ANN: OSCON 2006 Call for Proposals

[Kevin Altis]

OSCON 2006: Opening Innovation
http://conferences.oreillynet.com/os2006/

Save the date for the 8th annual O'Reilly Open Source Convention, happening
July 24-28, 2006 at the Oregon Convention Center in beautiful Portland,
Oregon.



Call For Participation
----------------------

Submit a proposal-fill out the form at:

http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/os2006/create/e_sess/

Important Dates:

* Proposals Due: Midnight (PST) February 13, 2006
* Speaker Notification: March 27, 2006
* Tutorial Presentation Files Due: June 12, 2006
* Session Presentation Files Due: June 26, 2006
* Conference: July 24-28, 2006

Proposals
---------

We are considering proposals for 45 minute sessions and 3 hour tutorials.
We rarely accept 90 minute proposals, as most general sessions are 45
minutes in length.  Your proposals are examined by a committee which draws
from them and which also solicits proposals to build the program.  Proposals
are due by midnight (PST), Feb. 13, 2006.  The OSCON Speaker Manager, Vee
McMillen, emails notification of the status of your talk (accepted or
otherwise) by March 27, 2006.  Unless the content of your talk is
particularly timely (e.g., features of a product that will be launched at
OSCON), you are required to send us your slides several weeks before the
conference begins. Submit proposals via the form below.

Some tips for writing a good proposal for a good talk:

* Keep it free of marketing: talk about open source software, but not about
a commercial product--the audience should be able to use and improve the
things you talk about without paying money
* Keep the audience in mind: they're technical, professional, and already
pretty smart.
* Clearly identify the level of the talk: is it for beginners to the topic,
or for gurus?  What knowledge should people have when they come to the talk?
* Give it a simple and straightforward title: fancy and clever titles make
it harder for people (committee and attendees) to figure out what you're
really talking about
* Limit the scope of the talk: in 45 minutes, you won't be able to cover
Everything about Widget Framework X.  Instead, pick a useful aspect, or a
particular technique, or walk through a simple program.
* Pages of code are unreadable: mere mortals can deal with code a line at a
time.  Sometimes three lines at a time.  A page of code can't be read when
it's projected, and can't be comprehended by the audience.
* Explain why people will want to attend: is the framework gaining traction?
Is the app critical to modern systems?  Will they learn how to deploy it,
program it, or just what it is?
* Let us know in your proposal notes whether you can give all the talks you
submitted proposals for
* Explain what you will cover in the talk

NOTE: All presenters whose talks are accepted (excluding Lightning Talks)
will receive free registration at the conference. For each half-day
tutorial, the presenter receives one night's accommodation, a limited travel
allowance, and an honorarium. We give tutors and speakers registration to
the convention (including tutorials), and tutors are eligible for a travel
allowance: up to US$300 from the west coast of the USA, up to US$500 from
the east coast of the USA, up to US$800 from outside the USA.

Registration opens April, 2006. If you would like to be notified by email
when registration opens, please use the form on our main page.



CONFERENCE INFO
===============

The O'Reilly Open Source Convention is where coders, sysadmins,
entrepreneurs, and business people working in free and open source software
gather to share ideas, discover code, and find solutions. At OSCON 2005,
more than 2,400 attendees took part in 241 sessions and tutorials across
eleven technology tracks, learning about the newest features and versions
from creators and experts. A record number of products launches and
announcements were made, and sponsors and exhibitors from a wide range of
companies filled the largest exhibit hall in OSCON's history. We anticipate
that OSCON 2006 will be even more successful, and continue to be the place
for the open source community to meet up, debate, make deals, and connect
face to face. OSCON 2006 will take place at the Oregon Convention Center in
Portland, Oregon July 24-28, 2006.

OSCON 2006 will feature the projects, technologies, and skills that you need
to write and deploy killer modern apps.  We're looking for proposals on
platforms and applications around:

* Multimedia including voice (VoIP) and video
* AI including spam-busting, classification, clustering, and data mining
* Collaboration including email, calendars, RSS, OPML, mashups, IM,
presence, and session initialization
* Project best practices including governance, starting a project, and
managing communities
* Microsoft Windows-based open source projects including .NET, Mono, and
regular C/C++/Visual Basic Windows apps
* Enterprise Java techniques including integration, testing, and scalable
deployment solutions
* Linux kernel skills for sysadmins including virtualization, tuning, and
device drivers
* Device hacking including iPods, Nintendo, PSP, XBox 360, and beyond
* Design including CSS, GUI, and user experience (XP)
* Entrepreneurial topics including management for techies, how to go into
business for yourself, and business models that work
* Security including hardening, hacking, root kits (Sony and otherwise), and
intrusion detection/cleanup
* Fun subjects with no immediate commercial application including retro
computing, games, and BitTorrent

Tracks at OSCON will include:

* Desktop Apps
* Databases, including MySQL, PostgreSQL, Ingres, and others
* Emerging Topics
* Java
* Linux Kernel for SysAdmins
* Linux for Programmers
* Perl, celebrating the 10th year of The Perl Conference!
* PHP
* Programming, including everything that's not specific to a particular
language
* Python
* Security
* Ruby, including Ruby on Rails
* Web Apps, including Apache
* Windows