We just finished a big last-minute sprint in the #teachingopensource IRC channel to push our OSCON track proposal through.

Here are the five I'm listed for:

  1. 5 FOSS in Edu projects that changed the world (Karsten Wade, Mel Chua)
  2. Junior Jobs and Bite-sized bugs: Entry points for new contributors to open source (Mel Chua, Asheesh Laroia)
  3. Teaching FOSS to Undergraduates (Ralph Morelli, Luis Ibanez, Carlos Jensen, Mel Chua, Timothy Budd, Leslie Hawthorn)
  4. Teaching Open Source Has A POSSE (Professors Open Source Summer Experience) (Mel Chua)
  5. The Open Source Way: Leveraging Communities (Sebastian Dziallas, Mel Chua)

As a first-time proposer, I was amazed to see how quickly things came together, snowballing right up until the very end. A few minutes before the deadline, proposals were still being written - for the one I was in, Asheesh was filling in the outline Karsten had set down while Jeff caught typos and I copy-pasted the finished bits into the OSCON proposal submission page. We got it in right under the deadline. (In other news, etherpad kicks some serious butt.)

I'm hopeful that our track (and at least some of our talks) will be accepted - I definitely want to see... oh, pretty much all the talks listed. July should be a fun month for travel this summer.

In other news, the road trip back to Boston (from Raleigh) continues. I've made it to New York, staying with Sumana and Leonard. Many thanks to Paul and his family for putting me up last night (complete with affectionate dog resulting in my pants still having dog hair on them - but I'm happy about this, since my opportunities to get covered in dog hair are far less frequent than I would like them to be).

It is nearly 4am, which means unconsciousness shall claim me shortly. Farewell to the waking world for a few hours.