GOSCON 2007 in Portland

I got a note from Deb Bryant regarding GOSCON. I went last year and it was great. I'm shocked at how much has happened in a year.

• The week after I heard Larry Augustin speak at GOSCON, Compiere was forked. Less than a year later, a VP from Oracle took over Compiere hoping to turn it around.
• JanRain was just getting started - I saw Jason McKerr speak at GOSCON. He had recently left OSL which was pretty high flying at the time. I remember him saying, "I'm speaking at an OSS conference, but our products aren't OSS. We did a lot with OSS at OSL." I don't remember much more about what he said. A year later, their CEO has moved on. I have no idea how they are doing besides that. But when that happened, it reminded me just how hard it is to start a company & how hard you have to work to make good software products that the market needs & will pay more $$ than it costs to make. Looking at the JanRain website, I don't know where the $$ will come from. I do think that OpenID is as good an idea as any though for identity. I get really tired of registering and remembering my password. I just don't know how they will monetize it given some of the stuff going on in that community. I hope they do though - clearly some talent there. And I have a natural bias towards all Portland tech companies.
• Bradley Wheeler gave the closing keynote at GOSCON - it was incredible.
• Stuart Cohen gave a speech as the CEO of OSDL (now The Linux Foundation). He now runs The Collaborative Software Initiave (CSI) - it is conceptually similar to Brad Wheeler's success with universities.
• Open Source was a key focus of my daily work (along the lines of Brad Wheeler & CSI)- now it is just one fairly small aspect of it. Open Source has come a long way in a year yet has a ways to go. IMHO it is an unstoppable force. But lest we forget, it only makes up 2% of the software market. My personal opinions around open source have changed a ton in the last year. I remain convinced that it is the #1 disruptive force in the software market, but am a little more realistic about where it is and where it is leading.

Anyway, GOSCON is on again this year (year 3) GOSCON 2007, Oct 15-16 in Portland. Deb says: This year's keynotes include: Andrea DiMaio, Vice President and Distinguished Analyst, Gartner Research; Jim Zemlin, Executive Director, Linux Foundation; Skip McGaughey, Director of Eclipse Ecosystem, Eclipse Foundation.