OSCON 2008 Call for Participation

Call closed midnight 02/04/2008 PST.

Check on the status of your proposal

O’Reilly Media invites hackers and designers, inventors and innovators, community leaders, CTOs and CIOs, open source evangelists and activists, researchers, business developers, and entrepreneurs to lead conference sessions and tutorials at the O’Reilly Open Source Convention 2008. OSCON will be held July 21-25, 2008 at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, Oregon, U.S.

We want to hear about your winning techniques, favorite life-savers, and the system you’ve made that everyone will be using next year. We’ll have tracks for sessions and tutorials on Linux, PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby, Java, Databases, Desktop Applications, Web Applications, Mobile, Administration, Security, People, Business, and Emerging Topics.

Participants at the O’Reilly Open Source Convention want to hear about real-world scenarios using open source, ways they can be more productive or write better code, and what’s new. Please submit original session and tutorial ideas that focus on hands-on instruction and real-world examples. Include in your proposal as much detail about the planned presentation as possible. The more we know about what you plan to present, the better. Proposals which are vague or cover too much material are unlikely to be accepted. If you think your proposal covers too much of a topic, consider submitting two proposals which split the material into different sessions.

Some tips for writing a good proposal for a good talk

• Keep it free of marketing: talk about open source software, but not about a commercial product—the audience should be able to use and improve the things you discuss without paying money
• Keep the audience in mind: they’re technical, professional, and already pretty smart
• Clearly identify the level of the talk: is it for beginners to the topic, or for gurus? What knowledge should people have when they come to the presentation?
• Give it a simple and straightforward title or name: Fancy and clever titles or descriptions make it harder for people (committee and attendees) to figure out what you’re really talking about
• Limit the scope of the talk: in 45 minutes, you won’t be able to cover Everything about Widget Framework X. Instead, pick a useful aspect, or a particular technique, or walk through a simple program
• Pages of code are unreadable: mere mortals can deal with code a line at a time. Sometimes three lines at a time. A page of code can’t be read when it’s projected, and can’t be comprehended by the audience
• Explain why people will want to attend: is the framework gaining traction? Is the app critical to modern systems? Will they learn how to deploy it, program it, or just what it is?
• Let us know in your proposal notes whether you can give all the talks you submitted proposals for
• Explain what you will cover in the talk

Proposals should focus on:

• Delivering information that can be acted upon
• Tools people actually use
• Not simply repeating manual or web pages

Some of the topics we’re on the lookout for the 2008 conference program are:

• Parallelization, grid, and multicore technologies
• The strengths that will carry open source beyond the "gold rush"
• Open source in smart phones and mobile networked devices
• Open hardware and licensing
• Tools for the administration and deployment of large server farms
• Ajax, Javascript, standards-based design, and other client-side web issues
• AI, machine learning, and other ways of making software smarter than the people using it
• The spread of open source into law, culture, data, and services and the accompanying issues and lessons
• Open source in democracy, politics, government, and education
• Best practices for building a business model around open source
• Virtualization, appliances, and their creation and deployment

We also ask you to be clear about the experience and knowledge level of the audience that you are targeting: novice, intermediate, or expert. Keep in mind that we look for a balance of all three experience levels when determining the conference schedule.

Proposals will be considered for the following types of presentations:

• 45 minute sessions
• 3 hour tutorials
• Panel discussions
• Demonstrations

Tracks:

Administration – open source innovations in system and network administration
Business – open source best practices applied within the enterprise, legal issues and marketing strategies
Databases – essential techniques and advanced tips in MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, etc.
Desktop Applications – GUI toolkits, synchronization and offline caching, filling the long tail of a fully open source desktop experience
Emerging Topics – promising projects, proposals, and people (everything that doesn’t fit in another track)
Java – new tools, building on OpenJDK, Harmony, etc.
Linux – creation, use, and future direction of Linux and its killer apps, from kernel and distros to office suites and multimedia
Mobile – ahead-of-the-curve open telephony and mobile technologies, people, projects, and activities pushing the boundaries of what’s possible
People – community, users and their experience, user-centered design, and usability, humans rather than technology or processes, marketing as an architecture of collaboration
Perl – (Perl Conference 12) Perl 5 and Perl 6, trends from databases to mod_perl to Perl hacks for productivity
PHP – (PHP Conference 8) migration, deployment, security, and preparing for the future
Programming – hard-core open source tools, technologies, and techniques for elegant, quality coding
Python – (Python 16 Conference) latest developments, Python 2.x and 3.0
Ruby – Rails, Ruby 2.0, test, deploy, extend, and integrate
Security – application, network, and data security, from Linux firewalls to VoIP risks
Web Applications – the perpetual beta model, user experience, frameworks, scaling, testing

Have a passion to share what you know? If so, you are invited to submit a proposal now to speak at the next OSCON. Tutorial presenters are eligible to receive a travel allowance and one night’s stay in the convention hotel.

Limited speaking opportunities are also available through conference sponsorship. Contact Sharon Cordesse at (707) 827-7065 or scordesse@oreilly.com for more information.

Important Dates
Speakers will be notified by March 15, 2008.
Early registration opens in April 2008.

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