We’re really looking forward to seeing everyone, hearing your feedback, and seeing your photos. So is everyone else.

First things first. If you’re not already following OSBridge on Twitter or OSBridge on Identica, please do. We’ll use those accounts to keep you up-to-date on changes, retweet astute observations, and announce cool happenings throughout the event.

Or maybe you’re more into the FriendFeed? You’re in luck. We’ve got a FriendFeed room dedicated to Open Source Bridge discussions.

[UPDATE] And of course, who could forget (except me) the #osbridge IRC channel? Thanks to John DeRosa for reminding us.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s make tracking the Open Source Bridge conversations as easy as possible, shall we? We shall. Here are a few tips for tagging your content.

• When you’re tagging your content on Twitter and Identica, please use the #osb09 hashtag. If you want to use #osbridge that’s fine, too. But it will cost you those precious extra characters.
• We’re hoping a few of you are bringing cameras. Please make sure to tag photos osb09 and osbridge. We’ve also established an OSBridge group on Flickr for your photos, so join and add away
• And of course, we’re likely to see a bunch of blog posts about the conference. Again, using osb09 or osbridge tags and categories would be appreciated.

Thank you for attending and sharing your content. We can’t wait to see what you’re saying—and seeing—at Open Source Bridge.

Each and every one of us working to produce this conference is doing it without any compensation, following a very open source approach, free as in speech, or beer, depending on the situation.

Why? We <3 open source.

As much as we love free as in speech, it takes money to put on a conference. We have many generous monetary and in-kind sponsors, who have helped make this conference a reality, but we’re always looking for more to help us pay for stuff like food, bandwidth and wireless access, audio-visual equipment rental, badges, conference programs, and other operational details.

If you work at a company that you think should be sponsoring, please forward our sponsorship prospectus to the right people at your office. We’d really appreciate the support.

This is Portland, however, and we know as well as anyone that not everybody works for a big company.

Sponsors come in all sizes, and we welcome any level of support either through PayPal or through TipJoy, which allows you to tweet your support for Open Source Bridge proudly for all your followers to see. Oh, and if it spreads virally, we’re fine with that too.

Interested? Head over to our individual donations page for details, or click the purple box on the home page.

Of course, we want you all to attend, tell your friends you’re coming and shout it from the rooftops, or at least over Twitter. To that end, we have blog badges, and a Zazzle store with t-shirts, bumper stickers and the all-important coffee mug.

When you register to attend, why not put some bling on your badge and ante up for a Gold Star? Nothing says I’m a rockstar supporter of open source like a gold star. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

Finally, we still need volunteers to do operational planning and day-of stuff. Check out this post if you want specifics and if you’re interested, fill out our volunteer form, including any jobs you’d like to do.

Hope to see you all in June.

Photo courtesy of Aaron Hockley on Flickr used with permission, all rights reserved.