, here’s Open Source Bridge, a new grassroots-organized open-source-developer-oriented conference that’s slated to be held in Portland, next summer.
Costs? You can attend the three-day conference—June 17-19—for $175. But you have to act quickly. That early bird rate expires on April 1. And if you’re coming from out of town—heck if you’re coming from Beaverton—you can get a room at the Hilton for $139/night.
Why would you stay at the Hilton? Four words my friend. Well, actually one number and three words: 24-hour hacker lounge.
Personally, it’s been an incredible experience, thus far, working with the amazing people volunteering to pull this off. Open Source Bridge is a different kind of conference. And it’s yet another incredible event that’s going to put Portland on the map.
Different how? It’s about open source culture for developers. It’s about being open source citizens:
We’re planning a conference that will connect developers across projects, across languages, across backgrounds to learn from each other. We want people to experience something beyond “how to use tool X” or “why databases keel over when you do Y” (even though those topics are important, making up our tools and trade, and will be a central part of the conference content). We’d like to share what open source means to us, what it offers, where we struggle, and why we do this day in and day out, even when we’re not paid for it.
Hopefully, you’ll put up with me continuing to blather on about it. Because I think it’s yet another example of the Portland community doing things in a very Portland-y way and—as usual—wildly succeeding.
