The Open Source Bridge Conference made its debut last week at the Oregon Convention Center.  Over 450 attendees gathered to share ideas, learn from each other and strengthen open source communities.  The conference itself was an all volunteer effort that included dozens of organizers and volunteers that worked countless hours to make the event such a success.

Much has been written about the actual conference by better writers than myself so I will leave that level of detail to them.  I suggest you check out the article on ReadWriteWeb titled “Open Source Bridge is a Huge Success“.  Doug Coleman does a great job summarizing the conference and providing more resources to satisfy your information curiosity.

As for this blog post, I wanted to give you a little more flavor from the perspective of the people involved in the event.  On Friday I wandered the halls and spoke to several folks to get an attendee take on the event.  The response from the random group I spoke to was a resounding thumbs up for the conference.

One person in particular summed up the event for him rather eloquently.  He said  “It is refreshing to come to Portland and be around a group of smart people that want to share ideas and collaborate.”  He explained to me that where he came from the tech community was large and fiercely competitive to the point where people  didn’t share great ideas.  He said “Portland has been so refreshing, I’m jealous of this tech community.”  When speaking of conference highlights he said that the hallway time between sessions and table discussions with open source luminaries, community leaders and “the good people of Portland” made the conference memorable.

Another person I met was astounded that people weren’t in the halls during sessions.  He said that typically people spend a lot of time mulling around and not attending sessions.  He was amazed that at this conference the talks were so enticing and the content so compelling that the hallways were ghost towns and the sessions were full of participation.  The phrase he used was “What a breath of fresh air that so many people really just want to learn.”

What else can I say?  Not much, those two examples pretty much speaks volumes for the conference.

On the organizers side I’d like to congratulate the entire team for a job well done. Selena, Jake, Audrey, Rick, Reid, Igal and the dozens more – your dedication is admirable!   Although this was an all volunteer run conference, it came off as a professionally coordinated event.  O’Reilly has nothing on you guys!  Starting with a terrific web site, transparent proposal system, easy registration all the way to the hot coffee in the session areas and coordinated events like Beer & Blog and Strange Love Live the event was first class.

If you missed the conference this year, then start saving now so you can attend next year.  My prediction is that this conference will grow by leaps and bounds because it’s truly about the content, it’s about the attendee  and about the experience.