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2013 Call for Proposals Now Open!

christie — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 05:55:04 +0000

We are pleased to announce that our call for talk proposals is now open! The deadline for submitting your proposal is 11:59 PM PT (UTC-8:00) on 9 March*. Read on for complete details.

Our Goal

Our goal with Open Source Bridge is to gather a diverse citizenry and inspire one another to make the world a better place through open source technology and open culture principles.

In this regard, Open Source Bridge is unique among the landscape of community-driven technology conferences. Rather than focusing on a single language, platform, or knowledge-set, we strive to unite those working across the spectrum of open technology and culture.

As such, we are looking for people from all experience areas to submit talk proposals. Your background can be web development, project management, open hardware engineering, security, quality assurance, data visualization, user experience, etc. If you work or play in open source, we want to hear from you. Let us know how you are improving your communities, small or large. All speaking experience levels welcome.

Some talks from last year that we really liked and felt captured the spirit of our event include:

Why You Need to Host 100 New Wikis Just for Yourself, Ward Cunningham
Future of Wearable Computing: Constraint, Context and Location, Amber Case
Thriving in Chaos: An Introduction to Systems Thinking, Alex Kroman
Open Education Tools for Mentoring and Learning, Molly de Blanc
Identity, Reputation and Gratitude: Designing for a Community, Brandon Harris
A Snapshot of Open Source in West Africa, Renaud Gaudin
Rise of the Indie Web, Tantek Çelik
Be Bold: An Origin Story, Sumana Harihareswara

Conference Tracks

As in years past, you’ll need to submit your talk in one of the following tracks:

Business: How do you contribute to open technology and culture projects while still putting food on the table and paying the bills? How do you run a business on open principles?
Cooking: How did you get something to work? Show us how to write the script, configure the utility, debug the code. Share your best recipes.
Chemistry: We know that a recipe works, but why? Show us the science behind the recipe. Explain the components of a project and how they interact.
Culture: Give us your people recipes! What makes open technology and culture communities effective? Demonstrate how you motivate people to work together well.
Hacks: We want to know how you pulled it off. Show us your most ingenious hacks, kludges, work-arounds, and duct-tape jobs. It doesn’t have to be clever or elegant, it just has to work!

Don’t fret too much about selecting the perfect track. If you’re not sure, drop us a note. If we think you’ve mis-categorized something, we’ll ask you about it.

Public Proposals & Feedback Wanted

All proposals are public (except for fields marked private to organizers) and we encourage everyone to read through the submitted ones, leave comments and favorite talks you would like to see at the conference. Your feedback is extremely useful to our content selection committee. If you’ve submitted a talk, publicize it and ask others to leave feedback.

Encourage Others to Submit

Not prepared to give a talk at Open Source Bridge, but have someone in mind you’d like to see speak? Send them a note and let them know.

Acceptance Notifications

Proposal acceptances and wait-list notifications will be sent by 10 April.

Speaking Benefits

If you are selected to speak at Open Source Bridge, we will waive your attendance fee. We regret that we are not able to cover the cost of travel or lodging for speakers at this time. By not covering travel costs for our speakers, we are able to keep ticket prices low and make the conference accessible to the largest number of participants possible. However, if your proposal is accepted but you are unable to come due to travel costs, please let us know and we will do what we can to help out.

Speaking at Open Source Bridge is a fantastic way to participate in the conference. Start working on your proposal today and then submit it here.

Questions?

If you have any questions, please drop us a line and let us know.

We’ll also be holding a public Townhall via Google Hangout on 19 February at 4pm PT. You are welcome to attend and have your questions answered then.

*While it’s true that in previous years we have extended the deadline, this is never a guarantee. Get your proposal in early!

Announcing Our 2012 Schedule!

christie — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 05:17:04 +0000

We’ve just published our schedule for 2012.

Speakers, please take a look and note the date and time of your talk. If you have any concerns about your timeslot, email content@opensourcebridge.org as soon as possible.

Everyone, please indicate talks you’re interested in by marking them as a favorite (click the star icon to the right of the session name). This information helps us schedule rooms appropriately. So, please go mark talks you think you’ll attend!

We have two exciting evening events planned so far. The first is a Community/Project Hack night on the first evening of the conference. We’re still confirming which groups will participate, but we have a few spots still open. So, if you’d like your project to host a table and run a mini-hackathon, let us know by emailing hackerlounge@opensourcebridge.org.

The other exciting event is the official party on Thursday night! More details to come as we have them. Interested in sponsoring the official party? We still have a spot open, just email sponsor@opensourcebridge.org.

The last day of the conference, Friday, June 29 will be a full day of unconference sessions where you get to suggest and give talks on whatever you’d like!

Also, there are plenty of opportunities to volunteer on-site (and get in free if you contribute 8 or more hours)! Let us know you’d like to volunteer on our Get Involved page or email volunteer@opensourcebridge.org.

Announcing our Open Source Bridge 2012 lineup!

Reid Beels — Fri, 18 May 2012 22:03:47 +0000

We are very pleased to announce the session lineup for this year’s Open Source Bridge conference! These talks will be given as part of our 4-day event June 26th through the 29th in Portland, Oregon. We received hundreds of excellent presentation proposals, community comments, and other feedback, and our diverse selection committee was very busy carefully reviewing everything.

This year’s conference 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 finalizing the session schedule for Open Source Bridge, and plan to announce that in the very near future as well.

Without further ado, the selections for each of our five tracks:

Our Third Keynote Speaker: Paul Fenwick

jimmythehorn — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 21:27:46 +0000

The lineup of amazing keynote speakers for Open Source Bridge keeps on growing. We’re thrilled to announce that Paul Fenwick will be joining us as our third keynote speaker for this year’s event.

Paul Fenwick is the managing director of Perl Training Australia, and has been teaching computer science for over a decade. He is an internationally acclaimed presenter at conferences and user-groups worldwide, where he is well-known for his humour and off-beat topics. Paul is the author of Perl’s autodie pragma.

In his spare time, Paul’s interests include security, mycology, cycling, coffee, scuba diving, dressing like a pirate, and lexically scoped user pragmata.

You can join us to see Paul’s keynote speech along with all of the other great content at Open Source Bridge this year; our early bird registration is open through April 30th.

We Want Your Input

jimmythehorn — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 18:49:47 +0000

You still have one week left on our Call for Proposals, and there’s still time to apply to be on our Content Selection Committee. But whether you’ve submitted your proposal already or not (or even if you’ve decided not to submit one), we’re looking for input from the entire Open Source Bridge community on the excellent set of proposals for our 2012 event.

Is there a session proposal you’re excited to attend? Be sure to take a minute to leave comments on the proposals you’d like to see at this year’s Open Source Bridge conference, and tell your coworkers, friends, and fellow user group members to comment too.

There are two ways to tell our selection committee what proposals you’re interested in: 1) by marking the ones you like as favorites (using the little stars), and 2) by leaving comments on them (using the form at the end of each proposal). This feedback is very important to us, and tells the Content Selection Committee which sessions the community wants to see.

By marking talks as a favorite, you also provide great assistance to the scheduling process for Open Source Bridge. We try hard to avoid scheduling talks that speak to the same subject, or are marked as favorite by the same people, and so the more people that mark favorite talks, the more our schedule can avoid conflicts.

The list of favorites is publicly visible on your user profile page, so you can share the list of talks you’re excited about with others. The comments are private and only visible to the selection team; this is the place to tell us why the presentation’s topic is important, how well qualified the speaker is, and so on.

Commenting on proposals and marking your favorites is very valuable feedback for us, and allows you to further help set the direction of Open Source Bridge.

You can get started now: http://opensourcebridge.org/events/2012/proposals

Sumana Harihareswara to Keynote Open Source Bridge

jimmythehorn — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 23:04:16 +0000

The excitement never stops around here. We’re very pleased to announce our second amazing keynote speaker, Sumana Harihareswara.

Sumana Harihareswara manages projects and people, currently as Volunteer Development Coordinator at the Wikimedia Foundation, where she leads the Technical Liaisons and Developer Relations group (TLDR). She has worked at Collabora, GNOME, QuestionCopyright.org, Fog Creek Software, Behavior, and Salon.com, and contributed to the MediaWiki, AltLaw, Empathy, Miro, and Zeitgeist open source projects. She is a blogger at GeekFeminism and an advisory board member for the Ada Initiative, and was editor and release organizer for GNOME Journal. Harihareswara has presented at Foo Camp, Open Source Bridge 2011, Open Source Bridge 2010, MindCamp Seattle 2008 (“Three Models of Power: A Political Science Lens on Your Organization”), keynoted PICC, led or organized several Wikimedia hackathons, taught several courses at UC Berkeley, and performed at Bay Area stand-up comedy venues. She holds an MS in Technology Management from Columbia University. She also likes dinosaurs.

And don’t forget that we’ve extended our Call for Proposals, so you still have a chance to join what is already an excellent set of proposals, and sure to be an excellent set of speakers. You also have a chance to grab one of a limited number of $225 registrations if you act quickly and register now.

CFP Deadline Extended Until March 30th!

jimmythehorn — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 01:00:24 +0000

Procrastinators rejoice! We’re extending the deadline for our Call for Proposals until 11:59 PDT on Friday, March 30th.

Not sure if you want to speak at Open Source Bridge? Of course you do! We’d love to have you and your ideas be a part of this year’s event, and we have some tips for you:

Look over previously accepted talks: You can get an idea of what we’re looking for by reviewing the proposals we accepted as sessions for previous years (2009 talks, 2010 talks, and 2011 talks).
Be specific, but also clear and concise: Let us know the question and give an idea of the answer. Make sure to give clear details about the content of your talk.
Write well and use standard English: Use proper spelling, capitalization, grammar, and punctuation. Use the active voice. Proposals without these things are difficult to read. Our content committee has a lot to read through; please don’t make this process more difficult.
Provide a good title: A title can make or break a talk. It should be concise, yet comprehensible. Clever, but not overly so. Sparking curiosity is good, but make sure people can tell what you’re going to be talking about. If your title accurately reflects both the subject matter and the tone of your talk, your ideal audience will find you.
Explain why you’d give a good talk: You don’t need to be an expert, but if you are, let us know. Don’t assume we’ll know who you are even if you’ve given a bunch of talks all over the world. Also don’t assume that we won’t pick you if you’ve never spoken. Have you given this talk at a user group with overwhelming success? Let us know in your proposal’s Note to organizers field.
Spread the word: Open Source Bridge allows public viewing and coments on all proposed submissions. Advertise that you’ve submitted a talk so that people can comment and let our selection committee know they want to see your talk.
Ask questions: Not sure if your talk would be appropriate for OSBridge? Have other burning questions that are keeping you from submitting? The co-chairs and content commitee are available to answer your questions: content@opensourcebridge.org.

And did we mention that if your proposal gets accepted, you get into the conference for free?

We know you’ve been brewing some great ideas for a session or two. Well, now you have an extra fortnight to get your ideas to us!

Announcing our first Keynote Speaker: Jason Scott of Textfiles.com

jimmythehorn — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 18:33:21 +0000

The Open Source Bridge planning committee is pleased to announce the first of our keynote speakers for 2012: Jason Scott!

Photo by Rachel Lovinger

Jason Scott works at the Internet Archive helping to record and maintain a history of computer technology. But as many of you know, that’s hardly all that he does. He’s the owner and curator of textfiles.com and he has produced such great documentaries as BBS: The Documentary and Get Lamp. A recently successful kickstarter campaign has him working on three other documentaries at the same time — certainly no small task. We’re very excited to host him in Portland this June. In the meantime, you can read his blog, follow him on twitter @textfiles, or, as I’m sure many of you already do, follow his cat on twitter @sockington.

A limited number of $225 Early Bird tickets are still available, so Register now to see Jason Scott and many other amazing talks at this year’s Open Source Bridge. Even better, be one of the amazing presenters and get in for free! Our Call for Proposals is still open.

Apply for the 2012 Content Selection Committee

jimmythehorn — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 20:01:26 +0000

We’ve had many great proposals submitted so far, and we’re looking forward to more excellent ideas before our Call for Proposals closes. That means we’re not far from having to make the difficult decision of selecting which submissions to accept. To assist with this challenging task, we’d like to invite individuals from our community to help select talks for this year’s conference.

The only requirements are that you have some in-depth knowledge or expertise of a field related to an open source technology, and that you have 5-10 hours to spare between April 1st and April 7th to spend reviewing and discussing proposals. You don’t need to be in Portland, though if you aren’t, you should have the ability to participate via Skype in our final meeting to select talks (tentatively Sunday, April 8th).

To apply, please complete the form here by Friday, March 30. If you have any questions, email us at content@opensourcebridge.org.

We plan to select about a half-dozen community members to participate in the content committee. Our goals are to represent a diverse set of experiences and views — including a range of expertise areas — and involve both those who have experience selecting conference talks and those who are new to the process. We also want the committee to be as gender-balanced as possible.

We hope you’ll considering being a part of the selection committee, but if that doesn’t seem like a good fit, there are many other ways to get involved. Also, don’t forget that anyone can view and comment on submitted proposals, to let the selection team know what you want to see.

Announcing the 2012 Call for Proposals

jimmythehorn — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 17:50:32 +0000

Our call for presentation proposals is now open and we will be accepting proposals through March 16, 2012. Speaking at Open Source Bridge is a great opportunity to share your knowledge and enthusiasm. Now is the time to submit a proposal to speak at the conference!

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