09 Jul 2007, Posted by Matthew Reinbold in Events,Open Source,Tools,UT, 1 Comments

Speaking at UT Open Source Conf; Sept 6-8

A quick note to let people know that I’ll be presenting at the 2007 Utah Open Source Conference. Details such as the specific time and day have yet to be worked out.

“But Matthew, you handsome devil,” you say, “as a harbinger of such proprietary madness such as ColdFusion, Flex, and AIR (formerly Apollo) why would you be presenting at an open source conference?”

First off, CFML is an extremely dexterous language that long ago eschewed the steep learning curves of other programming tools before (and since). However, it capabilities continue to surprise daily users like myself – its much like the game Othello – a minute to learn, a lifetime to master. Oh, and there’s an open source parser for CFML code out there too.

Secondly, Adobe has taken a huge step and made Flex a full blown open source project. Yes, Chris Messina can lament how Flash is an evil proprietary technology all he wants. Being able to build extremely powerful RIAs on an open source framework that just happen to compile down to *.SWFs won’t keep me up at night.

Finally, AIR let’s me build cross-OS, native desktop applications leveraging my HTML and AJAX skillsets. There are some open source alternatives (Dojo’s client side storage and Firefox 3′s built in SQL engine) but neither are as elegant, as well thought out, or as darn powerful as AIR. No, its not open source but turning a blind eye to a technology just because it is (or isn’t) a corporate effort is the developer equivalent of racism.

Now that I’m done ranting about the tools I’ll say that my talk isn’t about tools. I’ll be talking about building ‘open source’ communities. That is, I’ll be sharing observations on open source software group organization and how to apply what works (and how to avoid what doesn’t work) to your own group or community. I’ll be presenting anecdotal stories based on other’s experiences as well as recounting my own. We’ll get deep into all that ‘soft’ stuff that most technical types long ago forgot from Sociology 101 (Network Effects, Social Grooming, Self-Reinforcing Behaviors, etc.). Lastly I’ll be demonstrating how to tie it all together with – you guessed it – open source tools. After my lecture your group will run better, it will be more effective, you’ll appear more strapping to the opposite sex, etc. etc. etc.

So if you’d like to see the talk just keep watching the Utah Open Source Conference page for updates on how to attend.