OSCON Conference Schedule

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Below are the confirmed and scheduled talks at OSCON 2009 (schedule subject to change). Download the Conference Venue Map (pdf).

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Create your own OSCON schedule using the personal scheduler function. Mark the workshops, sessions, keynotes, and events you want to attend by clicking on the calendar icon [calendar icon] next to each listing. Then click on "personal schedule" below and get your own customized schedule generated.

Ballroom A1
10:45am <video> and the Open Web Mark Surman (Mozilla Foundation), Asa Dotzler (Mozilla)
11:35am Building Compilers with the Parrot Compiler Toolkit Patrick Michaud (pmichaud.com)
1:45pm Thunderbird 3: A user-centric platform for email, learning from the web David Ascher (Mozilla Messaging), Dan Mosedale (Mozilla)
2:35pm Prism, Bringing Web Applications to the Desktop Matthew Gertner (Independent)
4:30pm Mashing-up Music with Songbird Steven Bengston (Pioneers of the Inevitable)
5:20pm Use LINA to Reach Your Users on all Platforms Saill White (Lina Software), Paul Honis (Lina Software)
Ballroom A2
10:45am Persistence Solutions with the Smalltalk Seaside Web Framework Randal Schwartz (FLOSS Weekly podcast)
11:35am Tips and Tricks for Writing PostGIS Spatial Queries LEO HSU (Paragon Corporation), Regina Obe (Paragon Corporation)
1:45pm Taming Your Data: Practical Data Integration Solutions with Kettle Roland Bouman (XCDSQL Solutions / Strukton Rail)
2:35pm Neo4j - The Benefits of Graph Databases Emil Eifrem (Neo Technology / Neo4j)
4:30pm Cassandra: Open Source Bigtable + Dynamo Jonathan Ellis (DataStax)
5:20pm MySQL Community Patches & Extensions Peter Zaitsev (Percona LLC)
Ballroom A3/A6
10:45am Computational Journalism Nick Diakopoulos (Georgia Tech), Brad Stenger (Ars Technica)
11:35am Functional Programming for the Real World - CANCELED! Bryan O'Sullivan (Serpentine Green Design)
1:45pm Email Hates the Living! Ricardo Signes (Pobox.com)
2:35pm How To Lie Like A Geek Michael Schwern (eval Empire)
4:30pm Beyond the Hype: The True Costs of Open Source Matt Asay (AWS), Zack Urlocker (MySQL), Matt Deuel (Virgin Mobile), Jeffrey Hammond (Forrester Research), Barry Klawans (San Francisco International Airport, IT&T Department)
5:20pm Effective Job Interviewing from Both Sides of the Desk Andy Lester (petdance.com)
Ballroom A4/A5
10:45am Situation Normal, Everything Must Change Simon Wardley (Leading Edge Forum)
11:35am Eucalyptus: an Open Source Infrastructure for Cloud Computing Rich Wolski (University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB))
1:45pm Building Custom Linux Images for Amazon EC2 Eric Hammond (Campus Explorer, Inc.)
2:35pm Building a Highly Scalable, Open Source, Twitter Clone Dan Diephouse (MuleSoft), Paul Brown (Multifarious, Inc)
4:30pm Portability in the Cloud: An Open Standard for Using Cloud Resources Alex Polvi (Cloudkick)
5:20pm Building Applications Across the Enterprise and Cloud Using Mule Ken Yagen (MuleSoft)
Ballroom A7
10:45am Introduction to Forensics Kyle Rankin (QuinStreet, Inc.)
11:35am Security-Centered Design: Exploring the Impact of Human Behavior Chris Shiflett (Analog)
1:45pm Why It Is Hard To Be Fast Auke Kok (Intel)
2:35pm MariaDB: Community Driven SQL Server Kurt von Finck (Monty Program Ab), Michael Widenius (Monty Program Ab)
4:30pm Implementing Privacy: OAuth & Token Madness Rabble Evan Henshaw-Plath (cuboxsa.com)
5:20pm What Zope Did Wrong, and How We Fixed It Lennart Regebro (Independent)
Meeting Room B1/B4
10:45am What Has Worked: OpenOffice.org Around the World Louis Suarez-Potts (Oracle / OpenOffice.org)
11:35am Varnish - A State of the Art High-Performance Reverse Proxy Artur Bergman (Fastly)
1:45pm Erlang for Five Nines: A non technical introduction to Erlang Francesco Cesarini (Erlang Solutions Ltd)
2:35pm The Role of Users in Open Source Projects Stormy Peters (Red Hat)
4:30pm Just Get the Job Done! Serving the Community One Argument at a Time. Jacinta Richardson (Perl Training Australia)
5:20pm What Web App Design Can Learn From the Harpsichord Elaine Wherry (Meebo)
Meeting Room B2
10:45am Wrangling Your Ubuntu Systems Ken Drachnik (Canonical)
11:35am Make Great Spreadsheets Casey West (Pivotal)
1:45pm FreeTUIT - Codeless GUI Programming Eric Wilhelm (Cisco, Inc.)
2:35pm High Performance SQL with PostgreSQL David Fetter (PgExperts)
4:30pm Open Source Documentation Doesn't Have to Suck Addison Berry (Lullabot)
5:20pm Version Control for Mere Mortals Emma Jane Westby (UN-OCHA)
Ballroom A8
10:45am Drizzle: Status, Principles, and Ecosystem Brian Aker (HP), Monty Taylor (HP), Mark Atwood (Hewlett Packard Enterprise), Ronald Bradford (EffectiveMySQL), Eric Day (craigslist), Patrick Galbraith (Hewlett Packard)
11:35am Building a Business on the Cheap Chris Wanstrath (GitHub)
1:45pm Does Working with Free Software Have to Be So Hard? Dave Neary (Red Hat)
2:35pm Barely Legal XXX Perl Jos Boumans (Krux Digital)
4:30pm Easy as BIRT: Introduction to Reporting Jason Weathersby (Actuate Corporation)
5:20pm Writing Books using Open Source Software wesley chun (Google)
Meeting Room N
9:00am Sunlight Labs Hackathon
Meeting Room J1/J4
10:45am JRuby on Google App Engine John Woodell (Google, Inc. ), Max Ross (Google, Inc. ), Ted Han (Videojuicer)
11:35am Accelerate your Rails Site with Automatic Generation-based Action Caching Rod Cope (OpenLogic, Inc.)
1:45pm Rubinius 1.0: The Ruby VM That Could Brian Shirai (Rubinius, Inc)
2:35pm IronRuby 0.9 Jimmy Schementi (Microsoft)
4:30pm Unit Test Your Database! David Wheeler (iovation)
5:20pm "Design Patterns" in Dynamic Languages Neal Ford (ThoughtWorks)
Meeting Room J2
10:45am All the Little Pieces: Distributed systems with PHP Andrei Zmievski (Analog)
11:35am Untestable Code Sebastian Bergmann (thePHP.cc)
1:45pm Scaling Firefox Support with PHP Laura Thomson (Mozilla Corporation)
2:35pm 2009 PHP Best Practices Luke Welling (Tidal Labs), Laura Thomson (Mozilla Corporation)
4:30pm Website Releases Made Easy with the PEAR Installer Helgi Thomar Thorbjoernsson (echolibre)
5:20pm XDebug Your Code: Tips and Tricks for Writing Bug-Free High Impact Code Brandon Savage (Mozilla)
Meeting Room B3
10:45am Building Enterprise Social Networks with Liferay Portal Brian Chan (Liferay, Inc.)
11:35am Launchpad Foundations: Learning to Leverage a Component Architecture Gary Poster (Canonical, Ltd.)
1:45pm Building a Corporate Blog Portal Using WordPress MU Dan York (Voxeo Corporation)
2:35pm Improving Legal Certainty in FOSS: Best Practices for Upstream Projects Richard Fontana (Red Hat)
4:30pm XTraDB OpenSource Storage Engine for MySQL Vadim Tkachenko (Percona Inc), Ryan Lowe (Square)
5:20pm Building a Business on Open Source Distributed Computing Bradford Stephens (roboticprofit)
Meeting Room J3
10:45am Java Testing on the Fast Lane Andres Almiray (Canoo Engineering AG), Ixchel Ruiz (CCA)
11:35am Spring Framework 3.0- New and Notable Rod Johnson (SpringSource)
1:45pm A Survey of Concurrency Constructs Ted Leung (The Walt Disney Company)
2:35pm Clojure: Functional Concurrency for the JVM Howard Lewis Ship (Formos)
4:30pm NASA World Wind: A New Mission Patrick Hogan (NASA), Randy Kim (NASA)
5:20pm What Open Source Projects Need to Know About Interacting with the Press Esther Schindler (It Expert Voice), Steven Vaughan-Nichols (ZDNet), Joe Brockmeier (Red Hat), James Turner (O'Reilly Media), Jennifer Cloer (Page One PR)
Meeting Room C1/C4
9:00am OSCamp
OSCamp 2009
10:15am Morning Break - Served in the Expo Hall
Room: Exhibit Hall 1
3:20pm Afternoon Break - Sponsored by Open Invention Network - Served in the Expo Hall
Room: Exhibit Hall 1
Exhibit Hall 3
9:00am Thursday Morning Keynotes
Room: Exhibit Hall 3
Standing Out in the Crowd Kirrily Robert (Freebase.com)
9:15am Plenary
Room: Exhibit Hall 3
Your Work in Open Source, the Numbers Chris DiBona (Google, Inc.)
9:30am Thursday Morning Keynotes (cont'd)
Room: Exhibit Hall 3
Enabling Academic Research – Open Tools and Services on Microsoft Platforms Tony Hey (Microsoft Corporation)
9:45am Plenary
Room: Exhibit Hall 3
Cloud Computing - Why IT Matters Simon Wardley (Leading Edge Forum)
10:00am Plenary
Room: Exhibit Hall 3
Apps for America Clay Johnson (InformationDiet.com)
10:45am There Are No Unicorns: And Other Lessons Learned While Running an Innovation Team Rolf Skyberg (eBay, Inc.)
11:35am The Google Open Source Update Chris DiBona (Google, Inc.), Leslie Hawthorn (Red Hat)
1:45pm State of Lightning Talks 2009 Josh Berkus (PostgreSQL Experts, Inc.)
4:30pm Perl Lightning Talks R Geoffrey Avery (Platypi Ventures)
6:15pm Plenary
Room: Exhibit Hall 3
White Camel Awards
6:30pm Plenary
Room: Exhibit Hall 3
State of the Onion Address Larry Wall (The Wall Nuthouse)
Meeting Room C2
10:45am Building Complex UI Animations in Moblin Clutter 1.0 Chris Lord (Intel)
2:35pm Solving The Troll Problem: The Role of Allied Security Trust and Open Invention Network Keith Bergelt (Open Invention Network), Daniel McCurdy (Allied Security Trust)
Meeting Room C3
10:45am Give Your ERP Some REST with p2ee Alejandro Imass (Yabarana Corporation)
11:35am Controlling the Addiction: Best Practices for Scaling With Memcached (a.k.a Crack for Developers) & the LAMP Stack Joaquin Ruiz (Gear6)
1:45pm The Secured Enterprise: Leverage OpenID with Web Services Prabath Siriwardena (WSO2 Inc.)
2:35pm How to Become a RESTafarian WOArrior Aaron Fulkerson (MindTouch, Inc. )
12:20pm Lunch - Sponsored by SourceForge
Room: Exhibit Hall 2
10:45am-11:30am (45m) Desktop Applications, Mozilla, Programming
<video> and the Open Web
Mark Surman (Mozilla Foundation), Asa Dotzler (Mozilla)
Using the
11:35am-12:20pm (45m) Programming
Building Compilers with the Parrot Compiler Toolkit
Patrick Michaud (pmichaud.com)
This talk provides a tutorial on creating compilers in Parrot using the Parrot Compiler Toolkit. It walks through the process of creating a parser, building an abstract syntax tree, and generating executable output.
1:45pm-2:30pm (45m) Desktop Applications, Mozilla
Thunderbird 3: A user-centric platform for email, learning from the web
David Ascher (Mozilla Messaging), Dan Mosedale (Mozilla)
Thunderbird 3 is nearing release -- in this developer-oriented talk, David Ascher and Dan Mosedale will talk about what Thunderbird 3 will mean to people who want to take an active role in managing their email lives.
2:35pm-3:20pm (45m) Mozilla, Web Applications
Prism, Bringing Web Applications to the Desktop
Matthew Gertner (Independent)
Although web applications are catching up with their desktop counterparts, there is still ground to cover. Prism, a project initiated by Mozilla Labs, is an attempt to bridge this gap. In this talk, we explain why Prism represents a superior web client for running web applications. We use a live demo to show how easy it is to use Prism to customize a popular web app.
4:30pm-5:15pm (45m) Desktop Applications, Programming, Web Applications
Mashing-up Music with Songbird
Steven Bengston (Pioneers of the Inevitable)
Know Javascript, HTML, and CSS? Interested in music, and exploring what's possible when you combine the power of Mozilla, add-ons, and music on the web? Songbird, a desktop media player powered by Mozilla's XULRunner/Firefox platform, allows you to build Javascript extensions to create new digital media mashups using open APIs, and media web services.
5:20pm-6:05pm (45m) Desktop Applications, Linux, Programming
Use LINA to Reach Your Users on all Platforms
Saill White (Lina Software), Paul Honis (Lina Software)
In this session, we will help you create a single universal binary and installer of your Open Source project that can run on Windows, Mac, UNIX, Xen, VMware, VirtualBox, Qemu, Parallels, and Amazon's EC2. If you want to Linafy your app, just create a Debian package of your application and bring that and a 128x128 PNG image of your logo.
10:45am-11:30am (45m) Databases, Emerging Topics, Programming, Web Applications
Persistence Solutions with the Smalltalk Seaside Web Framework
Randal Schwartz (FLOSS Weekly podcast)
Nearly all Web Applications need persistent solutions to be effective. For Perl and Ruby, the choice is generally "use an Object-Relational Mapper to put data into an SQL database", but with Smalltalk's object model, pure-object storage is also available as an option. We'll look at ORM and Object solutions for web apps built with Seaside, including a few commercial solutions like GemStone/S
11:35am-12:20pm (45m) Databases
Tips and Tricks for Writing PostGIS Spatial Queries
LEO HSU (Paragon Corporation), Regina Obe (Paragon Corporation)
We shall present 10 tricks/techniques for writing efficient PostGIS spatial queries.
1:45pm-2:30pm (45m) Business, Databases, Java, Programming
Taming Your Data: Practical Data Integration Solutions with Kettle
Roland Bouman (XCDSQL Solutions / Strukton Rail)
Nowadays, data is everywhere: databases, spreadsheets, the web...if only we could access it at on time, at the right place, in the right form... Turning data into information is a struggle. Like diamonds are mined and cut to create jewels, so must data be extracted and transformed to create information. Learn how the open source data integration tool Kettle helps to fight your data dragons.
2:35pm-3:20pm (45m) Databases, Emerging Topics, Java, Web Applications
Neo4j - The Benefits of Graph Databases
Emil Eifrem (Neo Technology / Neo4j)
A graph db stores data in a network structure rather than in relational tables. This model is well suited for many web use cases such as tagging, metadata annotations, social networks, wikis and other network-shaped or hierarchical data sets. This talk will introduce Neo4j: a high-performance, transactional open source graph db, which frequently outperforms RDBMSs with >1000x for such use cases.
4:30pm-5:15pm (45m) Databases
Cassandra: Open Source Bigtable + Dynamo
Jonathan Ellis (DataStax)
Cassandra is a third-generation open source distributed database that marries Bigtable's rich data model with Dynamo's aggressive simplicity to produce a uniquely compelling alternative to traditional relational databases.
5:20pm-6:05pm (45m) Databases
MySQL Community Patches & Extensions
Peter Zaitsev (Percona LLC)
Besides MySQL release officially available from Sun there are multiple patches and extensions developed by community. In this Presentation we will look into them to see what extra features patches from Google, Percona and OurDelta offer and how can you use them to make your MySQL life more fun.
10:45am-11:30am (45m) Emerging Topics, Web Applications
Computational Journalism
Nick Diakopoulos (Georgia Tech), Brad Stenger (Ars Technica)
The era of traditional journalism is giving way to something else. We think that something else is Computational Journalism. CJ recognizes the need for internal production and for public-facing news delivery innovations. What journalists provide in terms of services, interfaces, and business models are in flux. To settle things, smart experiments (often using Open Source APIs) are critical.
11:35am-12:20pm (45m) Emerging Topics, Programming
Functional Programming for the Real World - CANCELED!
Bryan O'Sullivan (Serpentine Green Design)
Languages like Erlang, Haskell, Scala and Clojure have been gaining visibility rapidly over the past few years. Our panel will discuss the advantages and challenges of developing and deploying software using functional languages. How do coding, QA, and maintenance change in this world?
1:45pm-2:30pm (45m) Desktop Applications, Mobile, Programming
Email Hates the Living!
Ricardo Signes (Pobox.com)
Email: you see it every day. It's on your desktop. It's in your servers. Through the magic of modern technology, it flows invisibly through the air and into your PDA! Your cellular phone conducts silent and arcane conversations with distant servers, speaking the ancient language of SMTP and the unknowable dialects of IMAP. Surely all this technology means progress of mankind... or does it?
2:35pm-3:20pm (45m) People
How To Lie Like A Geek
Michael Schwern (eval Empire)
Geeks have a special relationship with The Truth. Nothing is more important than correcting a falsehood, no matter how small, and nothing is more odious than not telling The Truth. Unfortunately the meaning is often mangled and the end result is the opposite, a lie. This leads to misunderstanding, mangled interfaces and the myth of the stupid user.
4:30pm-5:15pm (45m) Business, Emerging Topics
Beyond the Hype: The True Costs of Open Source
Matt Asay (AWS), Zack Urlocker (MySQL), Matt Deuel (Virgin Mobile), Jeffrey Hammond (Forrester Research), Barry Klawans (San Francisco International Airport, IT&T Department)
In a time of tight IT budgets, open source has attracted much attention due to its cost advantages. But what is hype and what is reality? Join industry veterans, analysts and end-users as the look at the true costs and cost savings of open source. Participants will discuss how smart open source implementation can save money and where investments need to be made.
5:20pm-6:05pm (45m) Business, People
Effective Job Interviewing from Both Sides of the Desk
Andy Lester (petdance.com)
An engaging, frank discussion of the job interview, its failings, and how to make it work for all involved. Effective interviewing reframes the interview as what it really is: The candidate's first day on the job. This session, aimed at the specific needs of the technical professional, shows how manager and candidate must work together for their common benefit.
10:45am-11:30am (45m) Business, Cloud Computing, Emerging Topics, Ubuntu
Situation Normal, Everything Must Change
Simon Wardley (Leading Edge Forum)
In today's computing world, it can often feel like we are drowning in wave after wave of new trends such as mashups, service oriented architecture and cloud computing. This sea of concepts are simply the manifestation of an underlying change in IT. In this session we will explore what is happening and why open source is the dominant model for the future.
11:35am-12:20pm (45m) Cloud Computing, Emerging Topics, Programming
Eucalyptus: an Open Source Infrastructure for Cloud Computing
Rich Wolski (University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB))
We will present Eucalyptus -- Elastic Utility Computing Architecture for Linking Your Programs to Useful Systems -- an open source software infrastructure that implements IaaS-style cloud computing. The goal of Eucalyptus is to allow sites with existing clusters and server infrastructure to host an elastic computing service that is interface-compatible with Amazon's AWS.
1:45pm-2:30pm (45m) Administration, Cloud Computing, Emerging Topics, Linux
Building Custom Linux Images for Amazon EC2
Eric Hammond (Campus Explorer, Inc.)
Learn how to create your own Linux machine images (AMIs) for running on Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) customized with your choice of software packages and application software configured to your liking. Use the latest open source software to build custom images from scratch in a secure, automated, reproducible process. Discover when to use a public image with automatic customization at boot.
2:35pm-3:20pm (45m) Cloud Computing, Databases, Emerging Topics, Java, Web Applications
Building a Highly Scalable, Open Source, Twitter Clone
Dan Diephouse (MuleSoft), Paul Brown (Multifarious, Inc)
What would you do if you were tasked with building a Twitter clone which was highly scalable, made from open source components and deployed in this infamous thing we call the cloud?
4:30pm-5:15pm (45m) Cloud Computing, Emerging Topics
Portability in the Cloud: An Open Standard for Using Cloud Resources
Alex Polvi (Cloudkick)
This talk will discuss the on going effort to standardize the interfaces into the cloud. Currently every cloud provider has a unique, proprietary, API for consuming the services they offer. The Cloud Computing Interoperability movement aims to provide standards that will overcome vendor lock-in, benefit the consumers, and allow the cloud ecosystem to grow transparently.
5:20pm-6:05pm (45m) Administration, Business, Cloud Computing, Java, Security, Web Applications
Building Applications Across the Enterprise and Cloud Using Mule
Ken Yagen (MuleSoft)
This session details how developers can use Mule -- an open source enterprise service bus (ESB) -- to develop, deploy and integrate composite applications on both sides of the firewall, and how Mule can work with complementary technology to address virtualization concerns.
10:45am-11:30am (45m) Linux, Security
Introduction to Forensics
Kyle Rankin (QuinStreet, Inc.)
In this talk Kyle Rankin will provide an introduction to performing forensics analysis on Linux machines using the popular Sleuthkit tools with their easy-to-use Autopsy web-based front-end. The talk will cover basic concepts for a forensics investigation, and at the end there will be a demo with a compromised Linux image.
11:35am-12:20pm (45m) Security
Security-Centered Design: Exploring the Impact of Human Behavior
Chris Shiflett (Analog)
Perception is as important as reality. In this multifarious talk, I'll introduce some of what I have learned about cognitive psychology, exploring topics such as change blindness and ambient signifiers, and I'll show some real-world examples that demonstrate the profound impact human behavior can have on security.
1:45pm-2:30pm (45m) Programming
Why It Is Hard To Be Fast
Auke Kok (Intel)
From the early 80s to the early 2000s computers and software got faster. But in the last 5 years the perception of performance hasn't really changed - or has even gotten worse! In this presentation we'll explain why it is hard to be fast, walk the audience step by step through one example where we addressed the issue and talk about ways to look at the problem more systematically.
2:35pm-3:20pm (45m) Databases
MariaDB: Community Driven SQL Server
Kurt von Finck (Monty Program Ab), Michael Widenius (Monty Program Ab)
MariaDB is a fork of Sun's MySQL product. This talk will present how MariaDB is both similar to and different from MySQL, in both social and technical senses.
4:30pm-5:15pm (45m) Ruby, Web Applications
Implementing Privacy: OAuth & Token Madness
Rabble Evan Henshaw-Plath (cuboxsa.com)
Ever cringe when you're asked to enter your email address and password to a third party service? This talk will cover how to build and consume services which protect users privacy with OAuth and other techniques.
5:20pm-6:05pm (45m) Programming, Python, Web Applications
What Zope Did Wrong, and How We Fixed It
Lennart Regebro (Independent)
Ten years old, Zope is the granddaddy of open source web frameworks. It introduced many new concepts that have spread through the web framework world. But not all of them was such great ideas. This talk is about the bad ideas that your framework risk end up repeating. It also talks about how these problems have been fixed in Zope, and why Zope still is the leading edge of web development.
10:45am-11:30am (45m) Design & Usability, Government, People
What Has Worked: OpenOffice.org Around the World
Louis Suarez-Potts (Oracle / OpenOffice.org)
OOo has succeeded in engaging thousands of contributors around the world. Many are not technical. How was this done? As well, governments are now adopting OpenOffice.org: Why? And, how do the local and localization communuties contribute to this adoption? Finally, what lessons can other Foss projects take from OpenOffice.org's accompishments?
11:35am-12:20pm (45m) Administration, Programming
Varnish - A State of the Art High-Performance Reverse Proxy
Artur Bergman (Fastly)
Varnish is a application level reverse proxy for HTTP. Written with performance in mind it incorporates some advanced features to stretch the kernel as far as possible. Wikia relies heavily on varnish to serve a peak traffic of close to a gigabit/sec out of 3 different datacenters. Each one with two Varnishes working as a pair serving thousands of requests a second.
1:45pm-2:30pm (45m) Emerging Topics, Programming
Erlang for Five Nines: A non technical introduction to Erlang
Francesco Cesarini (Erlang Solutions Ltd)
This talk will introduce Erlang, expanding on what the hype is all about. It will provide a high level technical overview, looking at its concurrency model and distribution models, software upgrade during runtime and scalability on multicore. It will describe its ever expanding community and domains of use, with examples on open source applications, commercial products and research projects
2:35pm-3:20pm (45m) Business, Design & Usability, People
The Role of Users in Open Source Projects
Stormy Peters (Red Hat)
While consumers and the open source community don't interact often, users are important to projects because users test software, spread the word, motivate developers, lend credibility, contribute financially and participate in users groups. Come learn why users are important to an open source project and how they can be more involved.
4:30pm-5:15pm (45m) People
Just Get the Job Done! Serving the Community One Argument at a Time.
Jacinta Richardson (Perl Training Australia)
The president of your committee is doing most of the work and none of the management. The secretary hasn't written the minutes for any of the meetings for the last 6 months (you wrote the last 4 agendas). The treasurer can't access the bank account, and you haven't heard from your publicity officer since you started planning the big event. Welcome to the fun of volunteer communities!
5:20pm-6:05pm (45m) Web Applications
What Web App Design Can Learn From the Harpsichord
Elaine Wherry (Meebo)
Baroque harpsichordists excelled at taking simple melodies and creating elaborate, beautiful pieces of music. But in their desire to push the boundaries of experimentation, these keyboard virtuosi eventually ornamented the music beyond the limits of good taste, making the composer’s original melody unrecognizable. Something similar happens in web design.
10:45am-11:30am (45m) Administration, Cloud Computing, Ubuntu
Wrangling Your Ubuntu Systems
Ken Drachnik (Canonical)
As Ubuntu environments grow, the complexity of managing packages and updating systems quickly outgrows the ability of a sys admin to easily manage servers and desktops with manual commands and scripts. This talk will explore some of the technologies that Ubuntu admins can use to manage their Ubuntu environments and how these can be extended to managing Cloud environments.
11:35am-12:20pm (45m) Perl
Make Great Spreadsheets
Casey West (Pivotal)
"Spreadsheet::WriteExcel":http://search.cpan.org/~jmcnamara/Spreadsheet-WriteExcel-2.25/ is a great Perl module for generating useful Spreadsheets with multiple worksheets, cell formatting, and data validation. You can use these spreadsheets for simple reporting, of course, or you can use them as an alternate interface to a data heavy application.
1:45pm-2:30pm (45m) Desktop Applications
FreeTUIT - Codeless GUI Programming
Eric Wilhelm (Cisco, Inc.)
FreeTUIT is desktop programming with less code. A concise, declarative syntax for widget layout and an expressive API for runtime give you clean and maintainable wxWidgets or Qt cross-platform applications in minutes.
2:35pm-3:20pm (45m) Databases
High Performance SQL with PostgreSQL
David Fetter (PgExperts)
PostgreSQL 8.4 is the first Open Source database management system to handle trees and lists using SQL:2008-compliant Common Table Expressions and Windowing functions. You'll learn how these work, see intriguing examples, and walk out ready to use them to your advantage.
4:30pm-5:15pm (45m) People
Open Source Documentation Doesn't Have to Suck
Addison Berry (Lullabot)
Many people view Open Source documentation as something they have to suffer if they want to use a free product. As Open Source code spreads faster and further in the great, wide world, we need to up the ante on documentation as well to keep fanning the flames. We'll take a look at how one community, the Drupal project, is trying to raise the bar and how others can learn from their ups and downs.
5:20pm-6:05pm (45m) Administration, Programming
Version Control for Mere Mortals
Emma Jane Westby (UN-OCHA)
As a freelance developer chances are good you use either many, or no, version control systems for your code. If your mental health has been compromised by index.version080912f-b.inc file naming, or you wish there was more flexibility in how (and when) your files are submitted to data central, it’s possible that Bazaar is the version control system you’ve been waiting for.
10:45am-11:30am (45m) Databases, People, Programming
Drizzle: Status, Principles, and Ecosystem
Brian Aker (HP), Monty Taylor (HP), Mark Atwood (Hewlett Packard Enterprise), Ronald Bradford (EffectiveMySQL), Eric Day (craigslist), Patrick Galbraith (Hewlett Packard)
In this panel talk a number of core Drizzle developers will explain where development sits today, critical tools involved, best practices that were used to get here, and how a vibrant open-source developer community has been built.
11:35am-12:20pm (45m) Business, Emerging Topics
Building a Business on the Cheap
Chris Wanstrath (GitHub)
With all the hype surrounding multimillion dollar rounds of funding, it's easy forget there's another way to build a business: by being cheap and smart. By relying on open source, building in increments, and only buying what you need, it's possible to create a successful company on your own (or with a few co-founders). This talk will focus on just that: the frugal path to profitability.
1:45pm-2:30pm (45m) Business, Linux, People
Does Working with Free Software Have to Be So Hard?
Dave Neary (Red Hat)
Most companies who start working with free software projects have trouble. They run over common stumbling blocks. Questions go unanswered, patches go unreviewed. Why does it take so much time and evergy to be a good citizen? This presentation will outline the problems, and will give some metrics which you can use to evaluate a community's health before marrying them.
2:35pm-3:20pm (45m) Perl
Barely Legal XXX Perl
Jos Boumans (Krux Digital)
"Barely Legal XXX Perl" shows several features of Perl you might not have known that existed, that are being (ab)used to run a program that was designed never to be able to run in the first place... It's a high paced, humourous, and entertaining look at Perl's slightly less obvious features.
4:30pm-5:15pm (45m) Business, Databases, Java, Web Applications
Easy as BIRT: Introduction to Reporting
Jason Weathersby (Actuate Corporation)
This session will detail using BIRT to create interactive content for your intranet and external web based applications.
5:20pm-6:05pm (45m) Business, Emerging Topics
Writing Books using Open Source Software
wesley chun (Google)
These days, there are countless number of software applications and web services that have been developed using free and open source software (FOSS). Such tools have become so flexible, powerful, and universal, that it should also be possible for authors to write manuscripts using FOSS in the same way that applications are developed. In this talk, we present some case studies of this phenomenon.
9:00am-6:00pm (9h) Event
Sunlight Labs Hackathon
At the Sunlight Labs hackathon, Sunlight Labs will be working with developers on two major projects: 1. Parsing sites at for our 50 state project to get every state legislature in a common data format, and 2. Adding data into Sunlight's newest project, Congrelate.
10:45am-11:30am (45m) Cloud Computing, Databases, Emerging Topics, Ruby, Web Applications
JRuby on Google App Engine
John Woodell (Google, Inc. ), Max Ross (Google, Inc. ), Ted Han (Videojuicer)
Using JRuby, apps created with Ruby frameworks like Rails or Merb can now be deployed to Google's highly scalable infrastructure. This talk, will provide an overview of App Engine, with attention to current features and apis. We will also show some demos, including deployment to the production environment, and provide some insight into (and best practices for) using the App Engine Datastore.
11:35am-12:20pm (45m) Ruby, Web Applications
Accelerate your Rails Site with Automatic Generation-based Action Caching
Rod Cope (OpenLogic, Inc.)
Rails caching is difficult and complicated. It takes some work to set it up, but it's even harder to make sure you always clear the right cache when data gets changed. This session demonstrates how to build an automatic generation-based action caching mechanism built on memcached that can handle edits from any angle while guaranteeing that users never see stale data.
1:45pm-2:30pm (45m) Programming, Ruby
Rubinius 1.0: The Ruby VM That Could
Brian Shirai (Rubinius, Inc)
This talk will give an overview of Rubinius, an alternative Ruby implementation with a C++ VM, Ruby standard library, and Ruby compiler. It will also detail major recent changes like switching away from stackless execution and improvements in the core library data structures, garbage collector, compiler, and JIT assembler.
2:35pm-3:20pm (45m) Ruby
IronRuby 0.9
Jimmy Schementi (Microsoft)
IronRuby is almost at 1.0! Come and see how IronRuby is used in .NET programs, how well it performs, and how conformant it is.
4:30pm-5:15pm (45m) Databases, Programming
Unit Test Your Database!
David Wheeler (iovation)
You unit test your application API. You unit test your presentation layer. You write integration and acceptance tests. But your database is tested only as a side-effect to testing everything else. That's a pretty important part of the stack to just leave to the assumption it works as expected! Come to this talk to learn about the tools that enable integrated unit tests for your database.
5:20pm-6:05pm (45m) Java, Programming, Ruby
"Design Patterns" in Dynamic Languages
Neal Ford (ThoughtWorks)
Design patterns describe common problems in software development, but many people believe that the GoF book demonstrates the best ways to implement these patterns. Dynamic languages provide more facilities than C++ or Java; this session shows alternative implementations of design patterns using dynamic languages (Ruby and Groovy).
10:45am-11:30am (45m) PHP, Web Applications
All the Little Pieces: Distributed systems with PHP
Andrei Zmievski (Analog)
Scaling up takes you only so far. Every Web business serious about its future needs to think about scaling out. Distributed systems are a key component of this strategy, but they aren't as difficult as they sound. This session will cover several distributed technologies and their use with PHP.
11:35am-12:20pm (45m) PHP, Programming
Untestable Code
Sebastian Bergmann (thePHP.cc)
How do you write untestable code and anger an ancient goddess? These and other questions will guide us while we discuss testability, an often forgotten attribute of software design and quality. Starting from untestable code fragments, the audience will learn why the code is untestable and how it can be refactored for testability.
1:45pm-2:30pm (45m) Mozilla, PHP
Scaling Firefox Support with PHP
Laura Thomson (Mozilla Corporation)
On Download Day 2008 eight million users downloaded Firefox 3 and set a Guinness World Record. Firefox 3's in-product help is provided by support.mozilla.com, written in PHP and using a variety of FOSS tools. Learn how we scaled up for Download Day and how we support millions of users worldwide.
2:35pm-3:20pm (45m) PHP
2009 PHP Best Practices
Luke Welling (Tidal Labs), Laura Thomson (Mozilla Corporation)
Web applications are like trees. Slice through them and you can judge their age by looking at the growth rings. You've probably abandoned PHP4 compatibility by now, but are you taking advantage of practices that have made web application development a mature discipline? Come with us on a tour of PHP best practices in 2009.
4:30pm-5:15pm (45m) Emerging Topics, PHP, Programming, Web Applications
Website Releases Made Easy with the PEAR Installer
Helgi Thomar Thorbjoernsson (echolibre)
Ever wondered if there is a easier way to manage releases for your website ? You will learn how to harness the power of the PEAR installer to make the release process as lean, mean and slick as possible so even your interns will be able to handle it.
5:20pm-6:05pm (45m) PHP
XDebug Your Code: Tips and Tricks for Writing Bug-Free High Impact Code
Brandon Savage (Mozilla)
Most developers have heard of XDebug, but how many of them have actually used it to its full potential? Here we explore all the exciting things XDebug can do to improve code, from profiling to benchmarking to variable output.
10:45am-11:30am (45m) Java, PHP, Python, Ruby
Building Enterprise Social Networks with Liferay Portal
Brian Chan (Liferay, Inc.)
Liferay Portal is a Java framework that provides blogs, document management, message boards, and wikis, with a social network flavor. We'll demo how to use Liferay Social API to wire collaborative social network sites for Cisco and Mini United, write an app that will automatically expose it to Facebook and iGoogle, and how to write language-agnostic apps in Java, Groovy, PHP, Python, and Ruby.
11:35am-12:20pm (45m) Programming, Python, Ubuntu, Web Applications
Launchpad Foundations: Learning to Leverage a Component Architecture
Gary Poster (Canonical, Ltd.)
Study gains and losses in how Launchpad, a collaboration web service for the open-source community, used a Python component library from Zope 3 to help manage a large project. Discuss when the approach might be appropriate. Code examples include automatic REST web service generation. Demonstrate how the component architecture might be leveraged in popular frameworks such as Django.
1:45pm-2:30pm (45m) Business
Building a Corporate Blog Portal Using WordPress MU
Dan York (Voxeo Corporation)
In this tight economy, are you looking for a way to create a multi-blog portal for your company or organization without spending a zillion dollars? This talk will introduce how you can create a powerful, custom-branded blog portal supporting blogs and podcasts using the open source WordPress MU.
2:35pm-3:20pm (45m) Business, Emerging Topics, Legal
Improving Legal Certainty in FOSS: Best Practices for Upstream Projects
Richard Fontana (Red Hat)
FOSS can be seen as a new kind of legal system that facilitates sharing rights in code. Viewed in this way, FOSS can benefit from greater public knowledge of code origins and licensing rules. My talk will focus on practical guidance for projects seeking to improve legal certainty in the code they write and use. I will conclude with some longer-term institutional proposals.
4:30pm-5:15pm (45m) Databases
XTraDB OpenSource Storage Engine for MySQL
Vadim Tkachenko (Percona Inc), Ryan Lowe (Square)
A storage engine for MySQL based on the InnoDB storage engine, designed to better scale on modern hardware, and including a variety of other features useful in high performance environments. It is fully backwards compatible, and so can be used as a drop-in replacement for standard InnoDB.
5:20pm-6:05pm (45m) Business, Emerging Topics
Building a Business on Open Source Distributed Computing
Bradford Stephens (roboticprofit)
The end of "scale-up" computing is near. The coming wave of web-scale data is too big to justify exponentially increasing hardware costs for decreasing returns. Apache's "Cloud Stack" (Hadoop, Lucene, HBase, etc) is enabling Visible Technologies to move from a non-scalable MS-exclusive platform to a large cluster processing millions of pieces of content a day.Here's what we learned.
10:45am-11:30am (45m) Java, Programming
Java Testing on the Fast Lane
Andres Almiray (Canoo Engineering AG), Ixchel Ruiz (CCA)
Learn how the Groovy language can help you enhance your testing experience of Java applications.
11:35am-12:20pm (45m) Desktop Applications, Java
Spring Framework 3.0- New and Notable
Rod Johnson (SpringSource)
The Spring Framework is the most popular application programming framework for Java/Java EE development, with widespread adoption across many industries. If you’re a Spring user, you should understand the Spring 3.0 features and how they may benefit you; if you are not yet a Spring user, you may find Spring significantly more compelling.
1:45pm-2:30pm (45m) Emerging Topics, Java, Programming, Python, Ruby
A Survey of Concurrency Constructs
Ted Leung (The Walt Disney Company)
This talk will be a survey of concurrent programming constructs which are currently available in some programming language or library. We will look at programming model being presented, as well as examining some of the implementation challenges for the various models.
2:35pm-3:20pm (45m) Emerging Topics, Java, Programming
Clojure: Functional Concurrency for the JVM
Howard Lewis Ship (Formos)
Clojure is a functional programming language that runs on the JVM and features great performance and innovative concurrency support.
4:30pm-5:15pm (45m) Java, Web Applications
NASA World Wind: A New Mission
Patrick Hogan (NASA), Randy Kim (NASA)
We are entering an era when 3D visualization technology will become as standard as 2D web browsers are today. NASA World Wind is standards-based, open source technology oriented to stimulate innovation. Just as public highways built for the common good opened up huge opportunities for society, so too NASA World Wind client *and* server technology provides a public domain 3D highway.
5:20pm-6:05pm (45m) People
What Open Source Projects Need to Know About Interacting with the Press
Esther Schindler (It Expert Voice), Steven Vaughan-Nichols (ZDNet), Joe Brockmeier (Red Hat), James Turner (O'Reilly Media), Jennifer Cloer (Page One PR)
Plenty of FOSS projects yearn for visibility, within the tech press or in the larger world. But few know how to respond when a journalist indicates interest. These experienced writers and editors will explain how your project can get attention and present itself in the best possible light.
9:00am-6:05pm (9h 5m) Event
OSCamp 2009
OSCamp 2009, a community organized event designed to share and improve the essential skills required to participate in collaborative, free and open online projects. The event features a mix of educational presentations and hands-on coaching from experts in participatory communities.
10:15am-10:45am (30m)
Break: Morning Break - Served in the Expo Hall
3:20pm-4:30pm (1h 10m)
Break: Afternoon Break - Sponsored by Open Invention Network - Served in the Expo Hall
9:00am-9:15am (15m)
Standing Out in the Crowd
Kirrily Robert (Freebase.com)
What's it like to be a woman in an open source project that's 99% men? What's it like to be a woman in a project that's 75%... women? Kirrily Robert, who has worked on both kinds of projects, will talk about the differences, and what we can learn from majority-female open source projects.
9:15am-9:30am (15m)
Your Work in Open Source, the Numbers
Chris DiBona (Google, Inc.)
Google crawls more than just web pages, we also crawl source code. Ever wondered just how much open source code is out there? What licenses is all that code under? Which projects are the most shared? We'll try to answer these questions in this talk.
9:30am-9:45am (15m)
Enabling Academic Research – Open Tools and Services on Microsoft Platforms
Tony Hey (Microsoft Corporation)
Microsoft External Research builds bridges between academia, industry, and government to advance computer science, education, and scientific research. Modern science and academic research increasingly relies on integrated information technologies and computation to collect, process, and analyze complex data.
9:45am-10:00am (15m)
Cloud Computing - Why IT Matters
Simon Wardley (Leading Edge Forum)
Keynote by Simon Wardley, Canoncial Ltd.
10:00am-10:15am (15m)
Apps for America
Clay Johnson (InformationDiet.com)
New Technology is crashing the gates of Washington, DC as a new administration begins to find its legs. Open Source developers are the key to making a lot of this change happen and we've got to move fast and work together in order to do it right. This talk is about strategy-- how can open source developers change their government?
10:45am-11:30am (45m) Business, Design & Usability, People
There Are No Unicorns: And Other Lessons Learned While Running an Innovation Team
Rolf Skyberg (eBay, Inc.)
Everybody wants innovation. Innovation is believed to be magical unicorn which will lead the way to success and riches, but this is easier said than done. In this talk I'll discuss lessons learned from two years driving innovation on eBay's Disruptive Innovation team; which strategies worked and which didn't, and what questions you should start asking first when someone tells you to "go innovate"!
11:35am-12:20pm (45m) Business, Emerging Topics, Linux, Mobile
The Google Open Source Update
Chris DiBona (Google, Inc.), Leslie Hawthorn (Red Hat)
In this talk, Chris DiBona will bring the audience up to date on recent Google activities in open source. We will specifically cover advances in Android’s open source deployment infrastructure, including the Gerrit and Repo tools, and the directions those tools are taking.
1:45pm-3:20pm (1h 35m) People
State of Lightning Talks 2009
Josh Berkus (PostgreSQL Experts, Inc.)
Come see your favorite open source projects for updates on what they've been doing while you were out partying (or job-hunting) all year. What has Mozilla been up to? What's going on with the FreeBSD Kernel? Have MySQL and PostgreSQL finally killed each other off? Join us for a 1 1/2 hour session of 5-minute project updates, combined with both intentional and unintentional humor.
4:30pm-6:05pm (1h 35m) Perl
Perl Lightning Talks
R Geoffrey Avery (Platypi Ventures)
A series of 5-minute talks on anything related to Perl or people who use it. A chance to get one-third of your 15 minutes of fame.
6:15pm-6:30pm (15m) Event
White Camel Awards
In the lands where the camel roams, the white (albino) camel is a rare and revered individual. The White Camel Awards recognize the many significant contributions made by the unsung heros of the Perl community. The efforts of these volunteers collectively make the Perl language and the Perl community better for all of us.
6:30pm-7:30pm (1h) Event
State of the Onion Address
Larry Wall (The Wall Nuthouse)
The OSCON tradition continues as Larry Wall delivers the annual State of the Onion Address.
10:45am-11:30am (45m) Products and Services
Building Complex UI Animations in Moblin Clutter 1.0
Chris Lord (Intel)
In the process of creating application for the new user experience in Moblin 2.0, a lot has been learned about how to effectively use Clutter to build aesthetically pleasing and practical interfaces. This will be a tutorial on how to implement complex and good-looking UI animations using Clutter.
2:35pm-3:20pm (45m) Products and Services
Solving The Troll Problem: The Role of Allied Security Trust and Open Invention Network
Keith Bergelt (Open Invention Network), Daniel McCurdy (Allied Security Trust)
Over the last decade, patent litigations launched by “patent trolls” have increased from approximately 3% of all patent litigations filed to over 17%. This session will analyze this issue and offer detailed recommendations to reduce exposures to “patent trolls,” including the role of AST and OIN in reducing such threats.
10:45am-11:30am (45m) Products and Services
Give Your ERP Some REST with p2ee
Alejandro Imass (Yabarana Corporation)
ERP is an area where FOSS programmers haven't particularly excelled at challenging the dogmas of traditional IS. In fact, the “monolithic ERP” challenges the very nature of FOSS and the diversity of it's communities. p2ee is a back-to-basics approach, based on the REST architectural style and new Web2 technologies.
11:35am-12:20pm (45m) Products and Services
Controlling the Addiction: Best Practices for Scaling With Memcached (a.k.a Crack for Developers) & the LAMP Stack
Joaquin Ruiz (Gear6)
Dynamic content created by and targeted at consumers is fuelling today’s web traffic growth and driving the evolution of the software stack. This evolution is a reversal of trends seen 10 years ago where the enterprise was the driving force in software development. The web is in the driver’s seat.
1:45pm-2:30pm (45m) Products and Services
The Secured Enterprise: Leverage OpenID with Web Services
Prabath Siriwardena (WSO2 Inc.)
SOA security needs to be by design, not as an afterthought. This session will demonstrate implementing Message Interceptor Gateway security pattern with WSO2 ESB, WSO2 WSAS and WSO2 Identity Server - together with the OpenID/Information Cards integration pattern at the front end.
2:35pm-3:20pm (45m) Products and Services
How to Become a RESTafarian WOArrior
Aaron Fulkerson (MindTouch, Inc. )
The web has evolved into the preeminent application platform. The design principles and technologies that have served the Internet well in terms of cost, scale and ease of development are just beginning to be applied to the enterprise. This session explains the characteristics and benefits of Web Oriented Architecture (WOA), provides strategies and includes enterprise success stories.
12:20pm-1:45pm (1h 25m)
Break: Lunch - Sponsored by SourceForge
  • Intel
  • Microsoft
  • Google
  • SourceForge.net
  • Sun Microsystems
  • Facebook
  • Gear6
  • Kaltura
  • Liferay
  • MindTouch
  • MySpace.com
  • Novell, Inc.
  • Open Invention Network
  • Rackspace Cloud
  • Schooner Information Technology
  • Silicon Mechanics
  • Symbian Foundation
  • Twilio
  • WSO2
  • Yabarana Corporation

Sponsorship Opportunities

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Press and Media

For media-related inquiries, contact Maureen Jennings at maureen@oreilly.com

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