O´Reilly Open Source Convention Delivers the Benefits of Open Source

OSCON Speakers Stress Value of Open Source Technology During Tough Economic Times

Sebastopol, CA, August 11, 2009, Sebastopol, CA — Thousands of independent thinkers gathered at the 11th annual OSCON in San Jose, CA, July 20-24 to hear about the latest solutions and savings that open source technology can deliver. For five full days and nights, the open source convention featured hundreds of inspiring sessions and practical tutorials on a full range of languages and platforms. Faced with a daunting economic climate, OSCON attendees found the tools to give their businesses a competitive edge.

˝Accomplishing great things with limited resources is the open source way of life,˝ said Allison Randal, who put the program together with co-chair Edd Dumbill and a 25-member committee.

OSCON provided the road map to that way of life, with more than 300 presentations by the most advanced thinkers and practical teachers in the open source community. It also created a venue for conversation, where like minds could explore ideas, solve problems, debate solutions, and share insights. ˝OSCON conversations are the gasoline for my motivation engine,˝ blogged developer Nick Thuesen of the New York Times.

Convention keynoters urged the audience to realize the power of open source technology, not only to build a profitable business but also to solve some of the world´s most intractable problems:

- Tim O´Reilly, founder and CEO of O´Reilly Media, announced the formation of Open Source for America, an organization of more than 70 companies, academic institutions, communities, related groups and individuals that will serve as a unified voice for the promotion of open source software in the U.S. federal government arena.
- Kirrily Robert of Infotrope explored women´s participation in the open source community, and gave suggestions on how to increase the number of women working in open source, in ˝Standing out in the Crowd.˝
- Mark Surman of the Mozilla Foundation began his presentation on ˝Where Next for Openness?˝ with the observation that ˝the people in this room create cool, world-changing technology.˝
- Simon Wardley of Canonical Ltd. talked about the inevitability of cloud computing as innovation becomes commodity, and why open source is critical to its future.
Experts also delivered the latest practical tips, including:

Damian Conway of Thoughtstream speaking on ˝˝7 Principles of Better API Design˝
Yehuda Katz of Engine Yard delivering ˝What You Need to Know About Rails3˝
Beth Tibbitts of IBM talking about ˝How to Write Your Own Eclipse Plug-ins˝
Chris Wanstrath of GitHub telling about ˝Building a Business on the Cheap˝
The winners of the 5th annual Google-O´Reilly Open Source Awards, which recognize exceptional leadership, creativity, and collaboration in the development of open source software were announced at OSCON. Winners were:

- Brian Aker, Best Open Source Database Hacker for his work on Drizzle and MySQL
- Bruce Momjian, Database Jedi Master for his work on PostgreSQL
- Clay Johnson, Best Community Builder for his work with Sunlight Labs
- Evan Prodromou, Best Social Networking Hacker for his work on identi.ca and Laconica
- Penny Leach, Best Education Hacker for her work on Mahara and Moodle

Other popular convention events included the first Ignite ever held at OSCON, OSCamp, a community-led ˝unconference,˝ and the traditional OSCON State of the Onion address by Larry Wall of Netlogic Microsystems.

OSCON´s expo hall presented the latest offerings from companies taking the lead in open source and gave attendees rich opportunities to network and learn about the latest products and systems. Several companies chose OSCON to make important open source announcements. Microsoft revealed that it is releasing 20,000 lines of device driver code, including three Linux device drivers, to the Linux community under the GPL2 license. It also released a Windows Live Services plug-in for Moodle, an open source project for educators. Kaltura announced the public launch of Kaltura Community Edition, the world´s first and only open source self-hosted online video platform. MindTouch revealed a trio of new features in its MindTouch 2009 platform including the ability to add collaborative video to MindTouch sites, package applications built in MindTouch for distribution, and stage content for greater collaboration and control.

Sponsors included Intel, Microsoft, Google, SourceForge, Sun Microsystems, Facebook, Gear6, Kaltura, Liferay, Mindtouch, Myspace, Novell, Open Invention Network, Schooner Information Technology, Silicon Mechanics, Symbian, The Rackspace Cloud, Twilio, WSO2, and Yabarana Corporation.

For complete information on O´Reilly OSCON open source convention, including videos, speaker presentation files, and photos, visit: http://en.oreilly.com/oscon2009

For news, coverage, and comments, go to:
http://en.oreilly.com/oscon2009/public/content/news-coverage

If you´d like to stay up to date on information relating to OSCON, sign up for the convention newsletter (login required) at: http://elists.oreilly.com/#conferences

To read Tim O´Reilly´s take on the future, go to the O´Reilly Radar at:
http://radar.oreilly.com/

For information about exhibiting at or sponsoring OSCON, contact Sharon Cordesse at scordesse@oreilly.com

If you would like to discuss forming a media or promotional partnership with O´Reilly for an upcoming event, contact mediapartners@oreilly.com

For a conference overview, visit: http://conferences.oreilly.com/

More O´Reilly Conferences:
Gov 2.0 Expo Showcase in Washington, DC, Sept 8, co-produced with TechWeb
Gov 2.0 Summit in Washington, DC, Sept. 9-10, co-produced with TechWeb
Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, CA, October 20-22, 2009, co-produced with TechWeb
Web 2.0 Expo New York in New York City, Nov. 16-19, 2009, co-produced with TechWeb
O´Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference in New York City, Feb. 22-24, 2010
MySQL Conference & Expo in Santa Clara, CA, April 12-15, 2010, co-presented with Sun Microsystems
Web 2.0 Expo SF in San Francisco, CA, May 3-6, 2010, co-produced with TechWeb.

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