Utah Open Source Blog

So you’ve been very patient, and we appreciate it very much!

But wait no more!  The speaker list for the Utah Open Source Conference is here!  There are over 45 speakers and 50+ presentations on this amazing list, visit it today to see if your favorites are there!!  You can also see the speakers in several ways, including by category; like Keynote, or by audience, like Beginner, or by Room or by Date.   We’re still working on the full fledged printable magic schedule that lets you imagine the presentations you want to attend and creates the presentations in that exact order, but we’re working on it!

Please take a moment and share this with your friends, family, neighbors, puppies, kitty cats, and llamas!

Everyone should know about the amazing presentations at the Utah Open Source Conference 2009!  I’m excited for several, and we’ve got some killer Keynotes including Stormy Peters from the GNOME Foundation and Dave McAllister from Adobe.

We have activities that will excite and encourage!

This year we have revamped the Try-It lab from last year, with workshops throughout the weekend..  These workshops will be scheduled for 2-3 hours and will be hands-on.  But don’t worry, there’s also ample opportunity to come and try out different distributions, applications and other items during the unscheduled time of the Try-It Lab!

Birds of a Feather really do flock together!

In 2007, we had a few successful BoFs (Birds of a Feather) sessions, including GPG keysigning and the Boardgame BoF.  In an effort to develop a richer experience, we’re bringing the BoF back to UTOSC 2009.  We already have a few created, so feel free to find the board and add your BoF during UTOSC 2009.  (If you would like to pre-schedule a BoF, feel free to email feather@utos.org with your topic and we’ll get it added)

LUGs are invited to share!

Local User Groups are why we run UTOSC.  If you are part of a LUG in the Mountain West, we’ve reserved time for you to come and talk about your group.  Things like; when you meet, what topics you discuss would be good, plus the foodstuffs you serve (like ‘Punch and Pie’).  Plus, we’ve even made time for mini-LUG meetings right at UTOSC on Thursday, October 8.  For more information, email lugs@utos.org, spots are going fast!

Wow, my hands are tired!

There is so much more to share about UTOSC 2009, but I think my hands are cramping a little more than I like.  So for now, I’ll just say ‘You should go and register today! Keep in mind, if you are a member of a Local User Group in the Mountain West, your LUG will have a promo code worth 50% off admission, that’s quite a discount!

Early Bird Registration ends September 19, so Visit http://attend.utosc.com to register today!

See you all in October at UTOSC 2009!!!

It’s time to introduce you to our first Local Keynote for UTOSC 2009.

Leveraging the Collective Intelligence of Online Communities for Public Good

Daren presented at the 2nd Ignite Salt Lake, you can see his 5 minute presentation on crowdsourcing.

A little about Daren

Daren C. Brabham is a Ph.D. candidate and graduate teaching fellow in the Department of Communication at the University of Utah; an associate graduate researcher in the Lab for Communicating Complexity with Multimedia at the University of Maryland-College Park; and a user experience designer at Burton Group in Midvale, Utah. His research on the crowdsourcing model has appeared in the journals Convergence, First Monday, Planning Theory, and Flow.

Technologies such as the Internet make it possible to effectively distribute problem solving and production among a large and globally dispersed labor pool. Open source production, crowdsourcing, and other distributed online models make use of this online talent network in astonishing ways. The results of these various processes include Web browsers, operating systems, and even television commercials, t-shirts, and scientific research.

But we should expect more from these tools. As Eric S. Raymond wrote in “The Cathedral and the Bazaar,” “Any tool should be useful in the expected way, but a truly great tool lends itself to uses you never expected.” Distributed online production models can — and should — be transformed for new uses, to solve real human problems. We can tap the collective intelligence of online communities for the public good.

In this keynote, I look at some of the ways online models like open source and crowdsourcing can be used in a variety of democratic and charitable ways. Drawing upon recent research and case studies, such as Peer to Patent, Next Stop Design, Financial Explorer, and experiments in open source government, this keynote ultimately asks: how will Utah’s open source community use their skills for the greater good?

Register Today for UTOSC 2009

Registration is open, contact your LUG today for discount codes.  Early bird registration ends Sept 19.

The presentation schedule will be available very soon.  See the Utah Open Source Conference 2009 website for more details!

The Utah Open Source Conference 2009 is proud to announce our Saturday keynote.

Big Company, Open Choice: Why Adobe is becoming Open

Ever wonder how a big company moves into Open? And then, how they decide what Open means? Does it really matter? And just where does it matter.

For Adobe, Open is a balance between multiple things, like exposing roadmaps, and publishing specifications, to releasing core technology, to open discussions with the community. Open source of that core technology is a major factor, and in the last three years, Adobe has released major technology to open source, given our technology to standards organization, opened access to closed technologies and provided major technology and code to external project. Our mission is to continue those efforts, balanced between the needs of our customers and employees and with an eye on our competition.

So, let’s talk about what is Open @ Adobe, and why we make the open source decisions we make. What’s the model we follow and just what are all the things we are doing and have done.

A little about Dave

As director, standards and open source, for Core Services at Adobe Systems, McAllister is focused on the company’s long-term strategic direction as it relates to leveraging standards and open-source technologies to differentiate Adobe. McAllister is Adobe’s representative to Ecma International, Open Ajax Alliance and OASIS. McAllister is also an active member of the W3C eGovernment efforts, Linux Foundation, and other industry associations.

Dave McAllister came to Adobe in 2006. Prior to joining Adobe, he created Open Source Business Technologies, a consultancy that helps venture capital firms understand the commercial opportunities created by open-source technologies. Before starting his own firm, McAllister co-founded software maker Cassatt Corp. Earlier in his career, he served as vice president and general manager of NEC’s server business in the U.S, launching NEC into the Linux HPC space in the US. He helped create the blade server market as an early member of Egenera. He spent almost 10 years at Silicon Graphics (SGI) where he started as a kernel engineer. Over his time in SGI, he managed most of the software development products, compilers and tools, and was the principal person that brought Linux and open source into SGI. He also taught computer languages for the University of Houston and helped create the initial Space Shuttle simulations for Singer-Link and Lockheed. He often speaks on topics such as the legal and technical issues associated with open-source software, as well as on virtualization, creating new technology companies. Well versed in trivia, he won a Golden Penguin in 2002. He has held seats on Advisory Boards for Sistina, Woven Systems, Pathworks, and Zetera and ConcreteCMS. He is currently on the Reader Advisory Board for Linux Journal.

Register Today for UTOSC 2009

Registration is open, contact your LUG today for discount codes.  Early bird registration ends Sept 19.

The presentation schedule will be available very soon.  See the Utah Open Source Conference 2009 website for more details!

Video of Howard Tayler’s keynote address from UTOSC 2008 is now available at opensourcetv.tv.

Howard Tayler, the creator of popular web comic Schlock Mercenary (available at schlockmercenary.com), spoke on Friday, 29 August, about how he makes money while giving stuff away.

If you missed the 2008 Utah Open Source Conference or attended and want to relive a piece of it, you’re in luck.

OpenSourceTV.tv, a service provided by KnowledgeBlue and the Utah Open Source Foundation, is now (finally) up and currently features video of UTOSC keynote addresses given by Paul Frields (of Fedora/Red Hat) and Mac Newbold (of Code Greene).

More video from UTOSC 2008 will be showing up on OpenSourceTV.tv in the weeks to come as well as video from UTOSC 2007 and other events.

Open source enthusiasts in the Weber and Davis counties have a local user group they may participate in. The Ogden Area Linux User Group, or OALUG, meets in-person the last Tuesday of every month at 7:00pm in the Weber County Main Library. Directions and a map to the meeting location are located on the OALUG website.

OALUG also has an active mailing list which can be used by members seeking answers to questions, suggestions when trying to solve a problem, or just shooting the bull with like-minded geeks.

Seth House, current president of OALUG, said “The Ogden Area Linux Users Group (OALUG) is a group of professionals who share a love and a passion for Linux, regardless of distribution. The group serves Weber, Davis, and Morgan counties. We welcome absolutely anyone who is interested in Linux, or Free and Open Source Software, to participate and help run the group.” If you are interested in being a part of the OALUG, simply subscribe to the mailing list or show up to a meeting!

Update:  We made a couple of errors in this post.  OALUG meets at the Weber County Main Library (not Weber State Library) and we had the link to their website incorrect.  These errors have been fixed.

It’s time to let loose information about yet-another keynote speaker for the 2008 Utah Open Source Conference. We are very pleased to announce that attendees at the upcoming conference will have the fortune of hearing from Paul Frields, current Fedora Project Leader (FPL).

Before being employed by Red Hat and serving in the FPL position, Paul worked as an engineer for the U.S. government, but has been intimately involved in the Fedora Project community since 2003 (after Red Hat created the Fedora Project out of the ashes of the free Red Hat Linux distribution). Paul’s involvement with Fedora has included working on and chairing the steering committee for the Fedora Documentation Project.

Paul lives in Fredericksburg, VA with his wife and 2 children where he also helps manage FredLUG – the Fredericksburg Linux User Group.

Paul’s personal blog illustrates that he represents many in the open source community. In addition to being a outspoken advocate of open source software and the communities surrounding open source projects, Paul loves music (playing and listening) and good movies. He lists as one thing he hates that he can’t just play music and hack on Linux all day.

As the FPL, Paul claims accountability for everything in the Fedora project. He works with the Fedora Program Manager, Fedora Engineering Manager, and Fedora Community Architecture teams to make sure Fedora is on track and making progress toward meeting the goals of their next release and supporting the community using the current releases. Paul also manages a handful of Fedora Project packages.

Paul plans to talk about the Fedora Project in his keynote presentation, how it came about, where it’s going, and some of the challenges it has faced in its five year existence.

We are truly lucky to have Paul Frields along with Joe Brockmeier as keynote speakers at this year’s conference!

A blurb about the conference

The 2008 Utah Open Source Conference is the second annual gathering of open source enthusiasts in Utah. Following the amazingly successful first conference held in 2007 at Novell’s Open Source Technology Center in Provo, UT, this year’s conference is being held on the Redwood campus of Salt Lake Community College near Salt Lake City.

For more information about this conference, to register to attend, or to see a really neat website driven by open source software, go over to <http://2008.utosc.com/>.

Hi all,

The Utah Open Source Conference 2007 was such a success. We’ve been busily recovering from all the work and joy we had and are ready to kick it into high gear for this year’s upcoming conference. As far as dates go, we’re looking in the same time frame (Late August, Early September 2008).

But there’s a larger question looming right now and we’d like your input on it. The question is:

Who would you like to come and keynote Utah Open Source Conference 2008?

We’ve thought of a few for you, but would like to have you submit names to us here on our blog. A poll has been created with a few obvious choices, and we’ll do what we can to get the winner here (if its not too cost prohibitive). So without further adieu, vote to your hearts content:

n

Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls. We here at the Utah Open Source Foundation would like to announce that we’ve recently been able to acquire and test the video from the Utah Open Source Conference (UTOSC).

We’re proud to announce our first video. Tons of work went into getting this live. Including streaming bandwidth provided by TierFour and video editing done by KnowledgeBlue and Open Source TV. We’d like to thank all of those who made this possible and look forward to providing you with additional videos as they arrive. Please feel free to download them or watch the stream.

In the future, we’ll work on making them downloadable from this site as well. Oh, and we’re working on part 1, it will be out soon.

Podcast currently unavailable due to a bug in the PodPress software. Currently looking for a new plugin or an alternate way to release the videos.

Cheers,

Clint Savage
Founder, Utah Open Source Foundation (http://www.utosf.org)

Utah Open Source is encouraging you all to come and put your pics up from the conference. We’d love to have you
all participate and take lots of pictures.

See you all tomorrow!

http://www.flickr.com/welcome/5500234/866773/

See you there!

Disclaimer:
Novell has been great to work with and is doing some amazing things for the conference. There will be areas which you will not be able to take pictures, but anything at the conference all should be fine. Be respectful and smart as we’re all guests on Novell’s campus during the conference.