I loved attending OSCON, as it is the yearly event in which I saved and scrimped to get there. The people who organised and coordinated the event are excellent folks. I’ve met wonderful people, learned more about the Open Source movement, and I get to take home the enthusiasm. From what I’ve heard, OSCON is more technical and nuts & bolts than the slick and marketing-heavy LinuxWorld. If I can, I’d take the Prediger to the 2010 OSCON.

But consider this: For those living and working in the Bay Area, it’s little problem to attend. However for Midwesterners, they have to fly out to the West Coast in order to attend. Then they need to rent a decent hotel room for 5-7 days at $189, plus a 10 percent tourist tax. Add meals and incidentals…NOT including the registration fees, that’s about $1800. That is more than the $1500 total I spent when I was at Portland 2008, including the student admission fee at $609. One presenter at that OSCON also mentioned the environmental effects of attending a cross-country convention.

No wonder why we should push for regional conferences like SCaLE in California. The Portland crowd has replaced the gap OSCON left with its own conference, the Open Source Bridge. For the low price of $250, you can attend all of these exciting sessions by the people who get into the nitty-gritty of the movement. I wish we can attend that as the Prediger has not been to Stumptown and I wanted to take him to Powell’s.

And now…here is what I’ve been doing when not studying PHP and CS4. I’ve been asked to join the planning committee for this year’s Ohio LinuxFest and we are planning neat exciting things. This year, we are celebrating 40 years of Unix. If you live within 3-5 hours of Columbus, Ohio…you should come. If you want to hear and learn from passionate people who gave their time, talent, and treasure in the FLOSS community…you should come. If you know a thing or two and you know it VERY well…drop us a line and we’ll contact you. And if you want to promote diversity in our community…you should come.

Best of all… you can register at the starting price of FREE. If you want to support our event, we have a $65 pass and a $350 for professional tutorials, and I highly recommend getting the supporter’s pass as you will get a shirt, some eats and drinks with that.

This year, consider making the regional conference your BIG conference.