OSCON 2016 Recap

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May 26, 2016

The 18th annual OSCON took place at the Austin Convention Center May 16-19. It was preceded by the Community Leadership Summit on May 14-15.
The Community Leadership Summit (CLS) is an unconference for open source community managers and project members interested in building a strong and vibrant community. Deb Goodkin from the FreeBSD Foundation and I attended as first time participants.

The morning sessions consisted of several keynotes, many of which are available as video. The afternoon sessions were organized by the attendees, with roughly 40 sessions to choose from in 4 one hour timeslots. As expected in an unconference, each session was a group discussion focused on a particular topic. The notes from the sessions can be found here. If you’ve never attended CLS before and are an active member in your open source community, consider attending one–it is an energizing experience to spend a weekend with other like-minded folks as well as a great opportunity to make contacts and to discuss strategies for solving common issues.
Jamie Thompson and several other pfSense team members joined Deb and I at the FreeBSD booth in the Expo area of OSCON. We were all kept busy chatting with conference attendees and answering questions about FreeBSD, the Foundation, FreeNAS, OpenZFS, and pfSense. The various stickers were popular, there was a lot of interest in the new Mini XL, and people missed the blinky horns (which are coming back soon!).
This was the first year that OSCON was held in Austin and I think most people liked the new venue, the proximity to great food, the bats, and the Austin vibe. We look forward to attending next year’s OSCON, as well as returning to Austin in July for Texas LinuxFest.
Dru Lavigne
Technical Documentation Specialist

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