We want you to be involved in making the next Open Source Bridge as awesome as the first two. If you’re interested in helping out with next year’s conference, please come to our Volunteer Kick-off meeting TONIGHT, 7/28 at 6pm.

• When: Tonight, Wednesday, 7/28 at 6pm
• Where: 117 NW 5th Ave. Suite 210, Portland OR 97209
• Map: http://calagator.org/events/1250458860

We’ll provide an overview of our plans for 2011, things we want to improve, outline our volunteer needs, and listen to your ideas about how you want to contribute.

If you’re unable to attend in person, you can participate online:

• Following the group notes here: http://etherpad.opensourcebridge.org/general-interest-07282010
• And asking questions in IRC: #osbridge on Freenode.

We’ll post meeting notes on our Google Group, so make sure you’re a member. Also, if you haven’t already, please let us know you’re interested in volunteering here: http://opensourcebridge.org/get-involved/.

Questions? Email volunteer@opensourcebridge.org.

So you’ve spent the last three days learning about the coolest open source projects, exploring Portland and making new friends. But wait – there’s more! Please join us for Friday’s Unconference After Party at Beer and Blog. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Beer and Blog, it is Portland’s premier tech happy hour where folks from near and far congregate and share their love of all things geeky. We’re looking forward to hearing about all of your recently gained knowledge from the conference and to enjoying each others company over fine local beers.

If you need any beer suggestions while you are at Beer and Blog this Friday, just Tweet to @kfinsand, the Chief Beer Officer of @Taplister and the Portland Chapter Host of Beer and Blog, so he can point you in the right direction.

Portland Beer and Blog takes place every Friday at the Green Dragon (928 Southeast 9th Avenue) from 4-6pm, though people usually stay a lot later. See you at the after party this Friday, and we hope to see you any Friday you find yourself in Portland!

Our Advocate Level sponsor, Facebook, will be hosting Thursday evening’s starup crawl. We’ll begin with a party at at Kell’s Irish Pub from 6:00 to 7:00 PM. Don’t forget to bring your conference badge as it’s required to get drinks!

We’ll then hand out maps with the locations of three startups on one side and a scavenger hunt on the other. After Kell’s we’ll stop in at the offices of JanRain, Puppet Labs, and Urban Airship, for beer and snacks. And last, but not least, from 9:00 – 11:00 PM the party continues to its last stop at the Wieden & Kennedy agency rooftop space with more beer (donated by Southern Oregon Brewing via Taplister) and desserts.

If you want to get a jump on the scavenger hunt, you can already get the clues in the Hacker Lounge. Check the beverage tables for information sheets while you’re getting your afternoon dose of caffeine.

Today’s opening keynote will be from Danny O’Brien, Internet Advocacy Coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists. He’s going to kick things off with a practical look at the FLOSS tools that journalists working in repressive regimes currently use, and what we could help create for them.

I wanted to also let you know that we’ve had a few changes to the schedule since it was printed:

• CANCELLED: Getting Started with FPGAs and HDLs, 1:30-2:15 Tuesday
• MOVED: The Story of Spaz: How to Give Away Everything, Make No Money,
  and Still Win – to 4:45p Thursday
• ERROR: Making Drupal Go Fast with Varnish and Pressflow – 10am Thurs Fremont

All talks are correct in the online version of the schedule at this time.

Thanks, and look forward to seeing you today!

• Four full days of technical content across five tracks (list of sessions).
• Keynotes from:
  • Danny O’Brien, journalist and activist with the Committee to Protect Journalists,
  • Leigh Honeywell, software security consultant and co-founder/director of HackLab, and
  • Portland Mayor Sam Adams.
• The return of our 24-hour hacker lounge, now located on-site.
• Beautiful downtown location at the Portland Art Museum, including full access to the exhibits during conference hours.
• A rousing pub crawl sponsored by Facebook.
• Plenty of lightning talks and a full day of unconference sessions.
• Birds of a Feather sessions for PHP, Civic Engagement, Ruby, Open Government/Data, NoSQL, PostgreSQL, Google Summer of Code and more.
• Free Voodoo Doughnuts during the unconference.
• An awesome housetruck!

Conference passes are still available and are $300 for full access to all four days of the conference. Student and single-day passes are available for $99. Short on cash? You can volunteer on-site for the conference and get in for free.

See what others are saying:

• Quit playing in the kiddie pool
• Open Source Bridge Will Rock Your Socks Again This Year
• Open Source Bridge Database Sessions

What are you waiting for? Register today!

During the conference, your Open Source Bridge badge gives you access to all of the museum galleries. This includes all of the open exhibition space within the Mark Building itself, home to the Jubitz Center for Modern and Contemporary Art, as well as the galleries in the main building itself.

For the entire month of June the Portland Art Museum is pleased to offer Bridge participants a 20% discount to becoming a member (use Promo code ‘OS10′) . Members enjoy free admission to the galleries, 10% off purchases made in the Museum gift store, invitations to members-only events & exhibition viewings, as well as discounts on lectures, films, art making classes, and other special programs.

For a complete list of membership categories and benefits visit http://portlandartmuseum.org/join//membership/

Promo code: OS10 valid through 6/30/2010

For those of you in the Portland Metro area, mark your calendars to attend the CivicApps Ideas Discussion on May 27, 2010, 18:00-20:00 at the Portland Building Auditorium. This is your chance to discuss your ideas for development with the CivicApps dataset providers and representatives from the City of Portland.

Please register here: CivicIdeas Discussion – registration is free but space is limited so sign-up soon!

After you’ve solidified your idea the next step is to make it a reality. You can do this at CiviCode day – co-located with Open Source Bridge on Thursday, June 3, 2010. A day of CiviCode unconference and hackathon activities begins with a keynote by Mayor Sam Adams and concludes with a show-in-tell of what you built!

CiviCode Day is located in the 24 hour Open Source Bridge Hacker Lounge – this year located in the Portland Art Museum’s – Mark Building. Come work on your CivicApps project in a space guaranteed to inspire creativity surrounded by peers and project stakeholders.

Register for CiviCode Day here: CiviCode Day – Registration for CiviCode day is free – but space is limited. Please add your name the list soon!

Additional information about the events can be found here: Important Upcoming Events for CivicApps.

Hope to see you at both the CivicApps Ideas Discussion and CiviCode Day!

Save the Date! Open Source Bridge Startup Crawl, June 3rd, 6-10 PM

Local startups including Urban Airship, Taplister and others are getting together with Facebook to host a startup crawl in Portland on Thursday, June 3rd from 6-10 PM. In addition to tech and tech people, there will be beer tastings from local brewers. This is a great chance to check out the local startup scene and have a beer with friends in the community. The crawl is free and open to all conference attendees.

We’ll post more details soon and we’re looking forward to seeing you on the crawl.

A few of us are getting together to do work sprinting for Open Source Bridge. It’s a beautiful day, so our plan is to occupy the patio at Ristretto (3808 N Williams Ave) until my battery runs out, and then enjoy a pint at the Fifth Quadrant in the early afternoon.

We hope you’re having a lovely day. Come join us if you’d like to work on a few things for the conference, or if you’d just like to hang out on this fine day.

I’ll head over to Ristretto at 11am.