Paul Fenwick is the managing director of Perl Training Australia, and has been teaching computer science for over a decade. He is an internationally acclaimed presenter at conferences and user-groups worldwide, where he is well-known for his humour and off-beat topics. Paul is the author of Perl’s autodie pragma.

In his spare time, Paul’s interests include security, mycology, cycling, coffee, scuba diving, dressing like a pirate, and lexically scoped user pragmata.

You can join us to see Paul’s keynote speech along with all of the other great content at Open Source Bridge this year; our early bird registration is open through April 30th.

Is there a session proposal you’re excited to attend? Be sure to take a minute to leave comments on the proposals you’d like to see at this year’s Open Source Bridge conference, and tell your coworkers, friends, and fellow user group members to comment too.

There are two ways to tell our selection committee what proposals you’re interested in: 1) by marking the ones you like as favorites (using the little stars), and 2) by leaving comments on them (using the form at the end of each proposal). This feedback is very important to us, and tells the Content Selection Committee which sessions the community wants to see.

By marking talks as a favorite, you also provide great assistance to the scheduling process for Open Source Bridge. We try hard to avoid scheduling talks that speak to the same subject, or are marked as favorite by the same people, and so the more people that mark favorite talks, the more our schedule can avoid conflicts.

The list of favorites is publicly visible on your user profile page, so you can share the list of talks you’re excited about with others. The comments are private and only visible to the selection team; this is the place to tell us why the presentation’s topic is important, how well qualified the speaker is, and so on.

Commenting on proposals and marking your favorites is very valuable feedback for us, and allows you to further help set the direction of Open Source Bridge.

You can get started now: http://opensourcebridge.org/events/2012/proposals

Sumana Harihareswara manages projects and people, currently as Volunteer Development Coordinator at the Wikimedia Foundation, where she leads the Technical Liaisons and Developer Relations group (TLDR). She has worked at Collabora, GNOME, QuestionCopyright.org, Fog Creek Software, Behavior, and Salon.com, and contributed to the MediaWiki, AltLaw, Empathy, Miro, and Zeitgeist open source projects. She is a blogger at GeekFeminism and an advisory board member for the Ada Initiative, and was editor and release organizer for GNOME Journal. Harihareswara has presented at Foo Camp, Open Source Bridge 2011, Open Source Bridge 2010, MindCamp Seattle 2008 (“Three Models of Power: A Political Science Lens on Your Organization”), keynoted PICC, led or organized several Wikimedia hackathons, taught several courses at UC Berkeley, and performed at Bay Area stand-up comedy venues. She holds an MS in Technology Management from Columbia University. She also likes dinosaurs.

And don’t forget that we’ve extended our Call for Proposals, so you still have a chance to join what is already an excellent set of proposals, and sure to be an excellent set of speakers. You also have a chance to grab one of a limited number of $225 registrations if you act quickly and register now.

Not sure if you want to speak at Open Source Bridge? Of course you do! We’d love to have you and your ideas be a part of this year’s event, and we have some tips for you:

• Look over previously accepted talks: You can get an idea of what we’re looking for by reviewing the proposals we accepted as sessions for previous years (2009 talks, 2010 talks, and 2011 talks).
• Be specific, but also clear and concise: Let us know the question and give an idea of the answer. Make sure to give clear details about the content of your talk.
• Write well and use standard English: Use proper spelling, capitalization, grammar, and punctuation. Use the active voice. Proposals without these things are difficult to read. Our content committee has a lot to read through; please don’t make this process more difficult.
• Provide a good title: A title can make or break a talk. It should be concise, yet comprehensible. Clever, but not overly so. Sparking curiosity is good, but make sure people can tell what you’re going to be talking about. If your title accurately reflects both the subject matter and the tone of your talk, your ideal audience will find you.
• Explain why you’d give a good talk: You don’t need to be an expert, but if you are, let us know. Don’t assume we’ll know who you are even if you’ve given a bunch of talks all over the world. Also don’t assume that we won’t pick you if you’ve never spoken. Have you given this talk at a user group with overwhelming success? Let us know in your proposal’s Note to organizers field.
• Spread the word: Open Source Bridge allows public viewing and coments on all proposed submissions. Advertise that you’ve submitted a talk so that people can comment and let our selection committee know they want to see your talk.
• Ask questions: Not sure if your talk would be appropriate for OSBridge? Have other burning questions that are keeping you from submitting? The co-chairs and content commitee are available to answer your questions: content@opensourcebridge.org.

And did we mention that if your proposal gets accepted, you get into the conference for free?

We know you’ve been brewing some great ideas for a session or two. Well, now you have an extra fortnight to get your ideas to us!

Photo by Rachel Lovinger

Jason Scott works at the Internet Archive helping to record and maintain a history of computer technology. But as many of you know, that’s hardly all that he does. He’s the owner and curator of textfiles.com and he has produced such great documentaries as BBS: The Documentary and Get Lamp. A recently successful  kickstarter campaign has him working on three other documentaries at the same time — certainly no small task. We’re very excited to host him in Portland this June. In the meantime, you can read his blog, follow him on twitter @textfiles, or, as I’m sure many of you already do, follow his cat on twitter @sockington.

A limited number of $225 Early Bird tickets are still available, so Register now to see Jason Scott and many other amazing talks at this year’s Open Source Bridge. Even better, be one of the amazing presenters and get in for free! Our Call for Proposals is still open.

The only requirements are that you have some in-depth knowledge or expertise of a field related to an open source technology, and that you have 5-10 hours to spare between April 1st and April 7th to spend reviewing and discussing proposals. You don’t need to be in Portland, though if you aren’t, you should have the ability to participate via Skype in our final meeting to select talks (tentatively Sunday, April 8th).

To apply, please complete the form here by Friday, March 30. If you have any questions, email us at content@opensourcebridge.org.

We plan to select about a half-dozen community members to participate in the content committee. Our goals are to represent a diverse set of experiences and views — including a range of expertise areas — and involve both those who have experience selecting conference talks and those who are new to the process. We also want the committee to be as gender-balanced as possible.

We hope you’ll considering being a part of the selection committee, but if that doesn’t seem like a good fit, there are many other ways to get involved. Also, don’t forget that anyone can view and comment on submitted proposals, to let the selection team know what you want to see.

What kind of proposals, you ask? Open Source Bridge strives to be a different kind of open source conference: one that welcomes all open source languages, platforms, and pursuits while embracing responsible and engaged open source citizenship.

The conference’s tracks are:
Business: How do you build a successful open source business?
Chemistry: What makes this work? Take the technology apart and teach us about its components.
Cooking: How do you write the script, configure the utility, debug the code, make it work? What are your best recipes?
Culture: What makes open source work? What else does the open source ethic lead us to do?
Hacks: How did you pull that off?

For a little additional inspiration, we encourage you to look through previous years’ archives of sessions presented at Open Source Bridge, but don’t let that limit you, either! We know that certain topic areas have been underrepresented in previous years, and we would very much love a diverse and broad set of proposals for this year’s bridge. We would very much love to see more talks about hardware, security, user experience design and just about everything else related to open source. No idea is too out there. We’d love to see it all.

If you speak at Open Source Bridge, we’ll happily waive the fee for your attendance. Not sure if you should register now, or hold off to see if your talk is accepted? If you wait and your talk is not accepted, we’ll give you a special discount code that will get you a ticket at $200 (that’s $25 off the early-bird rate).

So what are you waiting for? We’d love to hear what you have to say. Begin creating your proposal today.

Attend the conference

Register to attend Open Source Bridge 2012. We offer the following kinds of tickets:
Early bird tickets at $225 until April 30th.
Full price tickets at $300, great for corporate attendees.
As always, we offer a student rate of $99, available anytime.

Please register soon so you can help give the event some early support.

Interested in volunteering?

We encourage those of you interested in being more involved with Open Source Bridge to sign up for our volunteer list.

Interested in sponsoring?

Let us know by contacting sponsorship@opensourcebridge.org and we’ll send you a prospectus.

We hope that you are as excited as we are about Open Source Bridge 2012. Don’t hesitate to contact us at info@opensourcebridge.org if you have any questions. We thank you very much for your support and hope to see you in Portland in June!

–The Open Source Bridge Team

Who is the 2012 Core Planning Team?

The conference core planning team remains largely intact from last year’s event, and we’re adding a few more awesome people to this year’s team to make things even better. We’ll be updating the About Us page on the website soon and if you’re curious as to who we all are, you can check things out there.

Volunteer Outreach

We may not say it often enough, but we love our volunteers. Open Source Bridge could not happen without all of you. We’re planning a volunteer appreciation event at the moment, and will have a separate announcement out about that soon. We’re also looking at more ways to involve volunteers in pre-event planning and organization. And we’re looking at new volunteer management tools to make everything go even smoother this year.

Conference Content

We will be opening up our Call For Proposals in January. Many things will be the same as they’ve been in previous years, but we’re looking at additional topics that we’d like to encourage with this year’s CFP. If there are specific things you’d like to see at Open Source Bridge, please let us know.

Fundraising

We will have a sponsorship prospectus out soon, and are always looking for contributors to help finance Open Source Bridge. Stumptown Syndicate, the Oregon nonprofit behind the event, is also working toward 501(c)3 status and it may change how we handle sponsorship slightly.

Registration

You likely saw our latest reminder about tickets for Open Source Bridge. The $195 ticket price is only available through December 31st. After that, prices go up to $225 (full ticket price being $300).

Thanks for being a part of the Open Source Bridge community. We hope you’re looking forward to the 2012 event as much as we are!

As a special bonus, we’ll send Open Source Bridge scarves to the first 10 people who register starting today, December 14th, through the end of the year.

Now in its 4th year, the conference will be in Portland, OR from June 26-29, 2012. The $195 early registration fee is available through December 31st.

The conference includes 3 full days of sessions across multiple tracks, an unconference day, a Hacker Lounge, after parties, code sprints, work parties, and renowned keynote speakers. Also, get ready to submit your talk ideas! Open Source Bridge’s Call for Proposals opens Monday, January 17th.

More information about Open Source Bridge, past conferences, or the track schedule format, is available on this site.

Act now to save over $100 off regular admission!