Presentation Files

• Finding the Swan in Squeak's Ugly Duckling  Randal L. Schwartz
• Becoming an OpenSolaris Power User  Nicholas Solter, David Miner
• Conventional Thinking, a guide to database naming standards  Robert Treat

More Presentation Files

(Official Tag: #OSCON)Twitter

Pulling in content from Twitter

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OSCON 2009 Videos

• Tim O'Reilly
  "The O'Reilly Radar"
  19:41
• Ignite OSCON
  56:32

• More OSCON video

Recent Comments

Recent comments on OSCON sessions, workshops, keynotes and events

• Varnish - A State of the Art High-Performance Reverse Proxy

  @bryan, we do not have any audio recorded for this presentation.

• Varnish - A State of the Art High-Performance Reverse Proxy

  These slides are awesome! Please tell me where I can find the audio of this presentation…

2009 Conference Photos

• More Photos

• Julian Cash's Light Paintings on Flickr

About OSCON

Experience OSCON | Why Attend | Who Should Attend | OSCON Kudos

Since 1998, OSCON brings together visionaries, and hackers in the trenches to explore all that open source has to offer.

If the first ten years of OSCON were about opening the minds of big business to the philosophy of open source, are the next ten years about opening the minds of the open source community to the possibilities of its future? As the pace of technological innovation accelerates, OSCON provides a central place to gain exposure to and evaluate the new projects, tools, services, platforms, languages, software, and standards sweeping through the open source community. As open source becomes fully integrated into the corporate environment, OSCON helps to define, maintain, and extend the identity of what it means to be open source.

OSCON focuses on the substance of technology, not the shadow, filtering the information that most merits attention and preparing participants for curves and challenges in the coming year and beyond. OSCON is the place to be inspired and challenged, renew bonds to community, make new connections, and find ways to give back to the open source movement. OSCON has also become one of the most important places to make open source related announcements, and to unveil projects and products.

Open source is a fundamental principle at the core of many established and emerging technologies, driving the future of the computer industry. OSCON explores the open source technologies that are here to stay, what will broaden the foundation, and what will lead the way to unexpected places and innovations.

"With the deepening of the credit crisis, melt down in the financial industry, the IT budgets in the big companies is under squeeze. [...] Open source software and solutions have a great opportunity to survive and benefit in this economy as they provide better returns for the companies that are looking to save huge licensing costs and greater availability of solutions and software that can be easily adopted."
- Manjunatha Kutarahalli

Experience OSCON

OSCON has become a key meeting ground to see the jewels of open source on display. Through hundreds of sessions, tutorials, activities, and events, the eleventh annual OSCON will bring you open source's best:

• Hundreds of sessions encompassing the full range of open source languages and platforms
• Practical tutorials that go deep into technical skills, new features and applications, and best practices
• Inspirational keynote presentations charting the evolution of open source and beyond
• Quality time with over 3,000 fellow open source developers, hackers, experts, and users of all levels
• An Expo Hall featuring dozens of the latest tools, projects, services, and products
• A vibrant "hallway track" for attendees, speakers, journalists, and vendors to debate and discuss important issues
• OSCamp, an "unconference" open to all, where the program is created on the spot by the participants
• Fun evening events and receptions, Birds of a Feather sessions, awards ceremonies, late night parties, OSCON activities, and plenty of networking opportunities to create new connections

Why Attend?

No matter the economic climate, a strong technology foundation is the key for moving your business and projects forward. In just five information-packed days (and nights) OSCON gives you the tools you need to succeed by:

• Offering actionable techniques for elegant, quality coding
• Empowering you to migrate from expensive commercial installations
• Exploring innovations in system and network administration that are ready for you to integrate immediately to increase efficiency
• Presenting essential techniques and advanced tips to keep your system scaled and optimized for trouble-free, time-saving performance
• Teaching you how to maximize productivity, increase ease of use, and lower the cost of deployment, from databases to cloud computing
• Exposing you to the most promising projects and people to give you first mover advantage in analyzing new tools and software
• Highlighting ahead-of-the-curve open telephony and mobile technologies
• Offering hype-free guidance to give your business a solid footing for success

Who Should Attend

OSCON welcomes everyone passionate about open source:

• Developers and programmers
• Designers
• Sys admins
• Hackers and geeks
• Enterprise developers and managers
• IT managers and CxOs
• Entrepreneurs
• Activists
• Trainers and educators

Past O'Reilly Open Source Conventions brought together representatives from companies and organizations like:

ACS Inc., Adobe Systems, ADP, Alfresco, Amazon, Boeing, Christian Science Monitor, Cingular Wireless, City of Portland, craigslist, CSCI, Dell, Duke University, Federal Reserve Board, General Electric, Jobster, Kansas State University, Knova Software, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, Lexis Nexis, Liberty Mutual Insurance, Los Alamos National Lab, Lund University Libraries, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, Motosport, Mozilla, MySQL AB, Napster, Novell, Omni Hotels, Otsuka USA, Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission, PalmSource, Pentaho, Plaxo, Red Bean Software, Ruby Central Samsung, EW Scripps Company, U.S. Probation Office and Pretrial Services, University of Alaska, Verizon, WhitePages.com Inc., Xerox, and Zimbra

Past OSCON Sponsors, Exhibitors, and Media Partners have included:

ACM Queue, ActiveState, Advanced Micro Devices, Autodesk, Inc., Conference Guru, Covalent Technologies, Dell Inc., DevtownStation.com, Dr. Dobb's Journal, Enterprise Open Source Journal, Google, Greenplum, Griffin Technology, HP, Hyperic, IBM, Intel Corporation, IPTV Industry, Laszlo Systems Linux Journal, LinuxQuestions.org, Linux Pro Magazine, MacMinute.com, Methods & Tools, MindTouch, mixi.jp, Oracle, Port 25, Powell's Books, Roundabout Five, SDForum, Shopzilla, Six Apart Ltd., Solid, Sun Microsystems, Sys Admin, Technology Review, Inc., TechTracker, The 451 Group, The Open Technology Business Center (OTBC), The Women's Technology Cluster, Ticketmaster, Timbuk2 Designs Inc., VoIP-News.com, WiMAX Industry, Yahoo! Inc., and Zend Technologies, Inc.

OSCON Kudos

"Another year, another OSCON. I think three years of attendance is enough for us to declare OSCON an annual event for NYTimes.com. What makes OSCON worth the trip? For starters, the sessions — of course. But there’s more to OSCON than just sessions. We all really enjoyed the engaging dialogue with other attendees and speakers. For me, OSCON conversations are the gasoline for my motivation engine. Talking with others is great way to get a feel for the industry’s pulse. In short, it was another awesome OSCON. We can’t wait for next year!" —Nick Thuesen, Senior Software Engineer, NYTimes.com

"OSCON 2009: One of the greatest weeks in my Microsoft Career. Yep, it’s a bold statement to make, but I like to live life in capital letters. Last week at the O’Reilly Open Source Convention was truly epic. The Community Leadership Summit + OSCON 2009 epitomized everything I’ve ever wanted to do in community as a Microsoft employee." —Sarah Ford, Microsoft

"Why does every open source developer, entrepreneur and evangelist want to be at OSCON every year? OSCON continues to be the only open source technology conference in the US where everyone can meet their friends, colleagues and fellow community members to talk technology and discuss where open source is heading. OSCON still manages to attract the combined free and open source community. There are developers, community activists, and leading technologists from local and global open source projects and organizations, all interested in leveraging open source software and in practicing collaborative innovation." —Alolita Sharma, Open Source Buzz

"...expectations were not only met, but even surpassed: OSCON 2009 was a real blast, the kind that you don't ever want to miss again." —Jorge G. Mare, Haiku Blog-O-Sphere

"While OSCON is one of the most in-depth open source shows of the year, it's proven to also be a place were people come to meet others, and collaborate with old friends." —Mark Hinkle

"For those who have not been to OSCON, it's a great technical conference covering the whole spectrum of open source, including Linux, MySQL, the LAMP stack, Perl, Python, Ruby on Rails, middleware, applications, cloud computing, and more. OSCON always has great keynotes, tutorials, and evening Birds-of-a-Feather sessions. As with many conferences, a lot of the meat takes place in hallway conversations and impromptu sessions." —Zack Urlocker, InfoWorld

"OSCON is one of the must-attend open source conferences held each year." —OStatic

"As Tim says, one never has trouble finding an interesting conversation at OSCON...the content, both hallway and in-session, shined... there are people I literally see only at this event every year, and while remote collaboration is all well and good, it’s nice to have a beer with people every so often." —Stephen O'Grady, tecosystems, RedMonk

"For the past few years, we at NYTimes.com have been attending OSCON. It has become the premier conference for us because it offers so many opportunities to engage with fellow developers. We’ve met new friends, given talks, led Birds-of-a-Feather sessions..." —Derek Gottfrid, NYTimes.com

"OSCON has a major problem: There’s way too much to do! So far, this week has been chock full of excitement." —Joe ‘Zonker’ Brockmeier, DissociatedPress, Novell's openSUSE Community Manager

"OSCON [2008] was everything I'd hoped it would be and then some." —Serdar Yegulalp, InformationWeek

"Speaking at conferences like linux.conf.au and OSCON is great fun. It's challenging to speak to an audience that's so diverse that it includes both the creator of the Linux kernel and students who just discovered it exists. It's humbling to know that the intelligence and achievement in the audience dwarfs anything I've ever done." —Simon Phipps, Sun

"OSCON is a great opportunity for us to really get our geek on and meet with some of the industry's sharpest people. Love the 'Birds of a Feather' sessions. We had a great time at what we consider the best conference we get to attend." —Nick Thuesen, Senior Software Engineer, NYTimes.com

"I've recently been appointed to the board of the United States PostgreSQL Association (postgresql.us); I could never have gotten this without the connections I've made at OSCON over the years."—Michael Alan Brewer, University of Georgia

"...the annual Woodstock (or perhaps Coachella) of the open source crowd." —Zack Urlocker, Infoworld

"O'Reilly conferences are ground zero for the open source alpha geek tribe." —Jon Udell, Infoworld

"An amazing geek-a-thon...No better place on this earth to find out how to use all the cool new open source projects, and to see what's coming next." —Matt Asay, Infoworld

Hear what attendees and exhibitors had to say about their experiences at a past OSCON.

Program Chairs

Allison Randal
has developed everything from games, linguistic analysis tools, and e-commerce sites, to shipping fulfillment, compilers, and database replication systems, has worked as a language designer, project manager, author, editor, publisher, consultant, and president of an open source software foundation. She's currently architect and lead developer of Parrot, chairman of the Parrot Foundation, and on the board of directors of The Perl Foundation.

Edd Dumbill
has been messing around with computers for years. He's currently building Expectnation, a web-based conference management system. Edd has been part of various free software projects, including GNOME and Debian, and writes about open source and open standards. He's also chair of the European XTech web technology conference.