Everyone

Ultimate Randomness - Girl voices in open source

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In this session, several girls who are involved as users of and contributors to open source projects present some of their work. This is followed by a Q&A session for the audience to explore how to get girls involved in open source.

Although it's fun to talk about what they are doing, the girls and their dads recognize this as an uncommon opportunity for women in the computer field to talk with outspoken and knowledgeable girls of the next generation.

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Tips and Techniques for Improving Embedded Linux Startup Time

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The requirement for 'instant-on' capability in consumer electronics has become a necessity. This session examines techniques to reduce boot time while preserving the base functionality required of typically configured embedded Linux systems.

The requirement for 'instant-on' capability in consumer electronics, ranging from cellphones to mobile internet devices to automotive platforms, has become a necessity. Customers expectations for instant data or multimedia access has been increasing with trendy gadgets being released in the market. With the proliferation of Linux in these devices, it becomes essential to optimize the boot up time to meet the requirements. A typical Linux embedded system contains a bootloader and kernel, both of which are typically configured with many useful default features. This session examines techniques to reduce boot time while preserving the base functionality required of typically configured embedded Linux systems.
Topics covered:

• Challenges facing consumer product design

• Embedded hardware and software platforms to address these challenges

• Software techniques to decrease boot time

• Overview of boot sequence

• Bootloader optimizations

• Linux kernel optimizations

Speaker: Jeff Maier
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Building your own Google Maps using a complete Open Source and Open Data stack

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A brief look at different open source geospatial technologies

In geospatial applications, data and software must go hand in hand.
Software without data is useless.
Data without software is useless.
We live in interesting times, where geodata is becoming more open by government initiatives around the world. Projects like Openstreetmap are acting as huge repositories of useful, crowd-sourced, worldwide geodata. Not-for-profit organizations like OSGeo are helping to put together numerous open source geospatial software projects under one umbrella where they can start sharing resources, create software that works well together, as well as to provide representation and active participation in standard bodies related to Geographic Information Systems (GIS).
Most people are starting to finally understand the importance of Location Based Services, but surprisingly, most people are only aware of the proprietary alternatives (Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, Bing Maps, Mapquest, Navteq APIs, Teleatlas APIs, etc.)
The purpose of this talk is to make the attendees aware of the wealth of free open source and free open geodata options out there.
As a working example, we will dissect Google Maps, identify the relevant parts and show a working, free, standards compliant, open version of a web mapping application.

Speaker: Ragi Burhum
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Moving the Needle: How the San Francisco Ruby Community got to 18%

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The San Francisco Ruby community went from 3% women to 18% women in less than a year, using no witchcraft! Any OSS community with the right dedication can do it. Come find out how.

In January 2009, the monthly San Francisco Ruby meetings averaged 2% women. In January 2010, they averaged 18%. What happened in a year to make such a big difference?

Over the last year, Sarah Allen and I have been spending all our nights and weekends working on a series of workshops for women who want to learn Ruby. When we got started, to be honest, I wasn't very optimistic. I've lived through quite a few gender diversity efforts in quite a few technical communities, and most of them failed to make any noticeable dent.

But to my amazement, we were incredibly successful. In this talk, I'll take you through the factors that were critical to our success, and I'll explore the great things our community has gotten from the effort - some expected, some wonderfully unexpected. I believe that any local OSS community can adapt these techniques and end up with an outreach effort that makes an immediate, visible, and lasting difference.

Speaker: Sarah Mei
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What You Need to Know About Trademarks

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An introduction to the basics of trademark law, along with best practices recommendations.

This session will provide the very basics of trademark law along with recommendation for best and minimum practices. Common misconceptions about trademark law will be debunked and community interests in trademarks will be contrasted with corporate ones.

Speaker: Karen Sandler
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OpenSolaris: The Other White Meat

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OpenSolaris can offer users a powerful and innovative alternative to traditional community OS choices.

OpenSolaris attacks the four problem areas in an unique manner. Through the remainder of the paper we will examine each of the 4 problems areas declared above. We will look over the historical problems consumers of Operating Systems face and detail how OpenSolaris solves those problems with examples.

1.) CPU/MEM access layer

Kernel = Solaris Kernel
Virtualization = VirtualBox, Xen, Containers, LDOMs

2.) File System/Disk/Storage layer

File System = Zettabyte File System
Universal Storage Framework = COMSTAR

3.) Runtime layer

System Services = Service Management Facility
Fault Management = Fault Management Architectures
Process Diagnostics = Dynamic Tracing
Network Virtualization = Crossbow

4.) User Access layer

User Administration = Java Panels
Windowing Environment = GNOME/compiz
User Applications = Mozilla/OpenOffice/MySQL
Developer = GNU/Netbeans/AMP stack/SourceJuicer
Network Installation = Automated Installer/Distro-Contructor
Software Management = Image Packaging System
Security = Role Based Access, audit, file fingerprint, Least Privilege, Privacy Levels

Speaker: Michael Barrett
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Building Early Knowledge with Gcompris

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GCompris is a free program for early learners ages 2-10.

Participants in this session will walk through the GCompris edutainment suite. They'll then see a short video of students at Westside Neighborhood School using the software and reflecting upon their learning and technology experience. The speaker will touch on the practicalities of using this project in a classroom or computer lab, and will point to the value of this and other open source programs in education.

Participants are also encouraged to share their experiences with open source edutainment and/or learning software and discuss the potential for building and sharing knowledge with open source.

Speaker: Tim Stutt

Being a Catalyst in Communities - The scientific facts about the open source way

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How does Red Hat have wild success with Fedora and other FLOSS projects? By following a method firmly rooted in humanism, practice, and science. Learn in this session how to be an effective catalyst in communities of users, contributors, and businesses.

Red Hat is admired as a successful business that is an effective catalyst in communities, especially free/libre open source software (FLOSS). People look to learn from Red Hat in how to apply those practices to areas beyond software, such as education, business, and social activism.

However, when we look at the way other people have enacted these practices, many have adopted a subset of Red Hat's methods, but leave out enough to affect their ability to benefit from a purely free/open stance.

Many communities are successful in their domain without any idea of why their methods work. Is it pure luck or art? Or is it really a dose of humanism mixed with a long-practiced, and now well studied, method of developing communities?

To start, this presentation lays out the methods used by Red Hat in community development, which follow the well-studied methods of "communities of practice." The theory of communities of practice (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_of_practice) is explained with examples.

Next is covered a specific set of guidelines for practicing the open source way in communities. This is all brought together in a short guide, "The Open Source Way: Creating and nurturing communities of contributors", which is an open, community-written guide for following the open source way in any type of community effort.

The Community Architecture team at Red Hat is accountable for helping the rest of the organization define and act upon community plans, and learn from each others' community failures and successes. In essence, to learn from and teach Red Hat how and why we've been successful, and how to continue doing it. One thing we've learned, it is easier to teach something internally when it's a common practice externally. When we wrote the first round of "The Open Source Way" for an internal audience, we realized it benefited from being written externally and with an invitation to others to join our effort.

While there are other books written on how communities are successful, and other books written by multiple members of a community, we think this presents a new opportunity for a community book written by a community. It is short, to the point, and useful immediately. It presents a principle, how it is applied, and a real world example. It does not focus exclusively on FLOSS, but is applicable to anyone interested in applying the open source way in whatever domain they practice in. It does not look to replicate other efforts but to reference and build upon commonly useful works, such as Karl Fogel's "Producing OSS".

As the first major conference of the year, SCALE is where we want to make our first presentation on "The Open Source Way", with a specific goal of attracting others to contribute to the ongoing writing and maintenance.

Speaker: Karsten Wade
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Vim -- Taking it to the next level

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An introduction to some of Vim's more useful intermediate and advanced features

Vim is the most commonly used text editor in Linux. It is a extremely powerful and flexible editor. This talk introduces people to many of the more advanced features that they might be unaware of including:

* Multiple windows
* Commands for searching through *multiple* source files.
* Diff mode
* Commands for locating files when you only know a partial name.

Speaker: Steve Oualline
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Introduction to Forensics

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In this talk Kyle Rankin will cover basic concepts for a forensics investigation using Sleuthkit and Autopsy. The talk will feature a demo with a real compromised system.

In this talk Kyle Rankin will provide an introduction to performing forensics analysis on Linux machines using the popular Sleuthkit tools with their easy-to-use Autopsy web-based front-end. The talk will cover initial installation and configuration of Sleuthkit and Autopsy, basic concepts and considerations for a forensics investigation, and at the end there will be a demo with a real, compromised Linux image.

Speaker: Kyle Rankin
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