Abstraction is a powerful servant, but a dangerous master. We code, design, think, debug ... on a tower of abstractions. Spolsky's Law tells us that "All abstractions leak". This talk explores why they leak, why that's often a problem, what to do about it; I also cover why sometimes abstractions SHOULD "leak", and how best to produce and consume abstraction layers. Read more.

11:35am Wednesday, 07/22/2009

Gearman: Bringing the Power of Map/Reduce to Everyday Applications

Databases, Web Applications
Location: Ballroom A4/A5

Eric Day (Rackspace Cloud), Brian Aker (HP)

Average rating:

(4.11, 19 ratings)

Come learn the fundamentals of how to leverage Gearman, the open-source, distributed job queuing system. Originally designed to scale LiveJournal.com, Gearman is now faster than ever and can help you build your own scalable applications. Gearman's generic design allows it to be used as a building block for almost any use - from speeding up your website to building your own Map/Reduce cluster. Read more.

1:45pm Wednesday, 07/22/2009

Programmer Insecurity and the Genius Myth

People
Location: Exhibit Hall 3

Ben Collins-Sussman (Google, Inc.), Brian Fitzpatrick (Google, Inc.)

Average rating:

(3.88, 16 ratings)

A pervasive elitism hovers in the background of collaborative software development: everyone secretly wants to be seen as a genius. In this talk, we discuss how to avoid this trap and gracefully exchange personal ego for personal growth and super-charged collaboration. We'll also examine how software tools affect social behaviors, and how to successfully manage the growth of new ideas. Read more.

2:35pm Wednesday, 07/22/2009

Open Source / Open Government

Business, Emerging Topics, Government, People
Location: Exhibit Hall 3

Danese Cooper (Wikimedia Foundation and Open Source Initiative), Greg Elin (Sunlight Foundation), Brian Behlendorf ((self-employed)), Silona Bonewald (SLC), Michael Tiemann (Open Source Initiative)

Average rating:

(2.50, 2 ratings)

Panel of movers and shakers in the movement to open government using the principals of Open Source. Read more.

2:35pm Wednesday, 07/22/2009

Where'd my Files Go? A guide to Modern Ubuntu Distributions

Linux, Ubuntu
Location: Meeting Room B3

Kyle Rankin (QuinStreet, Inc.)

Average rating:

(3.80, 5 ratings)

While you might not be able to tell at a glance, a lot has changed behind the scenes on a modern Ubuntu system. For instance, did you know Ubuntu is phasing out System V init and has already replaced the init binary? In this talk Kyle discusses the current changes Ubuntu is making to what we might consider the traditional Linux system. Read more.

4:30pm Wednesday, 07/22/2009

R we f#¢$ed? Why We Don't Understand Risk, and How it Dooms Us All

Business, Emerging Topics, People, Programming
Location: Ballroom A8

Danese Cooper (Wikimedia Foundation and Open Source Initiative), David Smith (REvolution Computing)

Average rating:

(4.00, 14 ratings)

Risk and chance play a huge part in our daily lives, yet the human brain doesn't come pre-loaded with the right software to make intuitive decisions about them. This talk is to provide some illumination in the basic principles to help you understand and quantify risk, and to introduce you to the open-source language R, an essential tool for finding statistical solutions to your own problems. Read more.

4:30pm Wednesday, 07/22/2009

Bureaucrats, Technocrats and Policy Cats: How the Government is turning to Open Source, and Why.

Business, Emerging Topics, Government, People
Location: Ballroom A1

Deborah Bryant (Deb Bryant & Associates), Bjorn Freeman-Benson (New Relic), Greg Lund-Chaix (Oregon State University Open Source Lab), Clay Johnson (InformationDiet.com), Aleksandar Totic (Open Source Digital Voting Foundation)

Average rating:

(4.00, 1 rating)

Open source shares critical values with government and public education that make them function in the ideal; meritocracy of ideas, transparency, collaboration. But where is the sweet spot in the confluence of these social, technical, and public policy ideals? And where is the opportunity for the citizen developer to get involved? Read more.

5:20pm Wednesday, 07/22/2009

Hacking the Open Government

Emerging Topics, Government
Location: Ballroom A1

Adina Levin (Socialtext), Debra Bowen (State of California), Silona Bonewald (SLC), Ilan Rabinovitch (Ooyala), Kevin Marks (TummelVision.tv)

Average rating:

(4.50, 2 ratings)

This panel will discuss accessing open government initiatives and creating new services around existing government data on the internet. The idea is to get a point of view from each step of the process for open government initiatives, from producer and publisher, to standards advocate, to consumer and user, and to elected representative. Read more.

5:20pm Thursday, 07/23/2009

What Zope Did Wrong, and How We Fixed It

Programming, Python, Web Applications
Location: Ballroom A7

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. Read more.

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