During the conference, your Open Source Bridge badge gives you access to all of the museum galleries. This includes all of the open exhibition space within the Mark Building itself, home to the Jubitz Center for Modern and Contemporary Art, as well as the galleries in the main building itself.

For the entire month of June the Portland Art Museum is pleased to offer Bridge participants a 20% discount to becoming a member (use Promo code ‘OS10′) . Members enjoy free admission to the galleries, 10% off purchases made in the Museum gift store, invitations to members-only events & exhibition viewings, as well as discounts on lectures, films, art making classes, and other special programs.

For a complete list of membership categories and benefits visit http://portlandartmuseum.org/join//membership/

Promo code: OS10 valid through 6/30/2010

Open Source Bridge after today

It’s understandable. When we extended the deadline for proposals on March 31, it probably seemed like April 10 was a long, long time away.

At that point, your stress level dropped. You probably kicked back, pondered your bevy of potential proposal topics, and actually did rejoice in the fact that you had more time.

My how time flies. And here we are again.

Today is the last day to submit proposals for Open Source Bridge talks. It is also the last day to comment on submitted talks. We will close submissions and comments tonight at 11:59:59 PM Pacific time. So you still have a few hours left.

It’s also—as luck would have it—the last day to register for Open Source Bridge at the low, low price of $175.

No more extensions! We’ve lost our lease! Every sale is final! Everything must go! (And any other witty aphorisms of which you can think.)

Unless, of course, you submit a talk that doesn’t get accepted. Then we’ll still extend the early bird pricing to you. (Uh oh. Did I just give you a hint on how to get the early bird pricing after tomorrow?)

But that’s just crazy talk. Because you have a brilliant topic which will, no doubt, be accepted.

Have a great idea? Get it in there. Want to influence the track mix? Please log in and comment. Don’t have any ideas? Tell your idea-laden friends to submit. Petrified by confusion? Register. We guarantee it will cure what ails you.

Still not convinced? 24-hour hacker lounge, my friend.

We’ve had a ton of great talks submitted already. But we’d still like to have yours. And of course, we’d love to have you here in June—at the most cost-effective price available.

Do not delay! The time, as Reid says, is nigh.

(Image courtesy of Cosmic Kitty. Used under Creative Commons.)

Why hello there!

The Open Source Bridge team has been hard at work: cranking out code, contacting user groups and reviewing all the amazing proposals we’ve received since we opened our call on January 26.

It’s paid off with more registrations, our first Gold Star member, and even more great proposals.

You’ve been good to us.

Because you’ve been so nice, we’d like to share with you a few proposals we are very excited about. We’re so excited, that we jumped the gun a little, and asked these folks if they wouldn’t mind committing to present at our conference, like, now.

We’ve got lots of work to do tomorrow. While we take a little break and enjoy some pie, please take a peek into our first scheduled talks:

• RubySpec: What does my Ruby do?, Brian Ford
  Brian Ford is leading an effort to create a complete, executable specification for Ruby. We think this is a great project, and can’t wait to hear from the source how it’s going. Brian is a local, and we hear he’s part of our local Ruby Brigade.
• Drizzle, Rethinking MySQL for the Web, Brian Aker
  There’s been a lot of discussion about MySQL’s future. Come see it as Brian Aker envisions it: trimmer, modular and optimized for the cloud. Brian hails from Seattle, WA and would really like a bullet train between there and Portland.
• Advanced Git tutorial: Not your average VCS., Sarah Sharp
  Sarah Sharp gave a great presentation about git at a local user group where an audience member called the knowedge she shared “dangerous”. You can be dangerous too! Sarah is a Linux kernel hacker in the Portland area, and a rocket enthusiast. And she rides bikes.
• Remember Tcl/ Tk? Grandpa might be old, but he can still kick your ass!, Webb Sprague
  Come see the talk Nat Torkington made fun of. Webb Sprague teaches an introductory bash class at our local Free Geek chapter once a week, works mostly from Eugene on his PhD research, knows a ton about PostGIS, and loves the idea of Cyborg Anthropology. We had no idea that he liked Tcl/Tk.
• Open Source Library Software: Empowering Libraries – Creating Opportunities, Lori Ayre
  Are you a Librarian? Interested in Open source software for libraries? Come hear Lori talk about the culture shift that needs to happen in our libraries to get FOSS in there. Those people who are interested in “switcher” talks, will want to attend this talk to learn another way of making the pitch to shift from proprietary to open source in your business or among your peers.
• The Linux Kernel Development model, Greg Kroah-Hartman
  Greg K-H gave the opening keynote address at the Linux Plumbers Conference last year. My hope is that people new to free and open source software development, as well as people currently involved in open source projects can come learn how the most visible and successful FOSS project actually works. Greg K-H is a Linux kernel hacker living in the Portland area. He has a twitter account that used to track his command-line history.
• Configuration Management Panel, Moderated by James Turnbull
  Configuration management is the future of system administration. James Turnbull has gotten together the biggest names in configuration management – the original authors and developers themselves – in ONE MONSTER PANEL. That’s: cfengine, Puppet, Opscode, AutomateIT and bcfg2. Check it out! Be amazed. James is from Australia and claims to not like long walks on the beach.
• My Grand Experiment: A Portland Women-focused Tech Group., Gabrielle Roth
  Gabrielle Roth started Code-N-Splode after OSCON 2007. What started as a conversation between 3 people, grew into a large, free-wheeling programmers haunt for women. Come hear about how she did it, what she learned, and where she wants to go next with the group. User groups are very important to the co-chairs of the conference, as that’s how both of them got involved with open source community. This talk will be a great case study for anyone wanting to start a user group.
• Is the Web Down: a Practical Tutorial on How the Web Works, Michael Schwern, Joshua Keroes
  We first met Michael Schwern (known to most people as ‘Schwern’), and Joshua Keroes (known to most people as ‘ua’, pronounced “ooo-uh”) at the Portland Perlmongers. Schwern is known for his ability to explain complicated topics in easy to understand ways, and Joshua knows his Perl and his networking. United, these two will be an unstoppable “how it works” force. Schwern and Joshua live in the Portland area. Both seem to enjoy fine, mixed cocktails, and Perl.
• HOWTO earn an open source living without taking on investors or selling your soul, Brian Jamison

Brian Jamison is CEO of Open Sourcery, an open source-focused consulting company in the Portland area. We love that they want to share their strategy for success with you, and, at least from the description, their model seems like the type of sustainable business typical of the Portland area. We are not as focused on venture capital and investment, and perhaps more interested in quality of life, the long term plan, and keeping our souls safe.

• A Tour of CodePlex, Sara Ford
  Sara Ford’s submission grabbed us — Microsoft hosts open source projects? We’re curious about the features CodePlex offers, what the community is like and how it is growing. Our hunch is that peering into CodePlex will give you ideas, and hopefully, we can embrace and extend them.
• Drop ACID and think about data, Bob Ippolito
  We heard great things about Bob Ippolito from our friends that just went to PyCon 2009. As much as the ‘Drop ACID’ title pained one of our co-chairs (for relational database reasons), Bob’s presentation promises to be a fabulous tour of the “database” engines popping up for the web (also for the “cloud”).
• Organizing a Volunteer-Driven Open Source Community Project, Sarah Beecroft, molly vogt, Joaquin Lippincott, Melissa Anderson
  Last but not least, this talk promises to be amazing. Sarah Beecroft is an Americorps volunteer who led a team that created http://www.rosecityresource.org/, the online version of a comprehensive print guide for public services and assistance programs in the greater Portland area. We’ll let you visit the site and see it for yourself. But, briefly:

  The development of this website was an entirely volunteer-driven community effort; it didn’t cost a physical dollar and was built with the intention of providing an existing organization with a sustainable tool to better do what they already work very hard to do well.

  Wow. Anyway. Street Roots now maintains this resource. They are a small community and activist newspaper success story in a time where many newspapers are going away. We can’t wait for this panel, both to be inspired, and to find out how they did it — so that our own projects can be better in the future.

We hope to see you all in June!

P.S. Don’t see your favorite topic? Make sure to comment on your favorite Open Source Bridge proposals to ensure that your favorite gets picked!

Our main goal in Seattle was to meet a couple of our first registrants, John DeRosa and Matt Woodward, and get them excited about the conference. Rick talked last week about our need for volunteers in other metro areas outside Portland, and Seattle is obviously high on our list of places to get volunteer help.

John and Matt have already started talking to people they know, and it was awesome to meet them in person and spread the love for open source geekery. We even discussed organizing a party train on Amtrack for attendees from Seattle, since the Hilton is only about a mile away from Union Station.

Naturally, we also wanted to introduce the conference to new people in the Seattle crowd and drum up interest for it. Brian Westbrook streamed the event live on Seattle 2.0 and interviewed Selena about the conference. Rick and John chatted with John Cook from Seattle’s TechFlash about the conference, and I also got to put Rick on the spot to do an impromptu plug for the conference to the 30 or 40 people who attended.

Brian captured his interview with Selena and Rick’s extemporaneous speech about the conference, and I’ll update this post with those videos when they’re uploaded.

So, we did what we could to get the word out to as many Seattleites as possible. We’re hoping guys like John and Matt will spread the word, as will others who were at Lunch 2.0 or watched it live online and go forth to submit proposals, register to attend and tell their friends and colleagues to join us here in Portland in June.

Because Open Source Bridge is 100% volunteer-run, we’ll need grassroots help from all the people we can get to make the huge success we all envision.

Want to help spread the word in your town?

Let us know (in comments or using the volunteer form) about events in your area, like user group meetings, technical networking events, and technical conferences that you attend, and we’ll hook you up with the message and some stickers or business cards that you can take with you.

We might even organize a road trip to your town to hang out and help you spread the word. Rick likes to drive

Thanks to John, Matt, Josh Maher, the Seattle Lunch 2.0 organizer, and the hosts, Adam from Axios Law Group and Bryan from TalentSpring, for welcoming us to Seattle and letting us talk about Open Source Bridge. Next time, we’ll need to stay longer to enjoy the sights.

photo courtesy of caseorganic

The Open Source Bridge team is having a second Town Hall meeting for interested volunteers on November 6, 2008, 11:30am-1pm, at the Open Technology Business Center (OTBC). We’re gathering at its new location 12725 SW Millikan Way, Suite 101, Beaverton, OR 97005 (example MAX route from Portland, drive from Portland to OTBC). Please RSVP!

If you take public transit (which we highly recommend), just get off at the Beaverton CENTRAL stop (not the transit center), and walk about 90 feet into the building called The Round, which should be clearly marked. If you run into problems finding it, try giving OTBC a call at 971-223-4660.

This is a brown-bag affair, so please remember to bring a lunch!

Whether you can make it or not, subscribe to our mailing lists:

osbridgepdx-announce, low traffic announcement list for events like this one!

osbridgepdx-discuss, possibly high traffic list for discussing anything related to the conference!

Hope to see lots of you on Thursday! And please, invite your friends.

Update:

Here are a few more public transit tips from Steve Morris:

From downtown, take the Blue line to get to OTBC — because the Blue line goes all the way to the “Beaverton Central” stop. The Red line ends at the Beaverton Transit Center – just one stop before OTBC. (From the Beaverton Transit center to The Round is about a 5 minute walk, so someone who takes the Red line can either walk, or just switch to the Blue line at the transit center.)

Open Source Bridge will be a completely volunteer-run, community effort to connect developers working with open source. We’re kicking things off with a town hall discussion and planning meeting on October 30th, 7:30pm at CubeSpace (located at 622 SE Grand Avenue in Portland). We’ll talk about overall goals for the conference, then break into small working groups to start tackling the event planning needs. If you can, bring an audio or video recorder to help document the discussion.

Please let us know if you can attend. If October 30 doesn’t work for you, let us know as we will be having a second meeting on the west-side. We’d very much like to have your participation in making this conference a fun, educational experience.

You can RSVP by filling in the form at
http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=p1ZDddPXGskYFX5NnM9FaXA&hl=en ]]> http://opensourcebridge.org/blog/2008/10/open-source-bridge-town-hall/feed/ 5