FOSSCON

Hi everyone,

This Saturday Basekamp will be hosting FOSSCON (Free and Open Source Software Conference), focusing on the community that has grown around Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), and in parallel to both the Free Culture and Open Source cultural movements.

This is a community-focused live event designed to build and strengthen relationships between Free and Open Source Software developers and users. FOSSCON seeks to raise awareness of and promote FOSS alternatives to proprietary software. Facilitating face-to-face interaction, creative workshops, talks and think tanks, FOSSCON brings developers and users together in a nurturing and dynamic environment stimulating the free exchange of ideas and information while fostering cross-project collaboration and dialogue for innovation.

FOSSCON is organized by Peer-Directed Projects Center (PDPC) – the group responsible for projects like Freenode and fossevents – FOSSCON (along with Geeknics) is part of PDPC’s desire to bring an already massive online community that has grown around free and open source ideas, out into the world, to meet, connect, support and challenge each other, imagine, plot and co-develop beautiful, possibly useful and unexpected things.

The people behind FOSSCON are free software enthusiasts, user group members, coders and users – just like you! Free software is all about community and this is a very grassroots event, organized by the community and for the community. Our common goal is to provide a space for us to all come together in the northeast. We hope you’ll join us as an attendee, a volunteer or an exhibitor.

Register

Admission is free and open to the public, but RSVP is required (we expect to fill to capacity soon, but also encourage connecting with others in nearby overflow spaces). If you’re able and want to be a “FOSSCON supporter” you can get a tote and thanks for $25. Whether free or a supporter, please register here: http://fosscon.org/attend

Schedule

FOSSCON will last all day. See the regularly updated schedule of presentations (and proposal guidelines) here: http://fosscon.org/speakers

Anyone in the FOSS community with interesting and exciting topics are invited to submit a talk to speak at this event.  As a general event built for the community at large, the range of acceptable topics is broad, however FOSSCON traditionally favors topics with an immediate real world use in home, work, or education environments and broadly categorizes talks under one of these headings.

The program committee invites proposals for paper presentations, demonstrations and poster contributions on any topic relevant to FOSS awareness, accessibility and application. We want to offer something for beginning, intermediate, and advanced learning levels with particular emphasis on the following topics:

• The Open Culture Movements influence on open source
• Beginning the FOSS conversion
• FOSS on a Windows Desktop
• Fun FOSS projects for your home
• Plugging into Social Media with FOSS
• FOSS in the workplace
• FOSS in education
• FOSS at non-profits
• FOSS Government
• Open Hardware
• Open Mobile Environments
• Your new awesome FOSS project
• Free Network Services

Exhibitors

If your group has an interesting project, or event useful to the community, show it to the world at FOSSCON!  We invite you to join us at FOSSCON to show the community what you’ve done, what you’re doing, or what you offer.

• LUGs (Local User Groups)
• Hackerspaces
• Local FOSS events the community needs to know about

We still have a limited number of spaces available for groups so please get in touch with us to reserve your spot.

Sponsors

We have a limited number of tables available for sponsors so please get in touch with us early to reserve your spot.  We’re very interested as well in any suitable organizations involvement in other ways, such as talks or other interesting ideas you may have. Please see this link for more info (oh, and obligatory but genuine shout out to FOSSCON sponsors here as well): http://fosscon.org/sponsors

Location

FOSSCON will take place at Basekamp’s Philadelphia space (the second floor), and also the JOG gallery (on the 4th floor) of 723 Chestnut Street, located in the middle of Center City Philadelphia. The building has bus, subway and NJ transit stops on our block, and only a few minutes walk from Market East Station and Greyhound bus terminal. See a map with directions here:
http://maps.google.com/maps/place?q=basekamp&cid=15576003637506834736

Questions?

You can join us on the IRC network “chat.freenode.net” and join the channel “#fosscon” to talk with the planning team and others interested in Fosscon, ask questions, or volunteer to help us out.  You can easily join the channel using webchat by clicking here: http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=fosscon

See you all then!