I’m currently in Portland, Oregon attending the GOSCON conference where I gave a presentation titled “Open Source Community Principles for Organizational Change.” The slides in my presentation can be found at the bottom of this post. I’ve forgotten how wonderful a city Portland is. I haven’t been here for about 13 years. One of the things that makes it great is that Black Butte Porter can be found at draft everywhere.
A few thoughts on GOSCON
This is the best government tech conference I’ve attended so far. The attendees are mostly people rolling up their sleeves and working Gov 2.0 and Open Gov issues. There’s not a lot of need to do any convincing here. Furthermore, the presentations are actually thought provoking and less along the lines of vendors pitching their solution. Among the great conference content has been presentations about Civic Commons ((Which I totally amazed by. Expect a post or two on Civic Commons in the future.))
And the CONNECT project. Which provides actual fiscal proof that Open Government and open source approaches can save taxpayer dollars.
And the food? The food being served at GOSCON is ridiculously good. I’m having a hard time thinking of conference that has server better food and used a more stylish venue than The Nines Hotel in Portland, Oregon.