The Smorgasbord of Douglas Bell

The O’Reilly Open Source Convention, better known as OSCON, comes to San Jose next week. And though I’m not usually one to go to big convention-like events (other than the annual State PTA Convention), my reason for going is actually thanks to my connection with the phpBB community via phpBB Weekly. So why is that?

If you’d asked me three months ago if I was going to OSCON, I would have said, “What’s that?” However, ever since the phpBB teams put together the Londonvasion 2008 conference last July in London, I’ve had a desire to organize some kind of a phpBB users meetup event here in the Bay Area. And so, last December, I started a discussion topic with the idea of putting together a users conference here in the Bay Area–a San Franvasion, if you will. That didn’t go very far, though, due to lack of ideas, resources, and money. What can I say? This is the first event I’ve ever been responsible for organizing. You’ve gotta start small to buld up some experience first.

Back in late April, EXreaction suggested the idea of perhaps organizing an informal meetup around OSCON, and while I hedged on that until after graduation, and even gave up the idea at one point, I decided back in early June that despite the short notice, I would like to see that happen. I went down to San Jose on June 10th to do a little self-tour of the downtown San Jose area (plus the fact that our last PTA Convention was in San Jose was also convenient), and originally decided that we could centralize it around a group dinner at Johnny Rockets. (Because we’re programmers, so we have to eat on a low budget!)

Then I found out that OSCON has these things called Birds of a Feather (BoF) sessions that anyone in the community can propose and organize, and I decided that perhaps the meetup could include a BoF session (since it would thus be hosted at the Convention Center!). And so it was that there is now a phpBB BoF Session scheduled for Thursday, July 23rd at 7 PM in Ballroom A7 at the Convention Center. Those two events together combine to form what I dubbed the OSCONvasion 2009 Bay Area phpBB Users Meetup (or OSCONvasion for short).

In the month that has passed since all of this was finalized, this thing has started expanding beyond my expectations. There are now about 10 folks coming, including numerous phpBB team members and even my co-host on phpBB Weekly, many of whom are flying in from out-of-state! And who knows how many OSCON attendees will pop in as well. We’ve been organizing to get audiovisual equipment set up so that the BoF session will be recorded and streamed live on phpBB Weekly, and so that we can do PowerPoint presentations or run live phpBB demos at the session. And for the folks that are staying over, we may even arrange an opportunity to go see the San Jose Tech Museum of Innovation or the Intel Museum in Santa Clara or something like that on Friday.

But the great thing about OSCON is that you can get an Expo Hall pass for free. Going to the actual sessions costs in the range of hundreds of dollars, but there’s a bunch of free stuff at OSCON for which you only need the free Expo Hall pass. (Including the BoF session for OSCONvasion.) So I’m actually going to be spending a few days down in San Jose next week. On Wednesday, I’m going to be going to OSCamp, which is described as a full day unconference happening at OSCON, then going to the Expo Hall reception for a little bit, and then saying hi at the Joomla! Community Meet Up. On Thursday, I’m going to spend the day wandering the Expo Hall and doing their “OSCON 2009 Passport Program”, which is sort of like those scavenger hunt things that encourage you to meet all of the exhibitors, and then it will be OSCONvasion time. And as for Friday, that’s still to be determined.

So I’m looking forward to OSCON and OSCONvasion next week! And if you’re in the area, why not come by?