This year’s OSCON was my first attendance of the conference; I was pleasantly surprised. The conference is 5 days, the first two of which are half day tutorial sessions, and the remaining 3 being the core conference. I attended the 3 core days of the conference, and my brain was completely overflowed by the end.

In this post, part 1 of 2, the interesting items of note in the Keynote presentations are discussed. A follow on post will catalog the main sessions I attended.

Keynotes

Each morning OSCON has an hour’s worth of 5-15 keynote presentations – a format I hadn’t seen, but like. High density and thought provoking, each keynote is recorded and available for every one to view. The following are my picks for most intriguing, (in no particular order).

• Building an API for the Planet with a new Approach to Satellites

  The folks at Planet Labs <https://www.planet.com/>_ are building bird sized, (raptor sized) satellites and deploying them in a polar orbit to create the worlds first “planet scanner”. A goal being to image the entire planet, every day, as the earth rotates beneath the ring of satellites. And, … there’s more - this was OSCON: make the image data available to the public.

• Anticipating the Future - an Introduction to Value Chain Mapping

  Simon successfully argues that the “lemming” strategy of how to be successful in business endeavors is not necessarily the most effective. In lieu of following the leader, he argues and then exemplifies a analytic, (and scientific), approach to determining what actions would likely be more successful for a business – through the life cycle of a business.

• The Concert Programmer

  Entertaining, and certainly intriguing, Andrew Sorensen does actually perform a live concert by programming the music live. In this 10 minute performance Andrew explains the coding he performs while code-performing his musical piece.

• Yes, Your Refrigerator Is Trying To Kill You: Bad Actors and the Internet of Things

  Yes, security updates to intelligent appliances do matter; no, they are not happening. Beth Flanagan does an excellent job of relaying the increasing hazards lacking security in the Internet of Things could present to all humans on the planet.

Coming in part two: my notes on the sessions I attended.