Open Source Bridge

PSAS is a student aerospace engineering project at Portland State University. We're building ultra-low-cost, open hardware and open source rockets that feature perhaps the most sophisticated amateur rocket avionics systems out there today.

It may seem obvious to some, but the socialist imagery that Mozilla uses isn't accidental. Nor is the grounding of Activity Streams in socialist theory. What do these things have to do with open source an its future? A lot, and I'll paint a picture to tell you how it should play out.

Print is dead. Well, not dead yet. But it'll be stone dead in a moment.

Should you start a foundation? Should you start a nonprofit? What's the role of non-profits in the Open Source community today? How can you be a good citizen in the Open Source arena with a foundation to support?

How does free software help defend free speech in repressive regimes? Danny O'Brien will draw from the records of the Committee to Protect Journalists to explore how open source can help those at the cutting edge of free expression.

From creating remote-sensing CubeSats to analyzing aerogel: how the public is hacking into open source space exploration.

As a "software person," I found the hard technologies of building with steel and wood made for a very different creative and hacking process. At the same time, I discovered many parallels to software development, embedded hardware, and even open-source philosophies.

Writing quality software is a worthwhile challenge. Learn how to harness the magic of testing to create better software. This presentation will provide you with an overview of the different kinds of tests, show code using different testing tools, and help you decide when and how to apply these to your projects

It's not enough to have a website. You need to have your website (and your business) be findable, and not drive normal people (eg, everyone but you and your web designer) nuts. And you need to make sure that Google has it right. Here's how.

This yoga session is of benefit to anyone who sits and works on computers a lot. Breathing exercises and physical postures that can be done anytime to help maintain a healthy body and clear mind will be taught. Suggestions will be included for how to modify stretches to protect injuries and provide gentle opening.

Augmented Reality and Geolocation have been hot topics this year, but there has often been a confusion between aesthetics vs. practicality, and fantasy vs. reality. This presentation will highlight the advantages and disadvantages of visual and non-visual augmented reality. We'll tell stories from our experiences building location-aware social networks with custom proximity notification.

User groups are a vital part of the open source community. Learn more about how to start a group, keep it going, and make an existing group better from a panel of experienced user group organizers.

Facebook are full of juicy information about your friends and strangers alike! Learn how to use some simple open source tools and techniques to learn more about them.

JavaScript is a unique and powerful language. Its ubiquity in the browser and its elegant concurrency model make JavaScript an ideal tool in a number of situations. Learn about the best ways to use and to understand this language from a full-time JavaScript professional.

USB 3.0 promises a 10x speedup and better power management than USB 2.0. But how do these devices actually work? Is there open source support for them? Come learn about these fast new devices that are finally hitting the market.

"Do you watch television? Is your furnace loud? Do you have $2?" My 7-year-old's marketing suggestions aside, building custom gadgets to improve your life is remarkably simple, and I'll prove it by building something on stage that you can duplicate at home.

Social software is kind of a big deal right now. In the open-source spirit of transparency and dissection, let's talk about what makes social technology creepy, what makes it fun, and how to hack things to maximize your desired outcome.

Location and mapping are making a huge impact on the web and mobile. Open Source is right there. Learn the elements of the geo stack, from mapping APIs to geo databases.

Leigh will be discussing hacker spaces, and the culture of DIY spaces for making things around the world.

Co-conspirators Jamey Sharp and Josh Triplett get up to a lot of miscellaneous hacking mischief together. Much of this hacking occurs while staring at the same screen, and tag-teaming the keyboard. Sometimes this happens with the two of them in different places. We'll demo our favorite tools and invite audience contributions to the discussion.

Markus: Nautilus? I thought you said noodle house! Matt: Wait, wait, I think I see her head!! Markus: Are you sure? Matt: Maybe It's Not Her Head...

Using your computer on a public network is like having a conversation on a city bus: people you don't know can hear everything you say. They'll probably be polite and ignore you, but you still might not want to shout out your credit card number. Yet this is what your computer does. All the time. And you don't know it.

BOF to go with the "My Grand Experiment" Talk. http://opensourcebridge.org/sessions/115

CodePlex is Microsoft’s open source project hosting site. Get an inside look into how the CodePlex team builds the site using 3-week agile deployment cycles to deliver the best feature set for open source development.

Do you know the basics of Git but wonder what all the hype is about? Do you want the ultimate control over your Git history? This tutorial will walk you through the basics of committing changes before diving into the more advanced and "dangerous" Git commands.

Learn about several computer vision techniques and how to put them together to form an entry-level object classifier.

The strength of your community is the best predictor of your project's long-term viability. What happens when your community is gradually infiltrated by assholes, who infect everyone else with their constant negativity and personal attacks? This talk will teach you about the dramatic impact assholes are having on your organization today and will show you how you can begin to repair it.

Do you know a dynamic/scripting language like Ruby or Python, but you don't know C? Diving down just a little can make you a better programmer in your preferred language! Scripting languages can teach old C hands a thing or two, too. Delve into the benefits of being a multilingual programmer.

A panel on funding your business without VC, based on GitHub's experiences.

Selena loves Git and EmmaJane loves Bazaar. And like all good nerds they've spent a fair amount of time talkin' smack about the other's version control system (VCS). Come see what the fuss is all about!

The amount of information freely available on the internet from sources like Twitter and Github grows every day. This gives us new opportunities to leverage the collective consciousness. Clustering is a wonderful method for finding useful information in large amounts of data. But it can be an intimidating topic for programmers without a lot of academic background. In this talk I will introduce and explain some practical techniques for clustering real-world data.

CouchDB can serve standalone applications, which can be shared amongst users, putting the source code (and control) back in their hands.

Code sprints are events where developers quickly complete coding tasks in a collaborative environment. A panel of skilled developers will share their experiences for organizing effective code sprints so you can better participate and organize your own. The panel members have organized and participated in over a hundred sprints (ranging from Django to JRuby) and used sprints as the primary way to develop community-oriented projects (e.g., Calagator). While most of the discussion will be about volunteer-run open source code sprints, many of the ideas will be readily applicable to improving development at your workplace. The panel will offer practical, actionable advice that you can use and answer your questions.

As a long-time user of open source software, I've often considered myself an advocate but not necessarily a participant. Over the last year and a half, my own search for technical inspiration has led me full-circle to the realization that I'm an active member of a vibrant community of technical women.

Welcome to the unconference day.

This is a yoga workshop for anyone who sits and works on computers a lot. You will learn breathing exercises and physical postures that can be done at anytime to help maintain a healthy body and clear mind. Suggestions will be included for how to modify stretches to protect injuries and provide gentle opening.

The idea for Code-n-Splode grew out of the Women in Open Source BOF at OSCON 2007. I'll talk about my original reasons for starting a women-friendly tech group, how the group is evolving, and what I've learned.

You have a really cool open source project and everyone should see it, try it, and use it. But ... they don't seem to know about it. How can you make sure your project gets the press coverage it deserves?

Panel: Organization, coordination, and implementation of a volunteer community open source project: http://rosecityresource.org (by PDX Drupal UG)

Paper prototyping is the fastest, cheapest way to test your user interface designs. To prove it, in 45 minutes we'll walk through several rounds of prototyping and testing a small application.

Many people see project management as the art of trying to please everyone and pleasing no one, while trying not to go too far over deadline and too far over budget. It doesn't have to be that way. Good project management can be so predictable and reliable that it's almost boring. Here's what works in real projects.

Meditation is the ultimate open source tool. You can do it anywhere and it’s free. It requires only your brain and your body. It’s positive effects are numerous, including increased productivity, better problem-solving and a reduction in overall stress. Learn about long-term effects of mediation on the brain, some meditation techniques and how mediation can help you do your job better.

Solar powered server and communication arrays in Earth orbit . Manufacturing, costs, environmental benefits, security, maintenance, and survivability will be discussed.

The problem: you're using a modern dynamic language not known for speed, and you've identified a bottleneck. Write it in C? Does that give you the shakes? There are other language options available...

Maybe the edge isn’t as close as we thought it was. Maybe you can do some really funky things with your language without accidentally summoning eldritch spirits. Or maybe not. The only way to find out is to try it—or, if you are of the more prudent proclivities, to watch someone else try it.

A crash course in applying the principles of open source to the creation of real objects.

Featuring Mayor Sam Adams and Ward Cunningham

Featuring Amber Case, Cyborg Anthropologist, and Kurt von Finck of Monty Program AB.