Open Source Conference
If you're looking for a Linux initiative that is truly open source, where you can download the source, contribute without censorship, and drive the project, check out Moblin.org. The Moblin project was conceived in order to drive innovation on the new breed of Internet-enabled mobile devices, to foster community participation, and to avoid locking into a proprietary platform. Dirk Hohndel, the helmsman, woos open source developers to take this platform to its next level by participating in the community.
Christine Peterson is a founder and Vice-President of Foresight Institute, and focuses effort on educating the public on nanotechnology issues. In this emotionally-charged presentation at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention, Peterson lays out the potential privacy concerns of using nanotechnology and closed-source software to monitor for a future terrorist attack.
In this humorous talk from the O'Reilly Open Source Convention, Damian Conway combines quantum mechanics and general relativity with Perl to write code that executes in constant time, zero time, and finally backwards in time.
At some point while trying to get companies to adopt open source practices, Robert Lefkowitz realized that there was no specific open source software development methodology. In this presentation Lefkowitz discusses how he used Quintilian's Institutes of Oratory as a starting point to establish a framework for software development. With humor and insight, he outlines issues specific to open source, and shows how companies can create exceptional software by embracing a process where errors are not a bad thing.
There is an interaction between changes that happen in technology, changes in economics, and changes in society. The software industry is at the heart of these fundamental economic and social changes. More than any other time in history, software matters. In his keynote speech at the 2008 O'Reilly Media Open Source Convention (OSCON), Ubuntu founder and Open Source guru Mark Shuttleworth discusses how free software is the best way to drive wealth-creating opportunities.
Nathan Torkington gives a very humorous talk about how we can spawn (pun intended) the next generation of open source hackers and teach kids how
to use computers. He talks about various aspects of teaching kids and teachers alike. He further explores many different facets of a modern computer environment, including why pictures of people getting their legs bitten of by sharks are fun, why robots are lame, and the effective use of a new programming language called Scratch.
From the Greeks to the geeks, everyone loves to complain says former Sun chief open source evangelist Danese Cooper as she uncovers the role of whinging in the open source ecosystem. She paints the current state of open source cooperation and delivers a snapshot of beneficial directions for the community to adopt. Danese references the Helsinki Complaints Choir, Billie Jean King and baseball in relation to FOSS development in this conference talk.
David Recordon announces the creation of the Open Web Foundation. The open web is all about the data and protocols behind the web services in the cloud; the open web needs open data, and open data needs open specifications. Modeled after the Apache Software Foundation, the Open Web Foundation's goal is to do for specifications what open source has done in its arena, build community around specifications.
Using a touch of black humor and irony to convey a noble idea, Nathan Torkington, the chair of OSCON, lightens up the mood as he wraps up the conference, frequently throwing his audience into fits of laughter. He rapidly weaves three keynote messages together into a refreshingly therapeutic open source tonic. Due to brief profanity, this program may not be appropriate for work or family listening.
"Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge." That is the goal of Wikipedia's creator, Jimmy Wales. He has set his sights on Google and the other corporate Search Engines with his new project "Wikia," a personal search engine-builder.
