Edd Dumbill's Weblog: 'oscon' articles

OSCON: what are your must-see talks?

Edd Dumbill — 2008-07-01T15:58:59Z

We've switched on personal schedule sharing on the OSCON web site.

When you've put together your desired schedule by starring sessions of interest, just hand out the "public view" link to let others know what you want to see.

Here's my personal schedule. In it you'll find all the plenary sessions (as co-chair I simply cannot miss these, and neither should you, however late the party!)

Also there's a fair smattering of my pet topics such as open web technologies, virtualization and dynamic languages, and a bunch of things I want to hear more about: Prophet, female participation in open source, Clutter, and of course Erlang.

I'm fascinated to find out what other people have got planned, so please publish your schedules too and let's compare notes.

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My OSCON 2008 picks

Edd Dumbill — 2008-06-26T11:49:56Z

In just under a month, the tenth O'Reilly Open Source Convention will get underway in Portland.

Over ten years OSCON has developed—along with the world of open source—into an intense, exciting, informative, diverse and exhausting event. This year I've the privilege of being co-chair, along with Alison Randall. We've packed so much into the show, it's a difficult job even being able to comprehend it as a whole!

Fortunately, there's a way to start making sense of things before you arrive there, thanks to the personal scheduler. Just mark the sessions you want to go to with a star, and you'll be able to plan out your time in advance.

I wanted to list a few sessions from my own personal schedule that particularly piqued my interest. Then at the bottom of this post I'll share a discount code which can give readers of this blog 15% off OSCON registration. There's bribery for you.

Practical Erlang Programming

Largely thanks to XMPP enthusiasts and ejabberd, I've been hearing increasing amounts about Erlang, and I'd like to know enough about it to be dangerous. This three hour tutorial looks just the ticket.

Open Source Virtualization Hacks

This is one of several sessions we have on virtualization, something I'm particularly pleased about. Virtualization may be "done" at the kernel level, but I think we're only just starting out on its application. This session is by my friend and sometime co-author, Niel Bornstein, who works for Novell on just this sort of thing.

Using Puppet: Real World Configuration Management

Puppet is the piece of open source software that is most exciting to me at the moment. As a developer, it enables me to manage my machines like I'd manage my code libraries. A must-see if you've not used Puppet yet.

These are just 3 out of the 300 or so confirmed sessions. Don't forget there's a large number of events and parties happening around OSCON too.

And finally, the discount code. Use the code os08pgm when you're registering, and you'll get 15% off the ticket price.

See you in Portland!

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First post!

Edd Dumbill — 2008-01-08T00:35:19Z

I've just posted my first article over at the O'Reilly Radar blog. I'll be blogging over there on and off, making my small contribution, covering my favourite themes of open data and open source.

My first article takes a look at Shelf, an OS X implementation of Nat Friedman's GNOME Dashboard concept.

The main reason I've joined the Radar crew is that I've the honour of being co-chair of this year's O'Reilly Open Source Convention, with Allison Randal.

We've now opened the OSCON call for participation, so please head over and consider what you might submit for this year's conference.

(And if you're really observant, you'll see that O'Reilly are now using Expectnation, something about which I'm totally thrilled!)

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