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!

Today’s opening keynote will be from Danny O’Brien, Internet Advocacy Coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists. He’s going to kick things off with a practical look at the FLOSS tools that journalists working in repressive regimes currently use, and what we could help create for them.

I wanted to also let you know that we’ve had a few changes to the schedule since it was printed:

• CANCELLED: Getting Started with FPGAs and HDLs, 1:30-2:15 Tuesday
• MOVED: The Story of Spaz: How to Give Away Everything, Make No Money,
  and Still Win – to 4:45p Thursday
• ERROR: Making Drupal Go Fast with Varnish and Pressflow – 10am Thurs Fremont

All talks are correct in the online version of the schedule at this time.

Thanks, and look forward to seeing you today!

We couldn’t be happier. But there was only one problem: we didn’t know who was going to talk when.

But now, we do. Introducing the Open Source Bridge schedule.

The schedule will provide—at a glance—the time, title, track (including a color key for all the respective tracks), and room of each scheduled talk. Need more details? No problem. Simply roll over a particular talk and you’ll get the additional details you need, including an excerpt and scheduled speakers—as well as the ability to drill deeper into information on the talk, the speaker, the track, and the room.

So have it! Tell your friends! But most importantly start filling your calendar with Open Source Bridge goodness!

(Image courtesy Aaron Hockley. 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!