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2011 Video

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2011 Photos

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2011 Speaker Slides

• Taming the Big Data Fire Hose  John Hugg
• Programming with App Inventor for Android  Deborah Wallach, Eni Mustafaraj, Dave Wolber, Ralph Morelli
• Scaling Django Apps  Charles McLaughlin
• Use Ruby to Start Making Awesome Command Line Applications  David Copeland

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About OSCON

Experience OSCON | Who Should Attend | Why Attend | OSCON Kudos | Co-Chairs | Conference Diversity

What do you do once you change the world?
Do it again.

Once considered a radical upstart, open source has moved from disruption to default. Its methods and culture commoditized the technologies that drove the Internet revolution, and transformed the practice of software development. Collaborative and transparent, open source has become modus operandi, powering the next wave of innovation in cloud, data, and mobile technologies.

OSCON is where all of the pieces come together: developers, innovators, businesspeople, and investors. In the early days, this trailblazing O'Reilly event was focused on changing mainstream business thinking and practices; today OSCON is about how the close partnership between business and the open source community is building the future. That future is everywhere you look.

Now in its 14th year, OSCON is the best place on the planet to prepare for what comes next, from learning new skills to understanding how new and emerging open source technologies are going to impact how we live, work, and do business. In keeping with its O'Reilly heritage, OSCON is a unique gathering of all things open source, where participants find inspiration, confront new challenges, share their expertise, renew bonds to community, make significant connections, and find ways to give back to the open source movement. The event has also become one of the most important venues to unveil ground-breaking open source projects and products.

"For those who have not been to OSCON, it's a great technical conference covering the whole spectrum of open source, including Linux, MySQL, the LAMP stack, Perl, Python, Ruby on Rails, middleware, applications, cloud computing, and more. OSCON always has great keynotes, tutorials, and evening Birds-of-a-Feather sessions. As with many conferences, a lot of the meat takes place in hallway conversations and impromptu sessions." — Zack Urlocker, InfoWorld

Experience OSCON

Through hundreds of sessions, tutorials, activities, and events, OSCON 2012 will educate, provoke, and inspire, with:

• Hundreds of sessions covering the full range of open source languages and platforms
• Practical tutorials that go deep into technical skills, new features and applications, and best practices
• Inspirational (and relevant) keynote presentations
• Over 3,000 open source developers, hackers, experts, vendors, and users of all levels—many of whom share your interests
• An Expo Hall packed with an impressive array of open source projects and products
• A vibrant "hallway track" where attendees, speakers, journalists, and vendors debate and discuss important issues
• Fun evening events and receptions, Birds of a Feather sessions, awards ceremonies, late night parties, OSCON activities around town, and plenty of networking opportunities for everyone

Who Should Attend

OSCON welcomes anyone who's passionate about open source:

• Developers and programmers
• Architects
• Engineers
• CxOs
• Designers
• Sys admins
• Hackers and geeks
• Analysts

• IT Managers
• Enterprise developers and managers
• Entrepreneurs and business development professionals
• Community leaders and managers
• Activists
• Trainers and educators
• Vendors and suppliers in the open source ecosystem

O'Reilly is committed to promoting diversity at OSCON 2012, and at all of our events. Read more.

Why Attend?

No matter the economic climate, a strong technology foundation is the key for moving your business and projects forward. In just five information-packed days (and nights) OSCON gives you the tools you need to succeed:

• Learn techniques you can use to write great code
• Get the information you need to migrate from expensive commercial installations to more efficient, cost-effective open source solutions
• Explore innovations in system and network administration that your company can start implementing immediately to increase efficiency
• Master essential techniques and advanced tips to scale and optimize your systems for trouble-free, time-saving performance
• Learn how to maximize productivity, increase ease of use, and lower the cost of deployment, from databases to cloud computing
• Get exposure to the most promising projects and people to give you first-mover advantage in analyzing new tools and software
• Stay ahead of the curve with new technologies, platforms, and languages like HTML5, Android, Node.js, Clojure and OpenStack.
• Receive hype-free guidance that will help your business build a solid footing for future success

OSCON Kudos

"It's hard to explain the sort of impact that a good conference can have on your career and even your life, but we can't express how much you should go to one in order to gain inspiration, have fun and learn a whole bunch of new stuff you can take back to your workplace." — Martijn Verburg, London Java Community

"As Tim says, one never has trouble finding an interesting conversation at OSCON...the content, both hallway and in-session, shined... there are people I literally see only at this event every year, and while remote collaboration is all well and good, it's nice to have a beer with people every so often." — Stephen O'Grady, tecosystems, RedMonk

"For the past few years, we at NYTimes.com have been attending OSCON. It has become the premier conference for us because it offers so many opportunities to engage with fellow developers. We've met new friends, given talks, led Birds-of-a-Feather sessions..." — Derek Gottfrid, NYTimes.com

"Speaking at conferences like linux.conf.au and OSCON is great fun. It's challenging to speak to an audience that's so diverse that it includes both the creator of the Linux kernel and students who just discovered it exists. It's humbling to know that the intelligence and achievement in the audience dwarfs anything I've ever done." — Simon Phipps, Sun

"OSCON is a great opportunity for us to really get our geek on and meet with some of the industry's sharpest people. Love the 'Birds of a Feather' sessions. We had a great time at what we consider the best conference we get to attend." — Nick Thuesen, Senior Software Engineer, NYTimes.com

Program Chairs

Edd Dumbill
is program chair for Strata and the O'Reilly Open Source Convention. A technologist and writer, he also leads the design and implementation of conference software at O'Reilly. Edd was the editor of XML.com for many years, and program chair for the XML Europe and XTech conferences.

Sarah Novotny

is the CIO of a video game production house, Meteor Entertainment. She regularly talks about infrastructure automation and geek lifestyle. She is a founder and board member of Blue Gecko which does remote administration and management of databases around the world.

She is additionally a Program Chair of Percona Live MySQL Conference and Expo. Her technology writing and adventures as well as her more esoteric musings at sarahnovotny.com. For twittery things, check out twitter.com/sarahnovotny. To connect with her on LinkedIn, wander over to linkedin.com/in/sarahnovotny.

Conference Diversity

O'Reilly Media believes in spreading the knowledge of innovators. We believe that innovation is enhanced by a variety of perspectives, and our goal is to create an inclusive, respectful conference environment that invites participation from people of all races, ethnicities, genders, ages, abilities, religions, and sexual orientation.

We're actively seeking to increase the diversity of our attendees, speakers, and sponsors through our calls for proposals, other open submission processes, and through dialogue with the larger communities we serve.

This is an ongoing process. We are talking to our program chairs, program committees, and various innovators, experts, and organizations about this goal and about ways they can help us achieve it.

Here are some ways you can help us build a more diverse conference experience:

• Recommend appropriate speakers and/or program committee members to the conference chairs (see individual O'Reilly conference sites for program information; you may also send an email to diversity@oreilly.com)
• Forward our call for proposals to relevant affinity groups with the message that we are looking for a diverse speaker roster
• Suggest to potential speakers that they submit a proposal during our Call for Participation conference phase (see individual O'Reilly conference sites for details)
• Organize community-based public speaking trainings and practice events (Ignite is one popular format)
• Suggest ways that the onsite conference experience can be more welcoming and supportive, free from intimidation and marginalization (send an email to diversity@oreilly.com)
• Share your ideas and best practices for how we can realize our vision (send an email to diversity@oreilly.com)

We value diversity in the communities we bring together, and we welcome your contributions to bringing balanced representation of the richness of our collective human experience.

See our Creative Commons version (PDF) of this statement.