Put your laptops away — OSCON After Hours

OSCON is just a little over a week away now and we're busy making the final preparations for what we think will be the best OSCON yet. As you plan out your time at OSCON, keep in mind we have a lot of evening events happening outside of the regularly scheduled program. The majority of these events are designed to get you away from your laptop (or mobile device) and socializing face-to-face with the rest of the open source community.

We'll of course have the usual OSCON suspects like Birds of a Feather sessions (a.k.a. BoFs) where anyone can reserve a room to talk about anything they want, the State of the Onion with Larry Wall, and the O'Reilly Open Source Awards, where we honor individuals for their outstanding contribution to open source. We're also doing the second annual Ignite OSCON and the Expo Hall reception where we give you food and drinks and let you loose to chat up the exhibitors.

We also have new events and parties added to the after hours roster. At the Android Hands-on, happening Wednesday evening, Google Android experts will teach you how to write interesting code and apps for the Android. Make sure you register in advance for that event if you're interested because space is limited as is filling up fast.

There will be plenty of parties to attend, including a Media Temple party on Wednesday night at the Red Lion and Mashery's API Hour party on Thursday at The EastBurn in downtown Portland.  We'll round out the week with a walking tour of Portland happening right after the closing keynotes on Friday afternoon.

And this isn't all. There are tons of other gatherings being organized by various community groups and individuals, so make sure to check out the After-Hours board near registration when you get onsite to see what else is happening. If you want to organize your own soiree and invite others to come along, you'll be able to add it to the list.

Make sure you pack your party shoes and plan to attend some (or all) of OSCON After Hours.

Tags: events, party