Comments on: Thoughts on OSCON 2006, Conferences, Geeks, Open Source and Life

By: Luke Kanies

Luke Kanies — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 06:39:31 +0000

Thanks for the update. I’m not exactly happy with my posts on OSCON, as I feel like I should have been able to be more positive somehow, but I also felt like it was a viewpoint worth sharing, especially considering that I come from the sysadmin world which doesn’t seem well represented in the blogosphere these days.

I do like the idea of a conference organized on the same principles as an open source project, though.

By: ScW

ScW — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 20:55:40 +0000

Sorry Luke, I did generally take your post and ran with it. And rather than just running a little bit down the field in the other direction, I ran all the way onto the sidelines into the seats. I guess I was feeling a bit inspired to contribute my $.02 even if I really didn't have much of a counter-suggestion. I just willfully used a few of your comments as a rant that wandered way off the technical path. This was definitely not in my typical style of using pure self-deprecation and either false or true humility in approaching any topic. For that I am truly sorry.

I'll work on an update to the post and it will contain an apology as well.

And I also did not really address your actual topic that you presented on. No major thoughts there other than while you might not get the interest, it's an area that many more folks need to hear about. It's like living a healthy lifestyle... generally folks don't like to hear about it, but it's the right thing to do.

By: Luke Kanies

Luke Kanies — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 18:20:36 +0000

I feel the need to defend myself here somehow, but I'm going to try to avoid it. I will say that this isn't the first conference I've been to (I've been a regular LISA attendee for years), and even compared to Web 2.0 last year this one seemed a bit more insular.

I actually do understand group dynamics pretty well: I've been helping to organize LISA recently and have done workshop coordination this year and last year, so group dynamics come up a lot. LISA has actually been trying to come up with different ways to keep this insularity at bay; for instance, they have an "organizer bingo", where you try to get the people who ran the conference to sign your card and you get a prize (like OSCON's vendor bingo, I guess, but for people instead of exhibitors). This works really well for introducing different types of people.

It could just be that I don't normally attend conferences with "superstars", whereas OSCON seemed chock full of them, but as I mentioned in my post, I wasn't exactly the only one complaining.

And really, the post was written as a response to Tim Bray, who concluded somehow that OSCON should just be turned into a superhero worship conference, where the luminaries speak and the chaff listens.

Your point about democratic processes being less likely to choose my presentation are correct, but my response is that this inherently undemocratic process is theoretically this way because it's better at picking up-and-coming coolness.

Oh well. I guess we'll see how it goes next year, and hopefully I'll get to make it to Etech to see how they compare.

By: Brandon

Brandon — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 04:42:48 +0000

Excellent points on group dynamics and the OSCON proposal selection. One thing I’d like to add is that the most successful times I had connecting were when I already had “met” someone online (via email/blog/mailing list) to establish common ground. That’s what I’d recommend to anyone who didn’t feel naturally dynamic and outgoing (and many times I don’t).

I agree with Luke on the lack of focus hurting the conference though. Since networking seems to be the most positive aspect, I’d like to see a general BoF session established for each separate track (Web 2.0, Python, Ruby, database, etc.) at the beginning of the conference. I think it would be a good way to get people talking at the start instead of trying to bump into folks at the sessions.