So Concludes E.R.C. 2009?

Thanks to all who came! … Evil Robot Conference 2009 was a fun event. I would guess we had 60 or so attendees, and there were a really wide group of sessions so everyone had something great to pick from! Nice meeting all of you!

Here’s a post of the grid for those that missed it.

Twitter for #evilrobotconf

Apologies on who we lost for after-ERC festivities … we didn’t predict the WVu football game traffic, so Sammy’s was probably not the right place to send everyone and we had to regroup. I am guessing NCSU vs Murray State was not televised!

I was asked quite a few times “are we doing this next year?”. While I can’t say for sure, I’d like to. If you’d like to subscribe to this blog’s RSS feed, that would be a good way of keeping track of things, even if you forget. We’ll post up with details if so.

–Michael

Schedule for Saturday!

Here’s the schedule for Saturday!

9:00 Be there, say hi, meet friends and influence people.

9:20-9:50 We’ll say a few short words, and then speakers can present their idea for talks (whether they’ve already submitted it to me or just decided 5 minutes ago) and pitch for people to attend. Each will have about 30 seconds. Next, we’ll organize “The Grid” and what talks are when. Typical Unconference style format.

10:00-10:45 Talk Slot 1 (in various rooms)
11:00-11:45 Talk Slot 2

11:45-01:15 Lunch, on your own

1:15-2:00 Talk Slot 3
2:15-3:00 Talk Slot 4
3:15-4:00 Talk Slot 5

4:00… Everybody helps clean up, close up shop
Food/Beverages at Nearby Establishment

Everything will be on the ground floor of 1801 Varsity Drive. If you need food/drinks besides lunch, be advised Red Hat (who is graciously providing us the site for this) does not have vending machines but we’ll have H20 available. Seeing eye dolphins are allowed. Attack bears are not. Talking street mimes only with permit.

The official twitter/flickr tag is evilrobotconf.

Hope to see lots of you there!

Saturday Saturday Saturday

It’s just one week to Evil Robot Conference! Saturday, September 12th at 1801 Varsity Drive, Raleigh, NC.

Some logistical details:

Everyone should try to be there at 9 AM, schedules are still being finalized but we’ll try to start very shortly thereafter. If you can’t stay the whole time or are coming in late, that is cool — but if you are talking or think you might have an idea for a talk, you need to be there at 9 so we can pitch them and organize rooms. (If you have to leave in the middle of the day and come back for your talk time that is workable). For folks coming late we will probably post some cell phone numbers on the door for people to call and be let in since we can’t keep the doors open. Letting people in late keeps us from hearing cool talks ourselves, so avoid that if possible!

Another logistical note — we should have donuts for people in the morning, though if you want to eat breakfast first, eat breakfast first. We’re going to break for an hour and a half for lunch — enough time for folks to visit somewhere local and have a nice lunch. There are several places on Western Boulevard, including Bojangles (woot), as well as in neighboring Mission Valley shopping center. (Remember this conference is a recession buster special!) and is not really sponsored by anyone, though we’d like to thank Red Hat for donating the usage of the site to us. That is awesome, thank you.

Not to sound like a broken record, but if you haven’t signed up already, please go ahead and sign up on the sign up page (link at the top of this blog). We probably won’t fill up the site, but this will make sure we have logistics in order and help us know how many people we have coming. There is no deadline for signups, but try to have that done by Thursday of this week if possible.

As mentioned previously, after the conference (5pm or so) we will probably hit a nearby establishment for post-conference festivities, food, and beverages. Details will be shared at the event. All are welcome to join us.

For those inclined to use social networks, like Twitter and Flickr, I’m declaring the tag to be #evilrobotconf

Ok, apologies on all of the logistical spam. I am psyched. Look forward to meeting all of you and hearing lots of awesome talks.

Keep on coding in the free world.

– Michael DeHaan

Still Time To Sign Up, And Still Room For Talks

With a little less than a month to go, so far we’ve got about 50-60 people signed up, which is *awesome* for a 1st year free conference, on a Saturday, for something this focused.

We also have about 10 folks signed up to give talks, which look excellent (See Agenda). This means each timeslot will probably have an alternate talk, so you can choose what you want to go to. There’s still room for more talks though, so if you have an idea for a talk about something related to Open Source Software, email mdehaan@redhat.com with details. We can accept talks the day of, but it’s better to have them on the list ahead of time so people can think about what they want to see. Have a favorite language or project and want share? Here’s your chance.

Also, if you have friends and coworkers interested in this sort of thing, spread the word. There’s still room for more!

If you need a reminder, the event is September 12, 2009 in Raleigh, starting around 9:15-9:20. Click When & Where for directions.

Free As In Donuts!

Thanks to Max Spevack from the Fedora Project, ERC will have donuts. Yes, Free Software and Free Donuts. If you have a talk about OSS software for making donuts, that would just complete the whole deal.

We have about 50 people already signed up and some great talks on Free Software already … but plenty more room for content and attendees. I’m really really looking forward to it. It will rock. Tell your friends and con them into coming too, it is for their own good!

(Note, we’re still breaking for lunch — hmm, tasty Bojangles excursion)

BTW, if you are wondering about the tremendously high quality journalistic style you see here, our writers have been sacked.

Evil Robot Insurance?

Many readers have written in wondering if we are affiliated with Old Glory Insurance. No, we are not — it’s just a naming coincidence that they happen to have a insurance policy related to robots. We believe that Evil Robot Insurance is a poor alternative to preventing Evil Robots in the first place, and it is better to work on Open Source software instead, so we’re getting together to talk about Open Source software. That’s it! Hopefully Evil Robots will not find out of our plan from reading the internet. Sorry, insurance agents, there won’t be much content interesting to you on September 12th at 1801 Varsity Drive in Raleigh, NC. Hackers? Oh yes, it will be great. There will be plenty of exciting talks for you.

Recent additions to the agenda include talks on Lisp, Non-SQL databases, and Running Open Source businesses. There’s still PLENTY of room for you to submit your own topics. Email Michael with your ideas. We have people coming from LUGs, RUGs, PUGs, and all over the place, so it’s a great time to cross the streams and expose folks to stuff they haven’t seen before.

Have a Topic You’d Like To Present?

We need your Open Source topics. If you have a topic you are thinking of presenting, Sign Up, then email mdehaan@redhat.com with what you’d like to talk about so we can add you to the list. You can see some talks already planned on our Agenda page. Yes, we’ll take topics the day of, but go ahead and sign up now so no one claims your cool idea.

Example ideas: a favorite programming library, tool or framework, a new language you are interested in and why you like it, how to get involved in various Linux distributions, experiences running and contributing to projects, your spare time project, how to get more OSS involvement in ___, Open Source legal details, it’s up to you! (We’ll take almost anything 100% open source — no marketing/product talks or half-open code). If you are thinking between one topic that is really fun and one that is enterprisey and good resume experience, pick the fun one

If you haven’t presented at a conference before, don’t worry about it, ERC is going to be really informal and would be a great first time. Anybody can host a talk. Don’t worry about having a bunch of slides (though having some is good). It’s Saturday, we just want to get together, hang out, and talk about tech. If you run out of things to say and want to turn your presentation into more of a casual conversation with people interested in the same things, that’s cool too. Slots are going to be about 45 minutes long, and doing at least 15 minutes of Q&A/discussion or doing that all through your session is generally a good idea. No hard format rules though. We look forward to hearing what you’ll come up with.

RSS Feeds; Sign Up Page Open

Tip — You may want to subscribe to the RSS Feed so you can get updates on Evil Robot Conference as we send them out. <dalek voice> SUBSCRIBE! SUBSCRIBE! </dalek voice>. Ok, we know Daleks aren’t technically robots. But they don’t get much more evil, so that’s good enough for our purposes.

You may also notice we now have the Sign Up page open, please sign up if you’re coming so we can know how many folks to expect. We’ll also add topics to the Agenda page as submissions roll in.

Do You Know Open Source Kung-Fu?

We’re sharing Free Knowledge at the Evil Robot Conference. September 12th, 9:30 AM, in Raleigh, NC. And no, it’s not about evil robots. It’s about Free Software. We just named it that so you’d pay attention. Or … is it?

Is Your Robot Evil?

If your robot is stealing your beverages, it might be evil. Find out how you can use Open Source to defeat Evil Robots at the Evil Robot Conference, September 12th, in Raleigh.