by Nat Torkington on  Bioweathermap -- crowdsourcing the gathering of environmental samples for DNA sequencing to study the changing distribution of microbial life. Another George Church project. (via timoreilly at Twitter) We Are All African Now -- a great article about our genetic history and the computational genomics that makes it possible. (via Tim Bray) Standing Out In The Crowd -- OSCON keynote... read more

by Nat Torkington on  Ignite OSCON -- 56m of video from Ignite OSCON. They're all great, but Dan Meyer remains the highlight for me. gheat -- a maptile server in Python, delivering heatmaps to be superimposed on Google Maps. Handy for visualization fiends. CaDNAno -- open source software for design of 3-dimensional DNA origami. One of George Church's projects. I love the combination... read more

by Robert Kaye on  Two of my favorite presenters, Ben Collins-Sussman and Brad Fitzpatrick, did an OSCON session on "Programmer Insecurity and the Genius Myth." Brad and Ben talked about how programmers' insecurities cause all manner of troubles in programming projects, and then presented a number of tips for how to avoid these problems. They also asserted that there are very few genius... read more

by Robert Kaye on  At OSCON in 2006, I followed sessions that discussed how open source companies would fare when big corporations come in. Back then there were only a handful of examples of big companies purchasing small open source companies. Three years later, we've witnessed MySQL AB get swallowed by Sun, only to have Sun be swallowed by Oracle. Now there are... read more

by Robert Kaye on  Kirrily Robert gave the first keynote speech this morning, entitled "Standing Out in the Crowd." She spoke about the gender imbalance in open source and shared her experiences working on open source projects that have a higher-than-average percentage of women participants. She laid out statistics about the current gender balance of various projects, looked at trends in open source,... read more

by Robert Kaye on  I dove right in to OSCON by attending Jono Bacon's "Building Belonging" community talk. Jono, who is the community manager for Ubuntu, started out his presentation by asking what communities can do to build and improve the sense of belonging that people have in their community. After talking a little about what belonging means, he threw out the first concrete... read more

by Nat Torkington on  Bring the duct-tape, your head will explode. Here's the line-up for tomorrow's Ignite OSCON, starting 7.30pm in Exhibit Hall 3 of the San Jose Convention Center. (It's just before the 8.30pm Google-O'Reilly Open Source Awards) Jesse Vincent (@obra) - Hacking the Kindle The Kindle is not a read-only platform. One intrepid explorer reports back from the frontier. Skud (@skud) -... read more

by James Turner on  News providers, like most content providers, are interested in having their content seen by as many people as possible. But unlike many news organizations, whose primary concern may be monetizing their content, National Public Radio is interested in turning it into a resource for people to use in new and novel ways as well. Daniel Jacobson is in charge making that content available to developers and end users in a wide variety of formats, and has been doing so using an Open API that NPR developed specifically for that purpose. Daniel will talk about how the project is going at OSCON next week, here's a preview of what he'll be talking about. read more

by James Turner on  With Open Source now considered an accepted part of the software industry, some people are starting to wonder if we can't bring the same degree of openness and innovation into government. Danese Cooper, who is actively involved in the open source community through her work with the Open Source Initiative and Apache, as well as working as an R wonk for Revolution Computing, would love to see the government become more open. Part of that openness is being able to access and interpret the mass of data that the government collects, something Cooper thinks R would be a great tool for. She'll be talking about R and Open Government at O'Reilly's Open Source Conference, OSCON. read more

by James Turner on  The Human Genome Project took X years to fully sequence a single human's genetic information. At Washington University's Genome Center, they can now do one in a week. But when you're generating that much data, just keeping track of it can become a major challenge in itself. David Dooling is in charge of managing the massive output of the Center's herd of gene sequencing machines, and making it available to researchers inside the Center and around the world. He'll be speaking at OSCON, O'Reilly's Open Source Conference, on how he uses open source tools to keep things under control, and he agreed to give us an overview of how the field of genomics is evolving. read more

by James Turner on  There's a persistent perception that open source software is being ignored in the enterprise, that they fear it and it ends up being more costly to deploy than proprietary solutions. That's certainly the perception that some major software vendors would like you to have. But it's Jeffrey Hammond's job to dispel those perceptions, at least when they aren't accurate. As an analyst for Forrester Research, Hammond covers the world of software development as well as Web 2.0 and rich internet applications, so he sees how open source is being used on a daily basis. He'll be speaking at OSCON, O'Reilly's Open Source Conference, talking about the true cost of using open source, and he gave us a sample of what's going on in the enterprise at the moment. read more

by James Turner on  Think about Wikipedia, what some consider the most complete general survey of human knowledge we have at the moment. Now imagine squeezing it down to fit comfortably on an 8GB iPhone. Sound daunting? Well, that's just what Patrick Collison's iPhone application does. App Store purchasers of Collison's open source application can browser and search the full text of Wikipedia when stuck in a plane, or trapped in the middle of nowhere (or as defined by AT&T coverage...) Collison will be presenting a talk on how he did it at OSCON, O'Reilly's Open Source conference at the end of July, and he spent some time talking to me about it recently. read more

by Allison Randal on  OSCON 2009 is just around the corner, this year in San Jose, California. When I spoke at the Silicon Valley Linux Users Group last night, they asked me for a few highlights. It's tough to pick from over 200 sessions, all the best-of-the-best out of 800 submissions (and there were at least 100 more I wish I could have fit... read more

by Suzanne Axtell on  

Open source technologies are some of the most economical choices you can make for your business and we've just made it a little easier to get the info you need to maximize the value open source affords: The early registration discount for the O'Reilly Open Source Convention has been extended to June 23, 2009!

At OSCON 2009, you'll explore how to migrate from expensive commercial installations, the latest innovations in network administration designed to increase efficiency, ways to keep your system scaled and optimized for time-saving performance, and much, much more.

In just five short days, OSCON packs in the richest, most diverse open source content around. Hundreds of experts lead sessions in over 20 tracks, offering hype-free guidance to give your business a solid footing for success, from cloud computing and Linux to Python, web apps, and beyond.

OSCON takes place in San Jose, California at the McEnery Convention Center. Join with nearly 3,000 other programmers, developers, engineers, admins, educators, and managers from around the world for a nowhere-but-OSCON learning and networking experience.

Be sure to save by signing up for OSCON before the early registration discount ends on June 23, 2009.

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by Suzanne Axtell on  

What are the opportunities that today's economic climate creates for open source? Register now for OSCON to take part in this and many other conversations around the business of open source when OSCON 2009 convenes July 20-24 in San Jose, California.

3,000 developers, programmers, sys admins, hackers, enterprise developers and managers, IT managers and CxOs, entrepreneurs, activists, and trainers will gather to sharpen their skills, network with experts and fellow users, and learn the latest advances in open source, including the savings and the profits it can hold for us all.

Due to demand, , so now there are over 20 topics you can follow: Administration, Apache, Business, Cloud Computing, Databases, Design & Usability, Desktop Applications, Emerging Topics, Fundamentals, Government, Java, Legal, Linux, Mobile, Mozilla, People, Perl, PHP, Programming, Python, Ruby, Security, Ubuntu, and Web Applications.

Just a few of the over-200 stellar OSCON 2009 speakers include: Rafael Almeria (Xerox), Matt Asay (Alfresco), Jono Bacon (Canonical), Deborah Bryant (OSU Open Source Lab), Douglas Crockford (Yahoo!), Greg Elin (Sunlight Foundation), Richard Fontana (Red Hat, Inc.), Yehuda Katz (Engine Yard Inc.), Federico Lucifredi (SUSE team, Novell), Erik Meijer (Microsoft), Chris Messina (OpenID Foundation), Stormy Peters (GNOME Foundation), Simon Phipps (Sun Microsystems), Karen Sandler (Software Freedom Law Center), Brian Shire (Facebook), Steve Souders (Google), and many, many more.

If you're taking on new responsibilities or switching gears to work with new priorities, you'll find out how others are meeting these same challenges and staying competitive at OSCON. Be sure to register before June 2 for OSCON to take advantage of early registration savings.

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by Brady Forrest on  I will be hosting an Ignite at Google IO on 5/27 from 4:15-5:15 at Moscone. I did an open call for speakers and I'm happy to announce the following will be joining me onstage: Leo Dirac - Transhumanism Morality Why only geeks and hippies can save the world. Michael Driscoll - Hacking Big Data with the Force of Open... read more

by Brady Forrest on  Ignite is coming to Google I/O later this month. On May 27th, the first afternoon of the conference, I'll be hosting an Ignite at the Moscone Center. As with all Ignites each speaker will only get 20 slides that each auto-advance every 15 seconds for a total of five minutes. We'll be looking for talks that geeks will like.... read more

by Allison Randal on  The 5th annual Google-O'Reilly Open Source Awards will be hosted at OSCON 2009 in San Jose, CA. The awards recognize individual contributors who have demonstrated exceptional leadership, creativity, and collaboration in the development of Open Source Software. Past recipients for 2005-2008 include Angela Byron, Karl Fogel, Pamela Jones, Gerv Markham, Chris Messina, David Recordon, Doc Searls, and Andrew Tridgell. The... read more

by Artur Bergman on  In an editorial for Forbes, Tim called for the the opening of the Kindle, else it will slowly turn obsolete. Since I love my Kindle, I am happy that my friend, Jesse Vincent, a long time open source contributor and OSCON speaker, is trying to open the Kindle. (You might remember him as the guy who discovered Amazon's USB-network easter-egg... read more

by Jackie Hadley, Communications Associate on  

Five Finalists Present On Stage for Real-Time Feedback from Judges and Audience Attendees

SAN FRANCISCO, April 2 - O'Reilly Media, Inc. and TechWeb, co-producers of Web 2.0 Expo, Web 2.0 Summit and Gov 2.0 Summit, today announced the People's Choice winner of the Launch Pad startup program. Nitobi's PhoneGap, one of five on-stage presenters, was selected as the People's Choice Winner on Thursday, April 2 during Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco at Moscone West.

Launch Pad, sponsored this year by Microsoft BizSpark, is a unique public forum for unveiling distinctive new companies and products. Web 2.0 Expo hosts the Launch Pad program to showcase the best Web 2.0 startups and provide a unique public forum for unveiling new companies and products. Web 2.0 Expo is the leading global gathering of developers, designers, marketers, and business professionals building the next generation Web. For more information visit: www.web2expo.com/sf.

Read the full press release.

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by Jackie Hadley, Communications Associate on  

Sebastopol, CA, April 3, 2009 — Open source offers business a lifeline to economic survival, even as the economy crashes and companies flounder. The O'Reilly Open Source Convention shows the power of open source to help businesses rise above the competition in this daunting economic climate. Open source continues to thrive and grow because the open source community continues to find better ways, particularly to increase ease of use and lower the cost of deployment, to save technology costs in your organization. OSCON is the premier place to learn the latest advances and connect with leaders in this community. Registration has opened for the 11th OSCON, scheduled for July 20-24, 2009 in the new location of the San Jose McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California. The early registration period, lasting until June 2, offers advance savings.

Program Chairs Allison Randal and Edd Dumbill reviewed almost 800 proposals in order to plan the conference around tracks for Linux, PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby, Java, Mobile, Databases, Desktop Applications, Web Applications, Administration, Security, People, Business, and Emerging Topics.

Read the full press release.

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by Jackie Hadley, Communications Associate on  

Launch Pad Finalists to Receive Real-Time Feedback from Industry Experts

SAN FRANCISCO - March 27, 2009 - O’Reilly Media, Inc. and TechWeb, co-producers of Web 2.0 Expo, Web 2.0 Summit and Gov 2.0 Summit, today announced the five companies chosen to participate in this year’s Launch Pad, sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark. Launch Pad, which takes place Thursday, April 2 during Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco at the Moscone West, is a unique public forum for unveiling distinctive new companies and products. Web 2.0 Expo is the leading global gathering of developers, designers, marketers, and business professionals building the next generation Web. For more information visit: www.web2expo.com/sf.

Web 2.0 Expo’s judging panel of industry experts includes: Anand Iyer of Microsoft BizSpark, Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb and Matt Marshall of Venture Beat. Evaluating each Launch Pad company’s value to their market, the judges selected five finalists to present for five minutes in front of Web 2.0 Expo’s cutting edge audience. John Battelle, Founder/Chairman/CEO of Federated Media and Program Chair of Web 2.0 Summit will emcee the program as the following five companies present on the main stage of Web 2.0 Expo on Thursday, April 2 at 1:15 pm.

Read the full press release.

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by Sarah Milstein on  Next week is Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, a four-day mind meld for programmers, practitioners and novitiates. The Expo is co-produced by O'Reilly and TechWeb, who, for the third year in a row, are devoting resources and a row of rooms to Web2Open--a free, two-day unconference that anyone can attend. The Open, April 1 and 2 at Moscone West,... read more

by Brady Forrest on  Ignite is coming back to San Francisco. On April First, the second night of the Web 2.0 Expo, I'll be hosting an Ignite at the Mezzanine (just four short blocks away from Moscone). As with all Ignites each speaker will only get 20 slides that each auto-advance every 15 seconds for a total of five minutes. Folks with a... read more

by Jackie Hadley, Communications Associate on  

Event Showcases Everything from Major Product Announcements to New Service Launches and More

SAN FRANCISCO - March 23, 2009 -O'Reilly Media, Inc. and TechWeb today preview a sampling of exhibitor announcements to be made at Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco, happening March 31 - April 3 this year at Moscone West. Web 2.0 Expos are the leading annual events that bring people, ideas, products, and companies together to build stronger Web 2.0 communities, shaping the next-generation Web. Registration is now open at www.web2expo.com/sf.

"The Web is the innovation engine of our troubled economy," said Jennifer Pahlka, Web 2.0 Expo General Manager and Co-Chair. "The companies making announcements at Web 2.0 Expo are building out a rich and healthy ecosystem on the Web, helping consumers and businesses find both efficiencies and opportunities. These companies are modeling growth and innovation during a tumultuous time."

Read the full press release.

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by Jackie Hadley, Communications Associate on  

Sebastopol, CA, March 12, 2009 - O'Reilly Media, Inc., and TechWeb, co-producers of Web 2.0 Expo, Web 2.0 Summit and Gov 2.0 Summit, today announced the lineup of keynotes scheduled for Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco 2009, themed this year around the concept of "the Power of Less." Captains of industry such as Microsoft's Stephen Elop, and Google's Vic Gundotra will share the stage with innovative startups, thought leaders, and creative geniuses. The event takes place March 31-April 3, 2009 at the Moscone West Convention Center. More information available at: http://www.web2expo.com/sf.

"The power of less can mean how to get more done with fewer resources, it can mean the attractive power of simplicity, and it can mean all the ways in which constraints drive creativity and opportunity," said Jennifer Pahlka, conference co-chair of Web 2.0 Expo. "We wanted to explore how this principle manifests across all sizes and types of organizations and many different roles, in order to spur innovation and help attendees thrive during the downturn."

Read the full press release.

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by Nat Torkington on  Four Tuesday quickies: The Technology Behind Coraline -- 3D stop-motion movie used a 3D printer to make the dolls and things like drops of water. Some OSCON Proposal Tips (Alex Russell) -- good advice for anyone submitting a talk to a technical conference. Oscar Predictions You Can Bet On -- Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight turns his attention to the Oscars.... read more

by Jackie Hadley, Communications Associate on  

Registration Now Open

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 16 -- O'Reilly Media, Inc. and TechWeb, producers of Web 2.0 Expo and Web 2.0 Summit, today announced the return of Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco, the annual event for developers, designers, marketers, and business professionals building the next generation Web. This year, Web 2.0 Expo centers on the idea of "the Power of Less," exploring how the principles of Web 2.0 can turn constraints into opportunities. Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco is March 31 - April 3, 2009 at Moscone West.

Web 2.0 events have consistently inspired and educated this industry through memorable and market-moving programs. "The Web is serving as the innovation engine for an economy in peril," said Jennifer Pahlka, co-chair of Web 2.0 Expo, "and the recent slate of Web 2.0 programs, including the sold- out Web 2.0 Summit in November, attest to the energy and excitement of the community. There is enormous opportunity available to those willing to embrace the Web as a platform."

Read the full press release.

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by Jackie Hadley, Communications Associate on  

O'Reilly Open Source Convention Calls for Innovation
OSCON Proposals Invited

Sebastopol, CA—Dec 15 2008—Now that big business has grasped the principles of open source, the open source community can get down to business. New times demand new ideas, and OSCON, the O'Reilly Open Source Convention, has opened its call for innovation. O'Reilly Media and program chairs Allison Randal and Edd Dumbill invite proposals for tutorials, sessions, and panels for OSCON, happening July 20 - 24, 2009, in San Jose, CA.

"Accomplishing great things with limited resources is the open source way of life," says Allison. "We hope you'll join us and share your solutions. We live in a time of enormous challenges: economic, environmental, political, and social. Open source software and the open source community have much to offer as we work to solve the world's problems, to keep moving toward a better future."

Read the full press release.

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by Jackie Hadley, Communications Associate on  

Ryan Paul :

Fortunately, I'm not the only open source software enthusiast who doesn't buy into what I view as Stallman's hysteria and defeatism. Earlier this year, tech publisher Tim O'Reilly discussed the issue during a keynote presentation at the annual O'Reilly Open Source Conference (OSCON). O'Reilly acknowledged the challenges posed by cloud computing, but he also pointed out that the vibrant open source software community has already started exploring experimental solutions

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by Allison Randal on  The official word is out, OSCON 2009 will be moving from Portland, Oregon to San Jose, California. We've received significant positive feedback on the move, and messages of welcome from Bay Area open source contacts, but also some messages of disappointment from the local Portland open source community, and from non-local attendees who enjoyed visiting Portland every year. We're also... read more

by Jackie Hadley, Communications Associate on  

Sebastopol, CA- O'Reilly's Tenth Annual OSCON Explores Open Source's Dynamic Future-
Open Source Community Prepares for Challenges and Opportunities Ahead

More than 3,000 developers, entrepreneurs, and visionaries attended the 10th annual OSCON in Portland, on July 21-25, and they left knowing that the open source community is stronger than ever.

Program chairs Allison Randal, Edd Dumbill, and the OSCON program committee chose from more than 700 proposals and produced five full days of stirring talks and practical demonstrations at the cutting edge of technological and commercial innovation. Rich in content and inspiration, the convention featured the key players and issues influencing open source today, and it explored the greatest potential for open source tomorrow.

Read full press release.

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by Jackie Hadley, Communications Associate on  

Ryan Paul of ARS on his experience at OSCON 2008:

The event, which started ten years ago as a venue for bringing together Perl enthusiasts, has grown into one of the most important open source conventions in the United States.

Read all Ryan's coverage at OSCON.

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by Jackie Hadley, Communications Associate on  

Paul Krill writes about what OSCON had to say about mobile computing:

The iPhone attracted attention at the conference. An audience member during a morning keynote presentation event asked why the open source world has not done anything as "insanely great" as iPhone.

Read more.

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by Jackie Hadley, Communications Associate on  

Sean Michael Kerner sums up OSCON 2008:

Tim O'Reilly (you know the guy who runs the big tech publisher) is still bullish on the prospect of open source. After 10 years of running the OSCON conference he still sees innovation on the horizon.

Read more.

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by Jackie Hadley, Communications Associate on  

Paul Krill reports on the Open Web Foundation announcement at OSCON 2008:

The Open Web Foundation, a non-profit organization intended to help create an "Open Web," was announced Thursday at the O'Reilly Open Source Conference (OSCON) in Portland, Ore. Specifically, the organization is dedicated to the development and protection of non-proprietary specifications for Web technologies. The effort was announced by David Recordon of blogging tools maker Six Apart.

Read more.

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by Jackie Hadley, Communications Associate on  

Esther Schindler Recaps OSCON 2008 and Tim O'Reilly's Keynote Address:

While celebrating the many accomplishments of free software, O'Reilly put most of his attention on the new challenges where open source could-and in his opinion should-make a difference. And he brought several people on stage to back up his points. "We have to pay attention to the real consequences to the wave we've unleashed," he said.

Read more.

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by Maureen Jennings, Conferences Publicist on  

David Miller came to OSCON and interviewed Jim Zemlin, Raven Zachary, and Rick Turoczy:

It's open source time again in Portland: the Open Source Convention, or OSCON, is back in town. Of course, you could argue that every day is open source day in Portland. The inventor of the wiki lives here. So does Linus Torvalds of Linux fame. As do a number of companies based on open source architecture, like the Collaborative Software Initiative.

LISTEN TO "Open Source City"

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by Maureen Jennings, Conferences Publicist on  

Tim Bray offers more notes on his OSCON Keynote:

Here are all the missing pieces, should you want to watch it (only 15 minutes, remember); plus a little extra commentary.

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by Nat Torkington on  Some things I learned about at the Django/Python meetup in downtown Portland during OSCON: JS Bridge: a Python to Javascript bridge for all Mozilla applications, still under very active development (i.e., changing daily). 960.gs: a grid framework for Javascript (replacing Blueprint CSS) with a naming scheme that makes prototyping designs a lot less painful. Dojo has Django Templates: I take... read more

by Maureen Jennings, Conferences Publicist on  

AshMUG member John Clark soaks in the best of O’Reilly’s convention in his special guest column.

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by Maureen Jennings, Conferences Publicist on  

Esther Schindler came home from OSCON with thoughts on growing the size of the pool in open-source development communities. And it's all upbeat news.

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by Maureen Jennings, Conferences Publicist on  

Michael Dory, Adam Simon, and Scott Varland of Socialbomb presented a tutorial on Arduino hacking at last month's O'Reilly Open Source Convention:

Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It's intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments.

In this tutorial, participants will learn how to create devices for sensing and communicating with the physical world using the Arduino platform.

Read the rest of the tutorial.

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by Maureen Jennings, Conferences Publicist on  

Our good friend Ricky Montalvo and his crew shot some great footage at OSCON. Check out their coverage and conversations here. Fishsticks?

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by Maureen Jennings, Conferences Publicist on  

Andrew Savikas, chair of the O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference, on The Times and Derek Gottfrid's presentation at OSCON:

But there's something going on at the Times that probably won't make it to Silicon Alley Insider, much less the mainstream business press, and it's something that's starting to make me think the Times just might succeed in adapting to the changing rules of the media and publishing game (though there will almost certainly be many more casualties before it's over).

So what's the Times doing that's so important? They're hacking.

Read the rest of the story.

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by Maureen Jennings, Conferences Publicist on  

Slashdot on some of OSCON's greatest hits:

An anonymous reader writes "Infoweek wraps last week's event with Inside The OSCON 2008 Conference, which pulls together interviews with Mark Shuttleworth, Linux Foundation's Jim Zemlin, MySQL's Zach Urlocker and Sam Ramji, who directs Microsoft's Open Source Lab. Best quotes: 'We will make a significant attempt to elevate the Linux desktop to the point where it is as good or better than Apple,' from Shuttleworth; and 'If I would start a business tomorrow I'd do it in the netbook marketplace. I'd build a dead-simple $200 device that targets sports fans, women over forty,' from Zemlin."

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by Maureen Jennings, Conferences Publicist on  

Serdar Yegulalp brings all his OSCON coverage together.

We round up our coverage of the open source OSCON 2008 conference. Don't miss Q&As with Ubuntu's Mark Shuttleworth and The Linux Foundation's Jim Zemlin. Check out the photo gallery, too.

See all of Serdar's terrific coverage here.

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by Maureen Jennings, Conferences Publicist on  

While he couldn't attend the conference in person, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols has been following the news about OSCON and thinks that OSCON displayed the friendliest things ever seen to come out of Microsoft towards open source.

Read the rest of Steven's thoughts.

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by Maureen Jennings, Conferences Publicist on  

Dana Blankenhorn categorizes the OSCON crowd, i.e. tribe, as visioneers, geeks, suits, wannabees, and users in this overview.

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by Maureen Jennings, Conferences Publicist on  

At the OSCON open source convention in Portland last week, Neuros CEO Joe Born explained how Linux-based embedded devices will bring open source to the set-top market and the consumer electronics space. He also demonstrated how to build applications for the Neuros OSD, his company's programmable DVR product.

Read the rest of Ryan Paul's analysis here.

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by Maureen Jennings, Conferences Publicist on  

While all the other “nytimers” are running around having interesting discussions, I thought I’d do a quick blog post.

Yesterday’s OSCON sessions were great overall, but there were a couple that really stood out for me.

Read about the sessions that most interested Nick Thuesen.

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by Maureen Jennings, Conferences Publicist on  

Serdar brings us all the way to Friday:

There's a part of me that thinks Sam Ramji, director of Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)'s Open Source Lab, has the worst imaginable job at Microsoft. But he doesn't see it that way: Where other people would see such a position as being crushed between two wholly opposed forces (Microsoft and open source), Sam sees it as a way to build a bridge that didn't exist before -- and maybe to transform Microsoft all the more from within.

Read the whole story

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by Maureen Jennings, Conferences Publicist on  

Aside from having one of the niftier names in the industry, Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier has a pretty nifty job, too: He's the openSUSE Community Manager at Novell (NSDQ: NOVL), where he oversees the folks that help make what will ultimately turn into the next version of SUSE Linux Enterprise. I grabbed a few minutes of his time to follow up on things I'd talked to him about back at theRed Hat (NYSE: RHT) Summit.

Thursday, and the prolific Serdar continues his coverage.

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by Maureen Jennings, Conferences Publicist on  

On Wednesday I sat down at OSCON with a slew of people from Sun Microsystems to talk about key parts of their empire, both new and old. First up was Zack Urlocker of MySQL (whom I'd observed at the Monday Participate 08 panel), one of the newest additions to the Sun galaxy, and an acquisition that's caused a great deal of worry amongst existing MySQL users.

Serdar reaches the middle of OSCON in this Wednesday report.

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by Nat Torkington on  The wonderful Gregg Pollack, of Rails Envy fame, wandered the halls and speaker room at OSCON with his video camera. He asked a pile of speakers to summarize their talks in 30 seconds or less, and has compiled the results into "OSCON in 37 Minutes". It's well worth watching even if you were at the conference—as anyone who's attended knows,... read more

by Maureen Jennings, Conferences Publicist on  

Let's rewind a bit. My Monday afternoon at OSCON 2008 was taken up by "Participate 08," a Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)-sponsored discussion panel chaired by a whole panoply of folks -- including, yes, an open source liaison from Microsoft. The whole thing was neither a "corporate apologia" (as one wag put it from the audience) nor a pile-on where Microsoft got the worst of it. Their approach was only one of a diversity of perspectives, and sometimes not even the most eyebrow-raising.

Serdar Yegulalp continues his OSCON reports.

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by Maureen Jennings, Conferences Publicist on  

Mobile computing has become a dominant focus in the open source arena, a theme on prominent display at a major open source technology convention last week.

The O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) in Portland, Ore., highlighted mobile efforts along with Linux, Web computing, and languages. Mention of various mobile efforts abounded, including LiMo (Linux Mobile), Intel's Moblin, and the Google-backed Android platform.

Read more of Paul Krill's summary of Mobile at OSCON.

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by Maureen Jennings, Conferences Publicist on  

By most estimates, Linux and other open-source operating systems represent about 1 percent of the PC market. But on mobile devices, Linux is growing fast. As of 2007, more than 18 percent of all embedded devices--from cell phones to PDAs to e-book readers--ran a Linux-based OS, while less than 17 percent ran embedded Windows. So it's no great surprise that this year's OSCON open-source conference is leading off with a new program focused specifically on mobile gadgets.

Read more of Robert Strohmeyer's coverage.

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by Maureen Jennings, Conferences Publicist on  

Tim O'Reilly's OSCON keynote encouraged the open-source community to pay attention to three main challenges: Cloud computing, the open programmable Web and open mobile. Another speaker exhorted attendees to get involved in another larger effort.

Read more of Esther Schindler's report.

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by Maureen Jennings, Conferences Publicist on  

Serdar Yegulalp writes, "I'm still sorting through the last bits of my OSCON trip notes, but one striking conversation I had was with Byrne Reese of SixApart about people who violate open source licensing of for-pay editions of OSS apps. Do we sic the open source cops on them?"

Read their answer here.

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by Robert Kaye on  Today was the last day of OSCON and I'm in the mood to think about the conference and share some of my random observations that didn't make it into any of my other blog posts. First up is a comment that Brian Aker of MySQL fame made during the "Tim O'Reilly Interviews Monty Widenius & Brian Aker" interview: Microsoft... read more

by Robert Kaye on  After enjoying Ben Collins-Sussman and Brian Fitzpatrick's comments on the anti-patterns panel yesterday, I decided to peek into their "Do You Believe in the Users?" presentation. Ben and Fitz started the presentation with "Successful software requires more than just technical effort." as their premise and then went on to build on that premise. Ben and Fitz used the analogy... read more

by Maureen Jennings, Conferences Publicist on  

Serdar Yegulalp talks with Jim Hemlin about the potential he sees in the cloud.

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by Robert Kaye on  Some of you may know Jesse Vincent as the guy who hands out snarky t-shirts like last year's "My free software runs your business" shirt. But today I got to see Jesse's more serious side when I attended his "Prophet, your path out of the cloud" presentation. He started his session by outlining why cloud computing may not be... read more

by Maureen Jennings, Conferences Publicist on  

Paul Krill writes about Sun's announcements at OSCON.

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by Maureen Jennings, Conferences Publicist on  

Today at OSCON, David Recordon announced the Open Web Foundation, an organization that will help the creation and acceptance of Open Web.

The news was immediately picked up by:
Washington Post.com
TechCrunch.com
TechMeme
ReadWriteWeb
CNet.com

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by Maureen Jennings, Conferences Publicist on  

At the OSCON show, Black Duck and Intel are offering better ways for open-source developers to accelerate software development and improve their parallel processing capabilities.

Darryl Taft reports on more OSCON news.

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by Maureen Jennings, Conferences Publicist on  

"Proprietary software vendors, movie companies and the music industry aren't the only businesses that don't like pirates stealing, copying and reselling their CDs and DVDs.

It turns out that pirated software can also hurt the open-source community. When stolen proprietary software is used by consumers, that's a lost opportunity for open-source software makers to get their own software onto the computer hard drives of new users," writes Todd R. Weiss in his report on Louis Suarez-Potts' OSCON presentation.

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by Robert Kaye on  The second session of the day that really appealed to me was "An Open Source Project Called "Failure:" Community Antipatterns to Know and Avoid". When I saw that Ben and Fitz of subversion fame were joined by other open source heavy weights, I was sold on this panel. In this panel each member presented one anti-pattern in open source... read more

by Brady Forrest on  Today at OSCON, we'd like to announce the creation of the Open Web Foundation, an organizations that will help the creation and acceptance of As the web grows there is an increasing need for interoperability between sites. As Tim recently wrote: I believe that we're collectively working on an Internet Operating System, and that it will ultimately look more... read more

by Robert Kaye on  Its good to be back in Portland for my favorite geek convention: O'Reilly's Open Source Conference. The overcast sky in Portland is making it a little easier this year to focus on the plethora of excellent speakers and sessions. The first session to really grip and and speak to me was Rabble and Kellan's "Beyond REST? Building Data Services... read more

by Maureen Jennings, Conferences Publicist on  

Whether you call it a cellphone, a “Palmtop”, smartphone, or a converged device — pocket-sized computing devices took center stage at the first-ever O’Reilly Open Mobile Exchange held this week at Oscon 2008, in Portland, Oregon.

With more than 3 billion cellular users world-wide, “open” handheld devices promise to smash the stranglehold of proprietary systems — even invade the domain of desktop computers. In 2008 more users will access the internet via a mobile phone than PCs or laptops. The excitement and creativity was palpable. Open source mobile platforms have been introduced by The Limo Foundation, The Open Handset Alliance, Symbian and Open Moko. Topic of the day: global domination.
Sam Churchill's story continues here.

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by Maureen Jennings, Conferences Publicist on  

Matt Asay speculates on the predominance of Apple computers in the OSCON crowd.

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by Maureen Jennings, Conferences Publicist on  

Michael Halligan reports on his friends' session, "How to Run a User Group" and details the series of steps he learned from the panel.

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by Maureen Jennings, Conferences Publicist on  

"Speaking at the Open Mobile Exchange portion of the O'Reilly Open Source Conference (OSCON), Jim Zemlin, executive director of the foundation, touted the trends and technologies pushing Linux into a leadership position in mobile systems. He was followed by Jason Grigsby, web strategist at mobile and web design firm Cloud Four, who emphasised the coming influence of the mobile web but countered that developers are not yet ready for it." Read more of Paul Krill's article.

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by Maureen Jennings, Conferences Publicist on  

We loved reading Serdar Yegulalp's opinion on OSCON, especially since he started by saying, "O'Reilly knows how to treat their guests. Not only was the registration process wonderfully painless (+1 points), not only was there wireless throughout the convention center (+3 points), the tables in the lecture halls had power strips (+5). My notebook gets around 4-5 hours of battery life, but not having to run out of juice in the middle of a lecture is a huge help. (The giant Buddhist temple bell outside the convention center that rings "without warning" was another nice bonus.)"

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by Maureen Jennings, Conferences Publicist on  

I have attended the O'Reilly Open Mobile Exchange (OMX), which is a one-day event organized for the first time as part of the O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON2008). I came to OSCON primarily for OMX and I am glad I did -- it was a wonderful event full of useful information -- many thanks to the organizers and speakers. Here are some highlights with comments...

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by Robert Kaye on  

Its good to be back in Portland for my favorite geek convention: O'Reilly's Open Source Conference. The overcast sky in Portland is making it a little easier this year to focus on the plethora of excellent speakers and sessions. The first session to really grip and and speak to me was Rabble and Kellan's "Beyond REST? Building Data Services with XMPP PubSub" presentation.

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by Artur Bergman on  

I am a Perl hacker. I have written parts of the core, created CPAN modules and written tons of perl code. In fact I am addicted to it ; or rather, CPAN. I have been wanting to play around with Google App Engine, but I haven't had time to get up to speed in Python. Today at OSCON I met up with Brad Fitzpatrick, who told me he had permission from Google to talk about and work on a Perl on App Engine project.

He makes it clear that,

I'm happy to announce that the Google App Engine team has given me permission to talk about a 20% project inside Google to to add Perl support to App Engine.  To be clear:  I'm not a member of the App Engine team and the App Engine team is not promising to add Perl support.  They're just saying that I (along with other Perl hackers here at Google) are now allowed to work on this 20% project of ours out in the open where other Perl hackers can help us out, should you be so inclined.

The plan is to harden Perl (one layer of defense in App Engine's hardened environment); implement Protocol Buffers and stubs of the backend services, so people can write App Engine applications on their local servers.

There is more information at Brad's LiveJournal, as well as the the Perl-AppEngine project. Capturing the creative spirit here at OSCON, Brad and I hacked together a new module that emulates a protected environment, Sys::Protect (generally good idea for any web application).

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by Maureen Jennings, Conferences Publicist on  

"One of the reasons that I attend O’Reilly’s Open Source Conference (OSCON) is that, more so than others I go to, it gets into the intellectual and—dare I say—philosophical underpinnings of things as well as the things themselves," says Gordon Haff in this thoughtful piece on the issues raised by the Participate 08 panel.

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by Maureen Jennings, Conferences Publicist on  

O'Reilly author Brian K. Jones monitors the BOF Board, reports on the "Python in 3 hours" session, and shares more Portland tips.

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by Maureen Jennings, Conferences Publicist on  

Sam Churchill gives a great overview of OSCON.

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by Maureen Jennings, Conferences Publicist on  

"Jim Zemlin of the Linux Foundation says Linux is the platform of choice for the mobile and embedded platforms. Zemlin will speak on the state of mobile Linux at OSCON," writes Darryl Taft.

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by Brady Forrest on  Dopplr, the traveler's social network, has added events. In this initial implementation you have to use one of the supplied URLs. Here are the URLs for the next six O'Reilly conferences. OSCON - http://dplr.it/oscon08 EuroRails - http://dplr.it/eurorailsconf08 Web 2.0 Expo NYC - http://dplr.it/w2exponyc Web 2.0 Expo Europe - http://dplr.it/w2expoeurope Web 2.0 Summit - http://dplr.it/w2summit08 MoneyTech - http://dplr.it/moneytech09 If you... read more

by Maureen Jennings, Conferences Publicist on  

Roberto Galoppini on what's he's looking forward to at OSCON.

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by Maureen Jennings, Conferences Publicist on  

"Portvangelist" Rick Turoczy welcomes OSCON attendees with inside info on his city.

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by Suzanne Axtell, Communications Gal on  

James Turner, contributing editor to O'Reilly Online, interviews Brian Aker, Director of Technology for MySQL. Brian is the author of Running Weblogs with Slash. He's also leading a tutorial at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention, July 21-25, in Portland, Oregon, titled "Memcached and MySQL: Everything You Need to Know."

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by Allison Randal on  One great feature of the new conference website software O'Reilly is using this year (developed by my co-chair Edd Dumbill) is the "Personal Schedule". When you're surfing the schedule or any list of talks you can click the star beside it to add it to a private list. During the conference you can quickly view your list to make sure... read more

by Allison Randal on  One great feature of the new conference website software O'Reilly is using this year (developed by my co-chair Edd Dumbill) is the "Personal Schedule". When you're surfing the schedule or any list of talks you can click the star beside it to add it to a private list. During the conference you can quickly view your list to make sure... read more

by Suzanne Axtell, Communications Gal on  

OMX, the first-ever O'Reilly Open Mobile Exchange, is for everyone involved in building out the open source mobile space, including platforms, standards, applications, hardware, integration, browsers, location, and services. This full day of insightful conversations, demos, technical presentations, and panel discussions brings together innovators from a broad swath of perspectives and backgrounds to share ideas and foster new thinking across technologies.

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by Avila Reese - PR Contributor on  

Yardena Arar highlights the coolest startups, innovators and exhibitors on the Expo show floor:

The Web 2.0 Expo at San Francisco's Moscone Center West, which wraps up today, doesn't take up a huge amount of space: Startups predominate, and most don't have money for big flashy booths. But there's more cool new technology per square foot here than at many big trade shows.

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by Suzanne Axtell, Communications Gal on  

OSCON program co-chair Allison Randal has put out the call for nominations for the Open Source Awards, presented by O'Reilly and Google at OSCON.

The awards recognize individual contributors who have demonstrated exceptional leadership, creativity, and collaboration in the development of Open Source Software. Past recipients for 2005-2007 include Doc Searls, Jeff Waugh, Gerv Markham, Julian Seward, David Heinemeier Hansson, Karl Fogel, David Recordon, and Paul Vixie.

Deadline is May 15. Send your nominations to osawards AT oreilly DOT com.

Another deadline to keep in mind is the early registration discount--you'll save up to $250 if you register by June 2.

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by Allison Randal on  For the 4th year running, Google and O'Reilly will present a set of Open Source Awards at OSCON 2008. The awards recognize individual contributors who have demonstrated exceptional leadership, creativity, and collaboration in the development of Open Source Software. Past recipients for 2005-2007 include Doc Searls, Jeff Waugh, Gerv Markham, Julian Seward, David Heinemeier Hansson, Karl Fogel, David Recordon, and... read more

by Suzanne Axtell, Communications Gal on  

With co-producers TechWeb, we've put out a news release:

Industry Leaders Publicly Unveil Products and Services--TechWeb (formerly CMP) and O'Reilly Media, Inc., today preview big product and market announcements to be made at the upcoming Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco, April 22-25, 2008 at Moscone West. Web 2.0 Expos are the leading global gatherings of developers, designers, marketers, and business professionals building the next generation Web.

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by Nat Torkington on  Via Michal Migurski's delicious feed, I found Disks Have Become Tapes, a fascinating set of observations about why MapReduce is so successful. In short (as observed by Doug Cutting at OSCON last year), MapReduce hits the sweet spot by operating... read more

by Nat Torkington on  Yahoo! launch world's largest production Hadoop installation (Yahoo!). Hadoop is the open source implementation of Google's map-reduce system of parallel programming. For background on Hadoop, see Doug Cutting and Eric Baldeschwieler's the OSCON 2007 talks. Author of this article... read more

by Nat Torkington on  We've been watching synthetic biology closely since Drew Endy keynoted on open source biology at OSCON back in 2005 (audio here). You might have caught Quinn Norton's series of posts on Drew and his work (parts 1, 2, 3, 4,... read more

by Allison Randal on  The call for participation for the 2008 O'Reilly Open Source Convention is out. This year marks the 10th anniversary of OSCON, of the Open Source Initiative, of Mozilla, and of the term "Open Source", so a huge celebration is in... read more

by Allison Randal on  At OSCON this summer, I was interviewed by Sam Ramji from Microsoft on the subject of open source and Microsoft's participation in the community. The video is live now on their open source labs site, Port 25.... read more

by Dawn Applegate on  

This is an interesting blog entry about events at OSCON and the notion of bringing Open Systems and Microsoft together....

When I describe my job as “helping Microsoft and open source to grow together,” I get a broad range of reactions from people outside and inside of Microsoft. These reactions have included sentiments along the lines of “that must be tough,” or “you must be a glutton for punishment” on occasion.

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