The Call for Papers for foss-north is open for another week (until the 12th). This gives you an opportunity to speak in front of a great crowd. Looking at the results from last year’s questionnaire, more than 90% are users of open source software and more than 50% are contributors. One thing that surprised me, is that more people actually contribute as a part of their profession than as hobbyists. Looking at the professional vs hobbyist proportions, 45% of the visitors stated that they had their ticket paid by their employer/school, while 42% paid them out of their own pocket.
The topic of the conference is free and open source – so anything related is much welcome.We do not even limit ourselves to software – hardware, patents, community and much more is also appreciated topics. Last year we had speakers talking about timing synchronization over vast networks, patent issues, working as a designer, linguistics and must more.
As always with these things, crowd dynamics means that me as an organizer has to work on my stress management abilities. Almost 30% of the tickets to last year’s event was sold in the last two days before the event. The same goes for Call for Papers – nobody registers a talk in good time before the deadline. So if you want to help an ageing developer keeping the pulse under control – submit your talk proposal now! ;-)