• UTOSC2008

Utah Open Source Conference 2008

UTOSC 2008's theme is "Howto...", which means each session will demonstrate a practical use for a certain open source product.

Since the conference will be 3 days, including evening dinner/keynotes to launch the conference, here is a quick little idea for an easy to run, but very fun conference. Which I think is a win win for both the organizers and the community at large. The biggest concern I have is that we keep it local, cheap and technology based.

This years theme should help us do that with a good twist of business aspects rolled in...

Location

SaltLakeCommunityCollege at their Redwood Road campus will be an excellent venue. This is being discussed in its own page.

Dates

The Utah Open Source Foundation (UTOS) has settled on August 28, 29 and 30 to be the conference dates. This will help accommodate schedules, and will be early enough into the semester that students shouldn't too overwhelmed with school work. In addition, SLCC's CS dept will be making it mandatory for their students (approx 100) to attend with the consideration that their attendance be free.

Costs

UTOS has always tried to keep the costs low for those in the community. UTOSC 2008 will be no different. The process is improving a little, however, and small changes are needed. Here is the breakdown for UTOSC 2008:

There are requirements for discounted admissions, the rules for these are defined here.

Day 1

Tutorials. 2-3 hour concept driven presentations that engage and inform the user. The general idea here is hands-on usage of specific tools and functionality. A good example of this might be a full-fledged implementation of an Asterisk server from start to finish. Another might be hands-on intro to the Ubuntu desktop.

Other Possible Topics

• Women in Open Source
• Free technology for the family
• Installfests

The plan is to start the tutorials in the early afternoon, allowing for two, two-hour tutorials in 4 rooms.

In addition, we will also hold a leadership meeting for LUG, Business and other Open Source Community Leaders.

• Dinner
  • Catered Reception, mingling, networking etc. . Part of the cost of the conference
• Local Open Source Presenter
  • A business/open source person to draw in the business/tech crowd who's not so interested in the geek side
• Major Open Source Presenter (many possibilities, but here's a couple to start with)
  • Jono Bacon, Ubuntu
  • Paul Frields, Fedora

  • Joe Zonker Brockmeier, OpenSUSE (Confirmed)

Day 2

Presentation day. This day is dedicated to showing people how to do whatever they want for the session. Tutorials will be 1.5-3 hrs in length.

• The Troubleshooting Challenge will be run this day all day long

• Beginner and Intermediate levels should be represented throughout the day

Day 3

Family day. For every paying conference attendee, bring their immediate family to the event.

• Help get them involved in open source in some way
• Showing off open source to suit the entire family
  • MythTV showing recordings and movies and such for the family
  • Edubuntu
  • Fedora Games
  • Software for Starving Students
  • and more
• Projects to help with domestic needs/desires
  • GNUCash (or others) for finances
  • Digital scrapbooking

• LDS Church FamilySearch API

• Personal Ancestral File (PAF)
• Helping your parents/children into open source

Other Information

• Avaliable Volunteer Positions - Donate your time to a good cause and get some cool benefits

• Sponsor UTOSC 2008 - Details about costs and value

• Prospectus UTOSC 2008 - Learn about the focus and goals of the conference for Sponsors and others

• Current Sponsor List - Maintain the list of sponsors here until we find a better way.

• Conference Talking Points - Add to this list any sort of points that would be useful to share about UTOSC 2008 (and other years)