Wiki: OSCONIdeas

How about extending the 40% July 4th discount to everyone who paid more prior to July 4th.

Ask the guys from Threadless.com to present something nifty!

Also, invite Maddog Hall as well. He did a great job at the Ohio Linux Fest in 2008.

Some more ideas: Beginner tutorials on code (PHP, Python, etc). I would love to learn more about certain programming languages.

Maybe have a survival guide presentation for anyone who has graduated from college, laid off from work, or just unemployed due to the capricious nature of the economy.

It would be cool if some of the keynotes could be like a kiss concert, with giant gouts of flame, face make-up, and maybe some spitting (fake) blood. Basically, make it more rock’n’roll.

I think there should be some way to interact with developers/users of free/open source projects: KDE, gnome, qt, GNUstep, etoile, objc, mozilla, r project, processing, etc. There may not be books being published about some of this stuff, but people want to know how to use and extend these projects. http://www.fosdem.org/2009/schedule/print

A little more detail about what will be available at OSCAMP for us first-timers, what we should plan to bring, and if any of the above questions about tutorials, interacting with the devs/users, etc will be possible during OSCAMP.

!! There should be a BoF where small-medium sized FLOSS projects can recruit programmers. There are many programmers who want to work on a project but havent made the jump. Meeting face to face (and possibly getting a code tour?) might help lower the barrier to contributing to a project.

How about an open survey? Find out attendee stats on: programming languages using (and want to use), editors, debuggers, IDE, operating system used (and want to use), email client, shell, keyboard style (qwerty, dvorak, etc…), male/female, left/right-handed (or ambidextrous), age, databases used.. Also what tricks do attendees use that they don’t think are common practices (eg use Iphone as a smart mousepad, or use Shellsink to store command history, etc…)

Intel did neat “game” at the OSCON 2008. The issued you a number and you had to find the person w/ the same number. You then had to have discussion based on certain questions. It’s a good way to meet people you might not normally. I met someone who lives in my hometown who I never met before.