About the Conference

Open Source Bridge is a new conference for developers working with open source technologies and for people interested in learning the open source way. It’s not a typical technical conference.

Here’s what makes it different:

• It’s entirely volunteer-run, by developers, for developers. This is the conference you’ve always wanted to attend.
• Session tracks are technology agnostic, based instead around shared community experiences and focused on similarities between projects, not differences.
• The geekery doesn’t end when the sessions do. There will also be a 24-hour hacker lounge for code sprints, bug bashes, session deep dives, bouncing ideas, starting new projects or just mingling and taking in the vibe.

Live Keynote Video

People are busy, but want to participate

Each morning started with a keynote session. These sessions included Ward Cunningham, Mayor Sam Adams, Amber Case, and Kurt von Finck. The keynote was streamed live and audience members tweeted the address to friends and co-workers. Our keynote audience peaked at 96 viewers. The online discussions were lively and full of praise from folks who could not make the event. One office even placed a projector in a conference room so that co-workers could watch together.

Recorded Sessions

In addition to the live streamed keynote sessions, Blaze Streaming Media recorded all the sessions taking place in the keynote room. 10 diverse sessions will be released online over the next year; building interest in next year’s event. The sessions released will fill up email boxes, blogs, and twitter streams long after the event is over.

Value to the conference and community

Live streaming video is a struggle for many event organizers to embrace. Their is a natural belief that if the content is available online, it will take attendees away from the event. This just has not been true in my experience. Conferences struggle in a competitive environment to be events that the community rallies around. A conference typically reaches a very small percentage of a huge market. The people involved are those who will make the investment in travel, time, and energy to physically attend. The conference attendee is rewarded with the best experience due to being away from the office, meeting new people, and networking to name a few. But… What to do with the 98.9% of people in your community that did not attend your event? (made up statistic)

Live streaming presents opportunities to reach a new audience. This audience can rally around your conference and recognize it to be the industry event they missed. They can participate via a paid, sponsored, or advertisement supported model. They can chat, twitter, network, and contribute to online event session notes. Online attendees add energy to an event and raise the status as industry inclusive. A live stream provides easy fodder for twitter, blogs, and industry web sites to promote your conference.

photo credit: Igal Koshevoy

Open Source Bridge included topics on projects that have a world wide following and use. The community for open source software is large but spread out geographically. Providing a live stream and recorded content shines a light on the conference as the source of community.

It has been a pleasure to work with the volunteer run conference and I appreciate their vision in embracing new tools and technology.