Sebastopol, CA, August 5, 2007—The O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON), held July 23-27 at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, Oregon brought together over 3,000 industry luminaries, developers, hackers, and business people to advance the discussion and share information surrounding open source computing.
The conference covered every area of the open source arena: Administration, Business, Databases, Emerging Topics, Java, Linux, People, Perl, PHP, Programming, Python, Ruby, Security, and Web Applications. A "united nations" of computing languages, attendees at OSCON were not only speaking in multiple technical languages, they were finding unique solutions to integrating tools seamlessly.
The first two days of the conference were devoted to tutorials on topics such as Taming Legacy Perl, Programming for OLPC, and Scalable Internet Architecture. The content provided at these hands-on tutorials had the halls of the Oregon Convention Center buzzing with information even before the official opening of the conference. The program was packed; attendees could choose from a staggering 80+ topics per day. Attendees took a deep breath and dove into the sessions providing a higher level of participation than in previous years. The seating areas were overflowing with discussions lasting long after sessions were finished. The speakers were both knowledgeable and well prepared and covered in-depth topics such as:
-"Mozilla Firefox and the Internet as an Open Platform," Mitchell Baker,
Mozilla Corporation
-"MySQL Internals and Kernel Developments," Michael (Monty) Widenius,
MySQL AB
-"Adventures in Copyright Reform," Karl Fogel, QuestionCopyright.org -"PHP Security: Fact and Fiction," Andi Gutmans, Zend Technologies, Inc. -"Prototype and Object prototype: JavaScript Power Tools," Amy Hoy, Lime
Wire, LLC
-"The LLVM Compiler System," Chris Lattner, Apple Inc.
-"Toward True Open Hardware," Timothy Miller, Open Graphics Project
-"OpenJDK: The First Eight Months," Mark Reinhold, Sun Microsystems -"Next Generation Version Control Systems," Sam Vilain, Catalyst IT (NZ) Ltd
As for keynote presentations, the roster was a veritable industry "who's who" ranging from Simon Peyton-Jones, Jimmy Wales, Tim O'Reilly, and Mark Shuttleworth. The keynote presenters covered every area of the open source debate and wrapped up by fielding audience questions. For more information and videos of their presentations, see the link below.
OSCON was also the location for the O'Reilly Radar Executive Briefing. This high level event was hosted by Tim O'Reilly and included industry leaders, visionaries, and pundits alike. Joining the full day discussion on the future of open source computing were Eben Moglen, Cory Doctorow, Karl Fogel, Christy Canida, Mike Shaver, and Matt Asay. The Executive Briefing was as much about conversation as formal presentation and was the spot to be seen and heard while at OSCON.
A key component to any O’Reilly conference is providing attendees an opportunity to network, share ideas, and information. Although there were many conference events running into the evening, a wonderful subculture of social gatherings was experienced at OSCON 2007 with parties and events being hosted by MySQL, Sun Microsystems, Intel, Mozilla, SourceForge, Powell's Technical Books author signing, and a tour of the Free Geek headquarters. At the conference itself, attendees could choose from the following events:
-The sponsor reception gave attendees another opportunity to network while enjoying
drinks and snacks
-Meet 'n' Geek: a structured mixer to encourage new connections -Hack sessions hosted by Open Solutions Alliance and Google
-OSCamp: an un-conference opportunity for people to discuss technology -Perl Foundation Auction & State of the Onion address featuring Larry Wall -Birds of a Feather sessions (BOFs) allowed any participant to lead an informal
evening gathering
Over the past nine years, OSCON has become the place to launch products, unveil strategies, and otherwise disseminate open source news. Sponsors and exhibitors were able to take advantage of an expo hall packed with attendees. OSCON 2007 sponsors included Intel, Sun Microsystems, Dell, HP, IBM, Mozilla, ActiveState, OSGeo, Google, Ingres, Novell, NYTimes.com, OpSource, Rearden Commerce, SnapLogic, Thoughtworks, and Ticketmaster. The O'Reilly OSCON Passport program encouraged participants to visit each and every booth, and resulted in hundreds of contestants vying for various prizes including the grand prize a R207i server provided by Silicon Mechanics.
Of the sponsors and exhibitors at the conference, a significant number took advantage of the opportunity to make announcements while at OSCON. Those included:
-Kysoh announced "Beta of Gadgets Manager Transforming Tux Droid in a
Real Smart Companion"
-ActiveState announced "Komodo IDE Demonstrates Advanced Code
Management and Development Capabilities"
-SpikeSource announced they will "Certify Open Source Applications on
Windows"
-Intel announced an "Open Source Project for Its Popular Multi-Core Development
Software"
-Ingres announced "Ingres Joins the Eclipse Foundation" -Silicon Mechanics launched "New Blade Server Platform" -Once:technologies announced "Once:technologies Contributes World's First
Browser-Based Web 2.0 Platform to the Open Source"
-Jive Software announced "Launches Innovative Developer Community for Clearspace" -O'Reilly introduced "beautifulcode at oreillynet.com" -Prentice Hall and SourceForge announced "New SourceForge Community
Press to Offer Definitive Information on Popular Open Source Projects" -Addison-Wesley/Prentice Hall/SAMS launched "New Ubuntu, AJAX, and
Ruby Books at OSCON"
-SnapLogic announced "Service-Enabled Applications Demonstrate Power
& Flexibility"
OSCON was also the place to acknowledge members of the technical community. There were four separate award events. The Google-O'Reilly Open Source awards honored the following industry contributors:
-Karl Fogel, Best Community Builder
-Pamela Jones, Best FUD Fighter
-Aaron Leventhal, Best Accessibility Architect
-David Recordon, Best Strategist
-Paul Vixie, Outstanding Lifetime Contributions
The Python Foundation gave the Frank Willison Award to Steve Holden, author of Python Web Programming. The Perl organization gave special White Camel awards to Allison Randal, Tim O'Reilly, and Norbert E. Gruner. Lastly, SourceForge.net Community Choice Awards were held at the nearby Jupiter Hotel.
>From sessions to hallway debates, OSCON 2007 was the place to be in the
>open source community. The momentum of this year's conference will
>continue into the program for next year. Program co-chair Allison
>Randal is anticipating another stellar gathering for 2008: "As open
>source moves into the mainstream, every year brings a dazzling array of
>new developments in technology, techniques and tools, business
>strategy, and the ways open source integrates with our lives. I'm
>looking forward to the year ahead in open source, and to hosting the
>most exciting innovations at OSCON 2008."
OSCON 2008 will take place July 21-25 at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, Oregon. The call for papers will take place in the January timeframe, and registration is expected to open in April.
For information about exhibiting or sponsoring at OSCON 2008 contact Sharon Cordesse at (707) 827-7065 or
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If you would like to form a media partnership with O'Reilly for an upcoming event, contact Avila Reese at (707) 827-7116 or
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