Open Source Bridge 2013, an open source conference produced by Stumptown Syndicate, kicked off today for its 5th annual event in Portland, Oregon. I spent the entire day and part of the evening networking with attendees and catching some of the amazing sessions and here is my report.
Keynote
James Vasile opened this year’s Open Source Bridge with the first keynote of the week and he chose a serious topic: how we are living in an age of surveillance and that we need to create solutions to protect free speech. Vasile referenced recent events like the Edward Snowden’s leak of the National Security Agency’s PRISM program and Internet Censorship in the Middle East.
Vasile talked fondly of the importance of open tools on the internet and technologies like encryption and pointed out that policy makers will not bring change.
Sessions of Interest
The first session of the day I attended was “Taming Your Inner Cowboy Coder – A Simple And Sane DevOps Workflow” a talk given by Greg Lund-Chaix and Evan Heidtmann. The talk discussed the tools and best practices for devops while working in development and production environments.
Next up was “DIY Electric Vehicles” a talk given by Ben Kero who works at Mozilla. Kero had informative slides and a even more informative talk as he shared his expertise in a hobby he has picked up: building DIY Electric Vehicles. Kero decribed the possibilities of making electric-powered bikes and cars and the anatomy of such vehicles and the basics of how to get started.
The final talk of the day I got to attend another talk by Ben Kero who gave a highlight of Firefox OS and a short history of the mobile technology that led up to Firefox OS. The talk was packed with great slides and useful information and Kero stayed after to answer questions of people who were interesting in making apps or even porting Firefox OS.
I look forward to day two of Open Source Bridge tomorrow and the 5th Year Anniversary Party this Thursday at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. If you happen to be attending Open Source Bridge this week, don’t forget to nominate a hard-working open source contributor for the Open Source Citizenship Award (which will be given out on Thursday), consider a donation to the nice folks at Stumptown Syndicate, and be sure to come to the Firefox OS Hackday tomorrow night!