What kind of proposals, you ask? Open Source Bridge strives to be a different kind of open source conference: one that welcomes all open source languages, platforms, and pursuits while embracing responsible and engaged open source citizenship.

The conference’s tracks are:
Business: How do you build a successful open source business?
Chemistry: What makes this work? Take the technology apart and teach us about its components.
Cooking: How do you write the script, configure the utility, debug the code, make it work? What are your best recipes?
Culture: What makes open source work? What else does the open source ethic lead us to do?
Hacks: How did you pull that off?

For a little additional inspiration, we encourage you to look through previous years’ archives of sessions presented at Open Source Bridge, but don’t let that limit you, either! We know that certain topic areas have been underrepresented in previous years, and we would very much love a diverse and broad set of proposals for this year’s bridge. We would very much love to see more talks about hardware, security, user experience design and just about everything else related to open source. No idea is too out there. We’d love to see it all.

If you speak at Open Source Bridge, we’ll happily waive the fee for your attendance. Not sure if you should register now, or hold off to see if your talk is accepted? If you wait and your talk is not accepted, we’ll give you a special discount code that will get you a ticket at $200 (that’s $25 off the early-bird rate).

So what are you waiting for? We’d love to hear what you have to say. Begin creating your proposal today.

Attend the conference

Register to attend Open Source Bridge 2012. We offer the following kinds of tickets:
Early bird tickets at $225 until April 30th.
Full price tickets at $300, great for corporate attendees.
As always, we offer a student rate of $99, available anytime.

Please register soon so you can help give the event some early support.

Interested in volunteering?

We encourage those of you interested in being more involved with Open Source Bridge to sign up for our volunteer list.

Interested in sponsoring?

Let us know by contacting sponsorship@opensourcebridge.org and we’ll send you a prospectus.

We hope that you are as excited as we are about Open Source Bridge 2012. Don’t hesitate to contact us at info@opensourcebridge.org if you have any questions. We thank you very much for your support and hope to see you in Portland in June!

–The Open Source Bridge Team

What’s an unconference? It’s a attendee-scheduled event that allows all you to share your interests and learn from each other. The sessions aren’t assigned in advance, so that everyone can participate in suggesting and leading the conversations they’re interested in having.

Today’s unconference is open to the general open source community in Portland, whether you’re attending the conference or not. If you don’t have a conference pass, register for the Community Pass at http://osbridge.eventbrite.com/ and please make a contribution if you can.

Scheduling begins at 9am, so don’t be late if you would like to propose a session. Sessions will begin at 10:15am.

You can share your session ideas or read everyone else’s on the wiki: http://opensourcebridge.org/2011/wiki/Unconference_Session_Ideas

Voodoo Doughnuts will be bringing their doughnut truck to the conference in the morning with a selection of tasty treats. We’ll also have fruit and gluten-free muffins available.

For lunch, we’ll meet up at local food carts. There’s a large cluster at SW 9th and Alder, with many others scattered nearby. If you’re not from Portland, ask a local to recommend something.

No evening events tonight, because we’re done at 4pm! Be sure to come to the closing session at 3:30pm so we can hear your feedback and share what we all learned. We’ll also be raffling off several fabulous O’Reilly books to thank you for your participation this week.

If you’re looking for something to do after that, we suggest checking out Beer and Blog at the Green Dragon in SE Portland, or visiting Calagator for other ideas.

We Love Feedback!
Fill out the attendee survey and you could win a ticket to next year’s conference. It will only take you a couple of minutes. Promise.

Register for Open Source Bridge 2012 Now!
Get your pass for next year at a lovely discount now through the end of the month. Go to http://osb12.eventbrite.com/ or stop by the registration desk.

Fun Things
What did you say? Maybe it was something like this:

• “If you were an ordinary gardener, you’d print out a paper calendar. But I’m a kernel #hacker, so I wrote a tool. In C.” —@SarahSharp #OSB11 [@maymaym]
• “Essentially, you can think of threads as nice, discrete, squiggly lines” #osb11 [@kscaldef]
• OH @maxogden is doing more for the unix beard right now than anyone else in open source #osb11 [@petewearspants]

Questions? Feedback? Talk to @osbridge on Twitter or check with any volunteer in a bright blue shirt.

Today we begin with Portland Mayor Sam Adams’ morning keynote on the city’s Civic Apps and open source participation, at 9am in the Sanctuary. The Mayor has presented at Open Source Bridge all three years, and we’re happy to have him back. Following the keynote, there will be an open data hacking session, related to regional farmers market data, scheduled in the Hacker Lounge. Drop by and see what the Portland Farmer’s Market has to play with.

Speaker sessions will begin at 10am.

Today we’re having a breakfast of muffins and scones by Sweetpea Baking Co., plus fresh fruit. Lunch catering is by Thai Garden, and we have cookies and fruit for the afternoon break.

Birds of a Feather sessions (BoFs), which are free and open to the public, begin at 7pm upstairs. Tonight’s BoFs include BIND and ISCDHCP, “Women in Tech (and friends) Go Drinking,” and more.

Mozilla and Emma are co-hosting a happy hour at the Cleaners at Ace Hotel, from 5-7pm.

Hacker Lounge activities include an Apache Lucene.net Hackathon, and a Transit Appliance meetup.

Register Today for Open Source Bridge 2012!
Do you want to be here again next year? We certainly do. Get your pass and put next year’s conference on your schedule now: registration for Open Source Bridge 2012 will be open after today’s keynote, at a special low rate.

Massage
Are you feeling sore from attending sessions all day and coding all night? Licensed massage therapist Domenika Radonich will be providing her services in room A102. Check with the Registration desk for more info.

Nominate Open Source Citizens!
Nominate your fellow citizens for our first open source citizenship award! At current count, we have three nominees. They’re all great people, but wouldn’t you like to submit someone yourself?

Volunteer
If all this civic pride is making you feel warm and fuzzy inside, sign up for a volunteer shift! Stop by the registration desk to find out how you can get involved.

Be Interviewed
Speakers who still might like to be interviewed but haven’t gotten around to it yet: email media@opensourcebridge.org and let us know when you’re available.

Silliness
We still like reading the session OHs, so don’t forget to tag everything with #osb11. Here’s a few more items we scraped out of the search feed:

“The more fish in the pond, the more will float to the top when you toss the dynamite in.” #trollu #osb11 [@suehle]

“If someone says their code doesn’t have bugs, then they don’t have much of a user base” #osb11 [@jthurman42]

“Free as in speech, not as in puppies” #osb11 [@demew]

OH: “It’s like a soup kitchen for nerds! Awesome!” [@reidab]

Questions? Feedback? Talk to @osbridge on Twitter or check with any volunteer in a bright blue shirt.

It is Wednesday, June 22nd and it’s expected be partly cloudy with a high of 71°.

Sessions begin at 9am today.

We will be serving a Continental Breakfast in the morning, lunch will be catered by Taqueria Los Gorditos, and an afternoon snack of cookies and fruit.

There will be a farmer’s market nearby in the South Park Blocks if you want to check out local produce and artisan goods during any of the breaks throughout the day.

Want to keep the conference running smoothly? Sign up for a volunteer shift! Stop by Registration to find out how you can help.

We’re having lightning talks again today at 1:30pm in room B201. Stop by the sign-up sheet in the Hacker Lounge to add yours to the list.

Speakers: if you want to do an interview with our wonderful media partners and you haven’t told us yet, please email media@opensourcebridge.org

Tonight’s evening activities:

Birds of a Feather (BoFs), which are free and open to the public, begin at 7pm in the session rooms. Wednesday BoFs include Google Summer of Code, Portland Javascript Admirers, and others (check the website for details).

The Hacker Lounge will be open all night again. There are some sessions scheduled — including a GIS/Location Smackdown — and lots of room for more. Check out the wiki to find out what’s planned. Snacks will be provided throughout the night.

Conference Tips:

Keep tagging your tweets and other content with #osb11.
We found these entertaining:

A dozen databases in 45 minutes. That’s, um, 3.75 minutes per database. #osb11 — @johnderosa

The couchdb talk has reached the point of interpretive dance to explain mvcc. Dancing about architecture. #osb11 — @laprice

Hovering helicopter – FBI saw the keynote? #osb11 — @donpdonp

We’re still looking for nominees for open source citizens seen making a strong contribution at the conference. Stop by Registration to fill out a nomination slip.

Questions? Feedback? Ask @osbridge on Twitter or check with any volunteer in a bright blue shirt.

Registration opens at 8am each day of the conference, and a Continental Breakfast will be provided for attendees.

We’re kicking off Open Source Bridge today at 9am with the morning keynote “Hacking for Freedom” by Peter Fein.

Speaker sessions begin at 10am.

Lunch will be catered by Nicholas Restaurant at noon.

The day’s sessions continue past the scheduled speakers, with Birds of a Feather (BoFs) talks, which are free and open to the public, and begin at 7pm. Check them out or schedule your own this week.

If you plan on attending the BoFs or join in on hacking sessions in the on-site 24-Hour Hacker Lounge, be sure to register for a Community Pass, which is a free option to attend evening events.

Events

A free and open-to-the-public Opening Reception in the Hacker Lounge (Buchan Hall) begins at 6pm.

Off-site evening activities? Sauce Labs and Yammer are co-sponsoring a late-night party at Someday Lounge from 8pm-late with plenty of free booze, food, and geekery. The Yammer and Sauce crews will be mingling about and would love to share a beer with you!

Citizenship Award

We are recognizing exemplary open source citizens who participate at this conference. If you spot someone who is really making a difference for fellow attendees, we will be collecting nominations at the Registration desk for an award to be presented at the end of the conference.

Hashtag & Flickr Group

The hashtag for this year’s conference is #osb11. We also have a Flickr group and encourge you to take photos and upload them there.

Please review the conference’s Code of Conduct.

Find a volunteer in an Open Source Bridge t-shirt if you have a question. Tweet at @osbridge if you have a less-immediate concern or feedback.

Volunteers, be sure to check your schedule in the Volunteer Lounge. If you’re not volunteering yet, but want to help out, we still have shifts available. It’s a minimum 2-hour commitment, but an essential part of making this conference happen. Stop by the Registration/Info desk to sign up.

Thank you all for your patience as we worked to come up with a schedule that will hopefully suit everybody. We’re still sorting out a few remaining details and expecting some additions to the schedule over the next few days, but as the bulk of the schedule is in place, we wanted to let you all know when each session will be so that you can start to plan your time at Open Source Bridge.

It’s only four short weeks until Open Source Bridge is here, and we hope you’re as excited as we are. We look forward to seeing all of you in June!

So you’ve decided to come to Open Source Bridge in Portland, Oregon this June 21 – 24, but you’re coming from out of town, don’t know the area all that well, and need a place to stay? Don’t worry, we have some options for you near our Eliot Center conference venue.

We put together a comprehensive listing of lodging options near our conference venue on our wiki’s Lodging section to help you research. There’s also a map so you can see where these are.

We have secured discounts for our attendees through local hotel sponsors during the week of the conference. You will find details about these hotels and their discounts in our wiki’s Hotels article. When booking or while staying at these hotels, please thank them for providing discount sponsorships for Open Source Bridge.

For those on a budget we can recommend a couple of really good options:

First, there is Couchsurfing.org, a travel web site that matches travelers with hosts in cities around the world that are willing to put a verified person up for a few nights’ stay. If this is the option you’d like to try, you should first sign up for Couchsurfing.org, read their getting started tips, make a profile, get verified, and read the tips on how to be a good couch surfer. Portland has its own Ambassador of Couchsurfing, Ms. Lolly Rae, check out her profile and contact her with any questions you have about the Couchsurfing.org community. Although she can’t put up all of you, she can give great tips on using Couchsurfing.org in the Portland area.

Next, we have some local hostels. The Northwest Portland International Hostel & Guesthouse is closest to the conference venue. The Portland Hawthorne Hostel is across the river, but easily-accessible by Tri-Met bus. You can also check the Hostel World web site for any other deals they may have.

Still looking for something else? You can try the usual travel sites, like Kayak.com, Lonely Planet, Orbitz, Priceline, or Lastminute.com. Or keep checking back to this blog post or our Open Source Bridge Wiki for any updates on travel and accommodations. We look forward to seeing you here in June in the beautiful Rose City to join us for Open Source Bridge 2011.

This year’s lineup features knowledgeable speakers covering a broad range of open source topics. So, if you’ve been holding off on registering, now is a great time to do so!

We’re still waiting to hear back from a few speakers, so stay tuned in the next few days as we fill in a few gaps – but the bulk of our speakers have responded to acceptances, and we’re happy to share what we have with you today!

We’re still finalizing the session schedule for Open Source Bridge, and plan to announce that in the very near future as well.

Without further ado:

Business

• Diary of an Open Source Sysadmin Entrepreur by Luke Kanies
• Doing NoSQL with SQL by Michael Widenius
• Drupal distributions, an open source product model by Lev Tsypin
• How 5 People with 4 Day Jobs in 3 Time Zones Enjoyed 2 Years Writing 1 Book by Ian Dees
• How Governments are Building Communities with Open Source by Chris Strahl
• How to ask for money by Selena Deckelmann and Scott Kveton
• Improving estimates for web projects by Alex Kroman
• Keeping Agile at the Heart of the Internet by Larissa Shapiro
• Learn Tech Management In 45 Minutes by Sumana Harihareswara
• Marketing: You’re Soaking In It! by VM Brasseur
• Open Source at Microsoft – Less Evil and More Organized than you’d think by Scott Hanselman
• Open Sourcing Your Legacy Project: A Game of Adventure, Danger and Low Cunning by VM Brasseur
• Pulling the Plug by Ryan Snyder
• Sales-fu by Amye Scavarda
• Starting and Scaling a Startup Outside of the Silicon Valley by Michael Richardson
• The Independent Software Developer by Peat Bakke
• Turning Mediocre Products Into Awesome Products by Bryan Zmijewski

Chemistry

• Beaming up with alien and lua by Brandon Philips
• Cookies are bad for you: Improving security on the web by Jesse Hallett
• Gearman: From the Worker’s Perspective by Brian Aker
• Geek Fitness: Your body is not just transportation for your brain by Kurt Sussman
• GraphViz: The open-source body scanner for code, systems, and data. by Matt Youell
• OSWALD: Lessons from and for the Open Hardware Movement by Tim Harder
• Open Source GIS Desktop Smackdown by David Percy, Darrell Fuhriman, and Christian Schumann-Curtis
• Parrot: State of the VM by Christoph Otto
• Previously Untitled Meditation on the Zen of Python by Dan Colish
• Qs on Queues by Eric Day
• So, you want to make a map? by Sarah Beecroft and Darrell Fuhriman
• The Current State of OAuth 2 by Aaron Parecki
• The History of Concurrency by Michael Schurter
• The Locker Project, TeleHash, and You by Jeremie Miller

Cooking

• A Dozen Databases in 45 Minutes by Eric Redmond
• Composing Software Systems by Jamey Sharp and Josh Triplett
• Cooking GeoData with PostGIS by Larry Price
• Creating Your Specific Live GNU/Linux Distribution with Debian Live Build by Steven Shiau, Chenkai Sun, Yao-Tsung Wang, and Thomas Tsai
• DNSSEC @ Mozilla by Shyam Mani
• Data Science in the Open by John Taylor
• Data Warehousing 101 by Josh Berkus
• Designing Error Aggregation Systems by Gavin McQuillan
• Fast VoIP: Build your own Asterisk server in less than an hour by Jonathan Thurman
• Getting Started with FPGAs and HDLs by Phil Tomson
• Getting Started with Semantic Web Applications by Leif Warner and Brian Panulla
• Hands-on Virtualization with Ganeti by Lance Albertson and Peter Krenesky
• Have Your Cake and Eat It Too: Meta-Programming Techniques for Java by Howard Lewis Ship
• Inclusive Design From The Start by Eitan Isaacson
• Intro to CouchDB by J Chris Anderson
• Inviting Contributors to Open Source Webdev through Virtualization by Les Orchard
• JavaScript up and down the stack by Mikeal Rogers
• King of the Data Jungle by Melissa Hollingsworth
• Massively scaling Django for a global audience with Playdoh by Frederic Wenzel
• Modern Perl Made Painless by chromatic x
• No More Joins by Nuno Job, J Chris Anderson, and Roger Bodamer
• Preventing runtime errors at compile time by David Lazar, Michael Ernst, and Werner Dietl
• Put THAT in your pipe and deploy it! by David Brewer
• Read the Docs: A completely open source Django web site by Eric Holscher
• Run your Javascript everywhere, with Jellyfish. by Adam Christian
• Similar, But Not The Same: Designing Projects Around Three Open Datasets by Matt Blair
• Technical Debt by Elizabeth Naramore
• Testing Antipatterns by Matt Robinson
• The Big Data Exploratorium: Data Mining, from Patents to Memes by Noah Pepper and Devin Chalmers
• Twiggy: The First New Logger in Fifteen Years by Peter Fein
• User, user, who art thou? by Jacinta Richardson
• Write better Javascript with RequireJS by Chris Pitzer
• ePUB – What, Why, and How by Jason LaPier

Culture

• Geek Choir 3.0 (Short Form) by Michael Alan Brewer
• Get ‘Em While They’re Young: Cultivating the Next Generation of Open Source Contributors by Jane Wells
• Give a Great Tech Talk by Ian Dees and Josh Berkus
• Hacker Dojo: Anarchy with Respect by Kitt Hodsden
• How Python saved 263 lives, and our sanity by Jonathan Karon
• How not to be a Jerk OR Something Awesome About Brains by Paul Fenwick
• Is your Community Connecting to the Future? by Mary Beth Henry
• Kick Asana by Sherri Montgomery
• Law is Code, and We’re Here to Open Source It by Robb Shecter and Lisa Hackenberger
• Learn open source skills without embarrassing yourself by Asheesh Laroia
• Mozilla School of Webcraft @P2PU by John Britton
• Online Community Metrics: Tips and Techniques for Measuring Participation by Dawn Foster
• Open Source: Saving the World by Noirin Shirley
• Open source: Open to whom? by Valerie Aurora
• Seven Habits Of Highly Obnoxious Trolls by Bart Massey, Selena Deckelmann, and Duke Leto
• Transit Appliances by Chris Smith

Hacks

• 5 Easy Pieces: “Rabid Prototyping” With “Physical Computing” and other dirty tricks. by Donald Davis
• Cloud Scaling: High Performance Even in Virtualized Environments. by Gavin McQuillan
• Control Emacs with Your Beard: the All-Singing All-Dancing Intro to Hacking the Kinect by Devin Chalmers and Greg Borenstein
• Drizzle, Virtualizing and Scaling MySQL for the Future by Brian Aker
• Growing food with Open Source by Sarah Sharp
• Hardware/Software Integration with Txtzyme by Ward Cunningham
• IRL: how do geeks undermine their presentations and conversations with body language by sarah novotny
• Location-Based Hacks – How to Automate your life with SMS and GPS by Amber Case and Aaron Parecki
• Snooze, the totally RESTful language by Markus Roberts

For the third year, we welcome back Portland’s own Mayor Sam Adams. This year Mayor Adams will speak about the City’s involvement with opening governmental data, what CivicApps projects have resulted from this, and what open source technologies the city is utilizing. In conjunction with the Mayor’s keynote, we’re also working with the City to reprise last year’s hugely popular CivicApps hack day.

Our second keynote will be Python expert Pete Fein, who will talk about “Hacking for Freedom.” Fein, the former CTO of Juju.com, will discuss the politics, technology and ethics of hacktivism. Working with Anonymous and Telecomix, Fein has helped organize protests in support of WikiLeaks, provided communications support to pro-democracy activists in Egypt and the Middle East, and generally continues to fight the good fight.

Last Day for Early Bird Registration

We’ve extended $225 Early Bird registration through the end of today. Register now to save $75 on regular price admission (at midnight prices increase to $300).