Summer Conference Schedule and Other Projects

It’s been quiet around here because I’ve been busy running BarCamp Portland and planning for Open Source Bridge, among other things. And it’s not going to slow down any time soon. Here’s my Summer conference schedule and an update on some of the projects that will be keeping me busy for the next several months.

21-24 June — Open Source Bridge

The conference for open source citizens, now in it’s third edition. I’m co-chairing the event this year, so while I won’t be giving any talks, I’ll be kicking off the conference and hanging around to make sure things run smoothly. Registration is still open, so come check it out if you’re able and be sure to find me and say hi.

23-34 July — Community Leadership Summit

The CLS is a free unconference for community organizers. I attended last year and found it worthwhile to connect with other community leaders who are in town from all over the US and beyond to attend OSCON.

25-29 July — OSCON

I’m giving two talks at OSCON this year: Tools for Spelunking a New-to-You Codebase and Event Planning for Geeks with Sherri Montgomery and Audrey Eschright.

Other Projects

WhereCampPDX (7-9 October)

WhereCampPDX is a free, volunteer-created unconference for anyone interested in geography and technology and this will be it’s 4th year. I’m helping to organize and if you want to help out, you can join our mailinglist.

Tech Workshops for Beginners

We want to run a series of recurring intro technology workshops. The workshops will be peer-driven, have a low instructor-to-student ratio and serve as the base for on-going mentor relationships. We’re not looking to teach a specific language, but rather offer a handful and let students choose what they connect with most. To make this a success, we’re going to need a lot of help from the community. Want to get involved? We have a mailinglist for that.

Stumptown Syndicate

The Syndicate is a non-profit that Audrey, Reid and I started late last year. Its purpose is to support technology education and professional development through fundraising, space and resource coordination, and other activities. It’s the organization we used to run Open Source Bridge, and we’ll be using it to run WhereCamp and possibly some other events this year. We want to earn 501(c)(3) status so that we can accept tax-deductible donations and we’ll be working on our application over the summer. Want to help? Email us at board@stumptownsyndicate.org. Want to keep track of our progress? We have a newsletter for that.

BarCamp Planning

Yes, yes, I know, we just had BarCamp Portland 5. But there’s a lot we want to accomplish for next year’s event and so we’re going to start early. We want to totally revamp our branding and our website and do a lot better at marketing the event. Want to help? Yup, you guessed it, we have a mailinglist for that too.