OSCON and Open Source

Welcome back everyone. This is the ChangeLog podcast and your host, Adam Stachowiak. This is episode 175 and on today's show I'm joined by Rachel Rommelios, the strategic content director at O'Reilly Media. She's also the programming chair for OSCON and also O'Reilly's Software Architecture Conference.

Great show today with Rachel. A lot of deep dive into open source, open source at O'Reilly, and all the fun they've had for the past 18 years with OSCON. We had four awesome sponsors, CodeChip, TopTowel, DigitalOcean, and Imgix. Our first sponsor of the show is CodeChip.

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Head to CodeChip.com slash the changelog to get started, and now on to the show. I am here with Rachel Rommelios. Rachel is the strategic content director at O'Reilly Media. She's also the programming chair for OSCON and another awesome O'Reilly conference called Software Architecture Conference.

So Rachel, it's been awesome to chat with you before all this, but I'm so glad you're here at the show, so welcome. Thank you so much. Happy to be here. We've been, I guess we can maybe even open this show with telling the world that the ChangeLog is newly an O'Reilly partner, which is kind of exciting.

Absolutely. It's great. What part do you play in that partnership program that O'Reilly has? Well, I guess I play whatever part they want me to.

So the partner program is really a fantastic way we can talk with people who do podcasts, people who are part of meetups. It's a way for us to communicate with them the content that we have that we want them to get out to the people that we hope really need it. It's kind of a two-way street, I think of it as. We're creating a street team of people that can go out and talk about what we have to offer.

And then hopefully we're giving out some information for free. You know, it's books, it's pieces of video. I know we give away tickets to some of our conferences. So we found that by creating a partner center, it kind of standardizes a little bit for us, and we're able to put out a wide variety of content so that there's something for everybody.

Yeah. I've been really interested in what it is going to do for us because I think it's definitely a partnership and definitely a fun way to approach what we're already doing. And I think I was telling, she talked to so many people from O'Reilly recently, I can't remember who I was talking to. I think it was Jenny and I can't remember the other person's name right now, but I'm sad about that.

But I was saying how excited we were because, you know, who doesn't know O'Reilly and who doesn't like the things and stuff that O'Reilly does? And she was like, that's very interesting that you say that like that. And I was like, well, that's how I feel. You know, who doesn't know O'Reilly and how couldn't we, you know, love what you do?

Well, I'm happy you feel that way because I too feel that way and I want to make sure that that's something we continue to do over time. And that changes in how we can do that. Right. Well, that's not where things begin, though, for you.

I mean, like all of us, we've started somewhere. And I can't imagine your first job out of anything was O'Reilly Media. So where did things begin for you? Like you're strategic content director.

I'm not really sure exactly what that breaks down to be, but I'd love to help us understand who you are and help tell your story that got you to where you're at today with O'Reilly and what you're doing for OSCON and the software architecture conference. Sure. So I always like to start with how I went to college at NYU for acting and English. So I was really thinking, how can I create a stable job for myself?

And then after a few years of not getting that stable job, I thought, you know, I really like books, like a lot of people that you'll find in publishing. And I ended up putting together, you know, a resume that somehow got me in the door at a technical publisher called Elsevier. And so I actually, I got in there into the sales group. Some reorg happened.

I was gone a month after that and then somehow got back in as editorial, which was really what I wanted to do anyways. And I was in the electrical engineering area. And I think what I really liked about it at first was that I kind of had to figure out a problem. To me, it was a problem that I had to figure out what the audience needed.

And now, of course, I started out as an editorial assistant. And so that wasn't my problem to solve right away. But I saw that that was the problem that needed to be answered kind of on a continuous basis as things changed in technology. And so I really liked not necessarily even having a really, really deep understanding of, say, optical engineering, but trying to talk to people and figure out how we could actually help them and move that field forward.

And so I, you know, went up the ranks and Elsevier, I covered different types of electrical engineering, embedded engineering, went over to do some computer security stuff with an imprint called Syngress, and then moved over to Morgan Kaufman, who does some computing publishing more on the theoretical side, though not completely, and looked at UX and artificial intelligence and stuff like that. And so it was during that time that I really, that was about seven years, and that I really started to, you know, we look at the competition, obviously, and I would come up against O'Reilly and I'd be like, oh, they're selling more than us. That's so funny. Yeah.

Well, and actually, I should point out one other thing. So way before that, you know, I would go to Barnes and Noble all the time, just looking for books. And even, you know, 10 years ago, there were a lot more books, computer books in the brick and mortar stores. And so I actually remember seeing the O'Reilly books.

So it's interesting how the animals make an impression, even if you're not in that field. I think, you know, it was the time where everyone's like, let's make websites. So I think I knew O'Reilly from back then, but on a professional level, I, you know, I saw them, they kept coming up. They were doing good.

And it just seemed like they were a little bit different than the other publishers, even that, you know, that I worked for or that we came up against or we met at conferences. And so, you know, at a certain point, I was like, okay, you know, time for me to move on. Where do I want to go? And I thought O'Reilly and thankfully they hired me and I've been here a little more than four years.

And, and everything that I thought about O'Reilly before I got here was true. And it's gone beyond that. I know that sounds like I love O'Reilly, but I guess I do. So basically the idea that O'Reilly didn't just sort of, and this is, I guess this isn't completely true about publishing, but in a very simplified version of it, you know, taking, working with people in the community, taking that knowledge and then selling it back to that same community.

I felt, and this was before I even got in, I still believe it's true, that O'Reilly really is part of that community, like in many different ways. And so I wanted to be a part of that. And I feel that we're doing that. And I feel like that's something that is really important to us.

We're still a business, of course, but we, we really do think about, you know, how can we help people, you know, on a daily basis? How are people learning now? You know, like print books was the big thing before. And now, you know, then it went to digital books.

Now it seems like people are looking at videos and maybe going to conferences and maybe it's not one thing. It's a multitude of things or it depends what you're learning. And so we're changing with the times so that we can do that. Another aspect, I guess of that is, I mean, thinking about things like the democratization of coding, you know, like in the nineties, I don't think anyone was like, I'm going to go check out this HTML even, you know what I mean?

And change that around. And now people do that. And so how does that affect us? Do we, you know, work on putting together some content where we try to get into, you know, the AP level stuff at school?

So it's an ongoing thing, you know, and it's, it's, there's lots of different places to go, I think with that content and, and what I like about O'Reilly, I guess this goes a little bit beyond my background, but what I like is that we keep trying things and trying different things and we are not, I wouldn't even call us a publisher anymore. We're definitely a media company. So you finally found your, your, the tail end of your business name, which is O'Reilly media. Yes, exactly.

So, so yeah. So here, you know, I hopefully Yeah, and you know, it's, it can depend on the topic. Like, for instance, something with design, obviously would do better if you could see it. Or I know with the hardware, we did a video on Raspberry Pi where you could literally see the guy, you know, putting the wires into the breadboard and stuff like that.

So that's stuff you would just never be able to do in a book. So that's really fun. And I think the idea is that just people don't necessarily consume things in one way any longer. I think it depends on the person.

I think it depends what the topic. But yeah. And I think, I don't know. I mean, I think it depends as time moves on, you see, you know, what makes sense or, I mean, we're continuing to learn.

I mean, obviously we've been doing books for over 30 years. So I think we have a pretty good sense of what works in books. So we're still learning what that is, you know, when we create something that's interactive or a video and I think we're still learning that. And I think that we've got some great things, and I think that we can do even better.

Conferences too. I mean, conferences, I think we have great conferences, but that doesn't mean that we're not going to change them. I mean, OSCON, for instance, the one we just had in Portland, had a whole new track system. And so it used to be very much based on, here's the Python track, here's the Perl track, you know, PHP, whatever.

And we really changed that to be, to be what we thought reflected what the programmer or the software engineer out there really dealt with. Which was architecture, performance, security. And then the secondary sort of tag that we gave it was like, oh, by the way, this will be in Python. But recognizing that developers, you know, it's kind of like, there's so many tools.

You pick the tool you like or pick the tool that works the best. But these issues that we're bringing up are the issues that most of the people are going to have. And that's where we really want to help. What exactly is a program chair?

I know there's three of them on the OSCON team. Yes. You know, do you divide the responsibilities up individually? Do you attack it holistically?

What exactly is that role and what do you do for OSCON? So it's been really fascinating. So it's been about a year since I became the OSCON chair. So I can give you a little sort of view of it, I guess, and maybe sort of like, in my time.

So last year this time, you know, they're like, hey, we want you to do this. And I'm like, fantastic. And so when I first started, you know, there were chairs that were already there. Matt McCullough, Sarah Devotny and Simon St.

Laurent, who is my colleague here at O'Reilly. And so as a new chair, I just wanted to basically get all of the information that they had downloaded into my brain, which is a lot. And really doesn't happen instantaneously. So we start off, we talk about, you know, what was going on at the last OSCON and we figure what worked, what didn't work.

And we'd already been talking internally maybe about switching things up and how they were presented. And this was something that did really start even before the last OSCON, not this one, this year, but the one before. And so that's really the time, I guess, like maybe the three to four months after the event where we're thinking, okay, what do we want next year to be? So we're already thinking that.

And then putting together, taking those thoughts, figuring out how this event fits with the rest of our content plan and the rest of sort of the software engineering world. And then trying to figure out how to put that succinctly, that idea of what we want next year to be, putting that succinctly into our call for papers. And our call for papers certainly doesn't have to be like the final word, like that's the way it's going to be. But it's kind of gives us an early deadline to say, okay, this is what we think it's going to look like.

And so last, I think it must've been Decemberish, last Decemberish, that's when we put together like, okay, we're not going to do language tracks, we're going to do it like this. And so we put that out. We're responsible for like kind of like figuring out what that bigger program is going to be. Then we put out the call for papers.

For OSCON, we get about 1,200 proposals, which is nuts. That's insane. That would take you like how long to go through? It's crazy.

And it's hard because OSCON is super diverse, right? So you could never be... Everything's interesting. Everything's interesting, but also you couldn't be a super expert on everything, or if you could, let me know and come on and be on the committee.

But so basically, that's when we do. So we have a program committee. And when we first started, the program committee, I think, is about 70 people for OSCON. And I was like, why do you need that many people?

And then I figured out it's because we have 1,200 proposals and we want to make sure that everything gets reviewed thoroughly. And so we have the 70 people plus the chairs, and they take a look at that content and we rate it and we put in comments to make sure it isn't just like, this is a 2, this is a 5. You know, we really want to like have qualitative comments in there because say, for instance, something like Docker, which is obviously the hotness right now, we'd get 15 proposals. You know what I mean?

And it's hard to be able to, you know, read through all 15 of those, trying to have to put together a little like crib sheet on like, this one did this and this did this, and this is why we like this one. So, so we do that. We have a period where we're looking through everything. At the end of that time, the chairs will take a look at all of that.

basically everything that the program committee has done and then put together the final program. So that's a combination of seeing sort of what rankings we've had, what, how the tracks have matched up. Say, for instance, like the architecture track would get, and these are not real numbers, but say it got, you know, 250 proposals and say we did, I don't know, like a design track. And for whatever reason it got 15.

So then we're thinking, okay, maybe this, this audience isn't too into design. Maybe we won't do that. And maybe we'll do, you know, maybe we'll expand the architecture track to make it two days or whatever. So those are, so those are the bigger sort of things.

And then we actually literally go through everything and start to work through it and figure out like what sessions are we going to accept? And so we do that and then we have to schedule it, which is a beast because last year we had 10 tracks. The year before, I think there were 15. So thankfully, yeah, there were 10 tracks.

And so we actually schedule it. So that's just the sessions. Then the tutorials are, you know, are just even more in depth. So we have to think, are we covering what we want?

So it's this combination of sort of, I guess in a nutshell, kind of, you know, telling everybody about it, like putting together the program at like a very high level, explaining to everybody, you know, what that program is about, working to get people to put in, you know, content for the proposal search, reviewing stuff, and then taking all that, seeing how it fits with that initial, initial vision, tweaking it how you think it needs to be tweaked, and then actually scheduling that. And at that point, you know, working with operations and figuring out, okay, where does this go? Where does this go? Big room, small room.

And then of course, you know, continuing to let people know about it and then actually being sort of like the MC host at the event. Well, it makes sense for you to have a background in, you know, in journalism and then being, you know, an editor in an editorial because that's, you know, a lot of what you're doing there is, is figuring out like what content, what, you know, what is it that makes sense from all of the work that you've done to gather the necessary topics for the different tracks you have and does it fit or does it not fit? Where does it fit? Wow, that's a, that's a lot of work.

It is. And it's funny that you said that because I actually found as I was, you know, it's daunting, right? I'm excited, but I'm thinking, oh my gosh, how am I going to do this? And it was very much to me, like what I had already been doing, you know, in my past, which was acquiring books to fit into a larger program.

And this just happened to be a heck of a lot of sort of programs together. And in, you know, just in a session form, like forget about books. So it was kind of, so it spoke to me in that sort of like, I was like, oh, this is fun. You know, it was kind of, it was kind of instant.

It was, you know, when you're working on a book, it's like you have to work on this proposal and then reutter, you know, iterate on that. And then this was sort of like an instantaneous, like I've got 1 It's gonna be with us. But yeah, so how is OSCON Amsterdam different? So as part of sort of evolving OSCON, it's, so it will take some of what we've done with OSCON 2015, which is changing the the way we construct the program from languages to basically problems and solutions.

So you're gonna see a lot of the same tracks. You're gonna see data architecture. We're gonna do a foundations track. We're gonna do a collaboration and craft track like we did at OSCON 2015.

So I guess what I would say, to put it in sort of a succinct answer, is that it's half of it's sort of like the best of OSCON and sort of what I think we've seen from the US. And then half of it is people in Europe that are from that continent talking about what they, they've done with open source over the past year or so. And so I wanted to make sure it was a mix. So, you know, it's an opportunity to bring over some of what we've been doing that people might not have a chance to see due to location.

And then also, obviously, the audience is going to be predominantly European, I would guess. And so making sure it's not just like, hey, the Americans have come to tell us everything. Right. So definitely don't want to do that.

You should bring some people from. Well, one that stood out to me that was a past guest on the show was Curtis Poe. Yep. Yeah.

So I mean, exactly. So, yeah, which Perl6 is gonna be fascinating anyways. I hope to see that come out on time at the end of the year. But that was next year, right?

I don't know. I had heard December, but we'll see. But yeah, so So yeah, so obviously, you know, I don't, you know, with travel and the internet and everything, it's not like things are like super different all over the world, but you know, there are definitely shades of difference in how I think open source is used. And most notably, you know, that it's used, I think, just as sort of like a de facto standard in government.

It seems like much more over in Europe. And then that the security and privacy and identity stuff is a little bit further along, it seems like, or the expectations of what people want and what companies can do is much different than the US. And the final thing I noticed was that just due to it being different countries, different languages, it's much more fragmented. So it's really interesting.

I've learned a lot about it in the past few months and I'm continuing to do so. So I think it will be a good a good mix. I mean, there's certain like Docker is just like you could say that anywhere. I feel like people be like, Oh, yeah, tell me about it.

Anytime we have Docker listed in our email, it's our change weekly email on Saturdays. It tends to get not the most, but definitely a lot more clicks than than, you know, something that's not Docker, for example. Yes. So I think the point that people are at with Docker particularly is like it's not that how awesome it is.

It's like how can I actually use how awesome it is? That's where a lot of people are like, does it really make sense for me? And there's some places where it does in a developer standpoint. There's some places that in a continuous delivery workflow that you want to make sure that, you know, that Docker is a part of that.

Yeah, it's funny because, you know, we, I talked to a lot of people that create the content and then I talk to people that attend conferences and that's a very small percentage of the developers out there. And so it's funny. I talk about, you know, Docker every day and microservices and I try to remember that people are at different points depending on what they're working on. And so Docker could be new to a lot of people still.

And like you're saying, they're just figuring out, like they've heard about it, maybe they're figuring out how to actually incorporate that into their workflow. And like I said, in a variety of different ways, we're trying to figure out how we can let people know that. And then, I mean, that's just, that's a tool that talks about, you know, the much bigger change that is sort of DevOps and continuous integration that is happening. That's one of the biggest, the last couple of OSCONs, you know, Docker, Kubernetes, CoreOS, distributed systems, that whole thing has been one of the most popular things or anything that has to do with them is one of the most popular things that we've had recently at our events.

And like you said, you know, and it spans from developers to operations people. That line is just totally been blurred. I think the breakthrough with that too is that is that people have sort of realized how much they can do on the operations side to really support the newer applications that need to be developed for scale. And it's such an interesting thing that has come out of Google with Kubernetes and ultimately the collaboration with CoreOS and, you know, being a containerized based operating system.

I think there's a lot of interesting things happen in that space that people just cannot help but pay attention to because there's just so much new and inventiveness coming. Whereas in other areas, not that they're not new and inventing, but there's a lot of new happening there every single day. Yeah. And it's funny because then you'll find the person that's like containers have been around forever.

And you're like, okay, but this time, you know, it seems like for whatever reason, they've gotten people's attention. And I think that there's, I think that the popularity too is that, you know, you could be working on a bunch of different type of projects and this sort of change of culture and tool set and the idea that, you know, it's all the cloud and that you don't just like throw your project over the wall to operations. It's just a massive change for a lot of people. And I don't think it's just like, oh, we're there now.

You know, it's something that's going to continue to go on. I mean, you know, we talk about software architecture, that, and that's one of the things I like here constantly is, you know, microservices. Like I can't imagine that like everyone, you know, six months ago was like, oh, let's close down the model, I think architecture we have and let's just do microservices. It's cool, right?

You know what I mean? Like it's not like we're just going to get rid of everything that we've had. So, so it's interesting. So I think it fits into different.

It's gotta be tough to do in the kind of conference you have because you have to be so wide. I almost feel the same pain we feel here at the changelog because we're not like, uh, we're not Ruby changelog or go changelog or Kubernetes changelog. It's like, we're, you know, we're interested in open source. Obviously that's the same mission of OSCON and larger part of O'Reilly's mission is open source software development.

And we've been advocates for that for, you know, many, many years and that's what we eat and breathe every single day. That doesn't mean we camp out in Python. Doesn't mean we camp out in Ruby too long. It means that we look at open source holistically and even us, we have, we have the same trouble because we have four shows a month basically, you know, one show a week and we want to stay on the edge, but we also want to serve things that are timeless and timely even.

And so it's really difficult to choose the path of our own editorial because um just because there's so much, so much going on out there. Yeah, I do feel your pain. And I think, I guess the way I look at it is that we have sort of, you have to pick some focuses where you go deeper in than others where you think you can make the most impression, I guess. And so that change, that distributed developer tool system and those changes that come from that, all the way from architecture down to, um, you know, how operations has changed.

That's something I think that we see as important and there's a lot there to figure out. You know, I was just funny cause I was just mapping out sort of like our products for the rest of the year and I can see, you know, we choose to focus on certain things. So I can see that for the rest of the year, we're focusing on architecture and branching off of that, we're focusing on a lot of um Java specifically in that. And then we're also focusing on Python.

You know, we weren't focusing so much on C for instance, which is still out there a lot. Um, you know, and so it makes me think, so one of the things I will be thinking about is, you know, do we want to do more on C? If we do, why do we want to do that? You know, the IoT sort of explosion, does that necessitate people getting back into that?

Is that going to be exciting? Or like Linux for instance, you know, you see a lot of times people on uh what do you call it, people looking for jobs. They're like, okay, you need to know Linux. And you know, does everybody know that still?

Uh, do we need to do refreshers on some of our content for Linux basics? How much do you need to know about that for, to use Docker or CoreOS? Um, so I think you have to make some choices and I think you have to continually be watching in front of you for what's next. And then, and this goes back to back in the day when I would really focus on books.

I kind of broke it up into three pieces. One was sort of like those evergreen things like, um, I happen, and it will help make, like today is because of them. To make sure that they're given a platform to talk about the history, how they got there, why they, you know, they decided to go down this path. But also on the other side, and this is I think really important, is that the people that are new to it and have new and crazy ideas are able to voice those and then talk to the people that have been in it for 20 years.

And maybe change their mind, or not. I don't know. You know what I mean? So it's the diversity is a really important piece of it.

And there were some things that I did that I think were hard choices. You know, I de-emphasized Perl. Perl is still interesting. We were talking about Perl 6.

That's going to be wild, you know, when that comes out. Perl is still out there and used. Probably not the most, you know, the most used language anymore. And there's lots of other things to be done.

And sometimes Perl isn't the biggest, isn't the tool, isn't the language to be used. And so I had, I made the choice to de-emphasize that a little bit. And I think that was probably not super popular, but I don't know, you know what I mean? So it's the diversity is a really important piece of it.

And there were some things that I did that I think were hard choices. You know, I de-emphasized Perl. Perl is still interesting. We were talking about Perl 6.

That's going to be wild, you know, when that comes out. Perl is still out there and used. Probably not the most, you know, the most used language anymore. And there's lots of other things to be done.

And sometimes Perl isn't the biggest, isn't the tool, isn't the language to be used. And so I had, I made the choice to de-emphasize that a little bit. And I think that was probably not super popular, but I don't know, you know what I mean? So it's the diversity is a really important piece of it.

And there were some things that I did that I think were hard choices. You know, I de-emphasized Perl. Perl is still interesting. We were talking about Perl 6.

That's going to be wild, you know, when that comes out. Perl is still out there and used. Probably not the most, you know, the most used language anymore. And there's lots of other things to be done.

And sometimes Perl isn't the biggest, isn't the tool, isn't the language to be used. And so I had, I made the choice to de-emphasize that a little bit. And I think that was probably not super popular, but I don't know, you know what I mean? So it's the diversity is a really important piece of it.

And the other thing too is, like, if we made a change this year that didn't seem to go over well, I'm going to change it again. And that's what I mean. Like, we'll just continuously change. And I think that's the important thing.

Like, obviously, you know, this last one was a good success. But that doesn't mean we're just going to, like, do nothing. You know what I mean? So it keeps changing.

Like, yeah, so like the distributed thing. I know I keep going back to that. That's a big deal. Security for developers, is that something, I mean, that's been a problem for a really long time.

But, like, when does it become, you know, instead of reacting to it... The most interesting thing to have, yeah. Yeah, you know what I mean? So how do you get people to actually be like, I'm starting a project.

What about the security? And maybe some people do. I don't know. You know what I mean?

In finance, that's something that is a first-level concern. I don't know. But, you know, so that and the community. I don't know.

It's honestly, it's an honor for me to be a part of it. And I'm so glad that they didn't kick me out after this year. That's awesome. I'm glad, too, because, I mean, I think you do some really great work.

And I think, essentially, what you're saying was that the way your tracks have changed from before to this year, you kind of made some more influential changes to the way you've done your tracks and the way you've, you know, architected the different talks that can go on and whatnot. So that was a big, big change this year. What I'm curious of, though, is for those who have never been to an OSCON or for those who aspire to go to one because, let's face it, it's not the most inexpensive event. Sometimes you don't always have the money to go or have, you know, your employer's backing or the startup you're working at is not making enough money yet so you can't go for it.

So for whatever reason, you know, why should someone who's out there in the open source world building products every day or building software every day, what is it about OSCON that should bring them there versus, let's say, regional conferences that are a bit more specific to their interests? Why should they come to something like OSCON? What is it that OSCON delivers for the masses and the open source world? Well, I think it goes back to a little bit of what we talked about.

I think it's a combination of being able to see such a wide array of content and having that inform what you're doing. And then the group of people that it brings together, I think, is fantastic. I mean, it's, like I said, like it's, you know, people that created the projects. Or it's, you know, this year we're going to try, I believe we're going to try and do basically like a triage-a-thon, which is, you know, we'll bring, we'll have, like, open source projects.

And then you can actually go in and fix problems or add things. So I think it's the place to go to get a full picture of what's going on and to talk to a wide variety of people that are actually, like, in there creating the projects, updating them. And those are the people that are speaking. You know what I mean?

It's, I don't know, it brings people together. You know what I mean? Like, generally in a local meetup, it'll be, you know, if you happen to live near the people that are creating the projects, that's fantastic. They'll probably go to the local meetups.

This one just seems to be, like, sort of like the festival for the year where everyone's like, I'm definitely going to that one. You know what I mean? So I think that the breadth of people that are there are great. And what's great for us is that a lot of those people are the ones that put in the proposals.

And I just think it ends up being a great event. Like I said, a combination of the people and the content that we put together. And hopefully, you know, as we've been talking, we're trying to be very thoughtful. You know, we have a view of the entire software engineering world.

And I'm sure there's lots of people out there that put together the meetups and they're great. And there's other conferences and those are great. But we really think that we're putting together, you know, a full sort of event that is a reflection of what is happening with best practices and what you should be focusing on. And, you know, I would say, like, yeah, you should come to OSCON over something else because, you know, I put it together and I'm thinking, these are the important things you need to be looking at.

Well, also, when it comes to OSCON, I mean, you have several locations, too. Like it was in Portland last year. This year, back state side, it's gonna be in Austin, which I'm excited about because I'm a Houston native. So that means it's just a two and a half hour drive for me, which makes it a lot more easier for me to get to OSCON.

But then you also have, you know, your European track versions of it. Is this the first time it's been in Amsterdam or is that the first for this conference? So we did do, and I should probably look this up, but we did do a European conference, an OSCON conference back in, I believe it was 2008. And I am not completely sure where that was exactly, but somewhere in Europe.

And so this is the first one back to Europe then? Yes. Since 2008? Yeah.

And, you know, like I said, so, you know, there's shades of different, you know, how people are using open source in different areas. And, you know, going over there and hearing the different stories is really interesting. And I think recognizing that there is a little bit of a regionality to things that, you know, it is hard. Obviously, if you're in Europe, going all the way to Portland, Oregon is quite a trip.

Right. And so, you know, going somewhere where it is easier for someone from Germany to hop over to Amsterdam. You know, when we look at the stats, and this is why we're going to Austin, too. When we look at the stats, you know, 20% of the people, I don't know, that's an average, come from, you know, Germany, that area.

And so the idea of, you know, Portland is, I love Portland. Portland's been amazing to us. They've been a part of growing the open source movement. I'm sure we'll be back there.

But, like, giving, you know, kind of going to, like, middle America and being like, hey, everybody, what are you guys doing? It's interesting, I think, you know, there's not as many huge places over there to have conferences. So that's, you know, you have to figure out where to have something. And then something I think that affected us all is figuring out where to have something.

You know, for us, I think it came down to Berlin, London and Amsterdam. It's hard, though, you know, like from afar, figuring out, you know, where do we want to, who has a space for us, what's the what's the tech world like in that immediate area? You know, do they want a conference that's in the English language? It's definitely more complex.

I mean, I think it's just whenever you cross the border, you're like, oh my God, I'm in another country. And then, yeah, you know, figuring out, you know, obviously we like I said, there's some things that are global, I think, but then figuring out, you know, what things are local to Europe and to Amsterdam and trying to figure out that balance between sort of, you know, what's generally going on and what's really going to speak to the people locally. I always find it interesting to try and think about something so far when obviously you've got the language barriers, you've got different things and you've got opinions about languages, not only in the technical space, but also in the physical space where you're trying to communicate through a language. That was funny, actually.

One funny little tidbit I can tell you is that for whatever reason, we got many more proposals on Ruby. Is that right? Yeah. I don't know what that means exactly, but there you have it.

Ruby is big there. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm I'm always fascinated by how much effort it takes to produce a conference.

Like, for example, Jared Sanders, the co-host of the show, was just an organizer of a small regional conference in in Nebraska, in Omaha. And a little thing like that. And I guess you could also say they're all new too, because it was the first year any of them had ever done any of it. But how much work it is to produce a conference, not only just like to program like you all have, but all the logistics, all the operations.

It's so much work. And you're just like at the end, you're just wondering, will it work? Does it work out? And I guess you do have the OSCON history behind you.

So you can say, you know, without a without a doubt, yes, that has worked out. But nonetheless, you're like so much work, so many people involved and in such a big event to plan. I can't even imagine being in your shoes. Yeah, well, it's funny, you know, like I said, it's not just like on site.

I mean, we started, you know, planning for next year, like almost immediately. And yeah, I mean, can you imagine, like just like figuring out the registration or like how to feed people? I agree. It's quite something.

And I have to say, I'm proud of of the events that we have, because I'm sure like everyone, we've been to ones that, you know, are great and aren't so great. And there's many great ones outside of us, too. But yeah, it's it's something. I mean, I know I was very proud after we finished OSCON 2015.

So. Maybe that's something you guys can do in terms of education is let the world in on your secrets of running a big conference like that or how to produce a conference, because that's you see a lot more, like you said, meet up groups turn into basically small conferences, regional conferences. And those things only affect the big things anyway. So the more of those there are, the more big things that are going to be like OSCON, for example.

So that would be interesting. Yeah, there's a lot of cool local conferences that have like blown up to 1500. That's a lot of people. Oh, yeah.

I mean, it's yeah. We were just at GopherCon in Denver, and I couldn't believe it that there were that many people. Yeah, it doubled. Yeah, it was.

Yeah, it was exactly. It went from like 700 to like 12 or 1300 people really easily. Yeah, I say really easily, but to Eric and Brian, it wasn't very easy. No, I'm sure.

You know, and it's interesting. I know. So I was at the first one and, you know, it was single track. And then I saw, I think this year it was single track again.

Yeah, so that's interesting. I mean, that's the choice they have to make. Like, so I wonder, like, I'm sure they're already thinking, do we do single track again? Do we split it up?

Do we have it at the same spot? You know, what was popular? What wasn't? So it's it's a lot.

It's it always seems to like with the CFP, I was like, oh, my God, it's already due. How is that possible? Because, you know, we do a lot of different things here, but it's exciting. It's fun to do.

It's it's a lot of work, but, you know, when you're actually at the event, it's cool to be able to pay off of that work is really cool. Let's take one final break. We'll we'll kill off the show. I know there was probably not much of a gap between the last break and this break.

So I apologize about that. We got a time limit to kind of hit here, though. But let's break. We'll do our some of our closing questions for Rachel and look forward to the next OSCON.

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Once again, imgix.com slash changelog and tell them Adam from the changelog sent you. Alright, we are back with Rachel and Rachel, I'm excited because I think I've learned quite a bit about you, learned quite a bit about O'Reilly and this really awesome conference, OSCON. And it's just so exciting to see, you know, such a staple of a conference keep going year after year after year. And then not even being so into itself that it's humble enough to say, well, we can change and we can even change up our tracks this year and morph and iterate for the community.

And that thing, that's just really interesting the way that y'all put this conference on. What a big deal it is to serve the open source community as you have for so many years. So kudos on that part for sure. But some closing questions we have.

I think they're pretty interesting and I figure no matter who you are, you've got to have like programming heroes. It's somebody that's influenced you, influenced your writing, influenced your team. You're a programmer yourself. So what is it?

Who is your, who is your programming hero? I guess if you just let me ask the question, that's the easiest way to ask the question. That's, that's a good question. I guess the first person that comes to mind and I don't know if this is completely because of programming, but is Guido van Rossum from, you know, creating Python.

And I think Python is awesome. It's it's simple, but what I think, I don't know, this might be a couple, but the community around Python is just so amazingly wonderful. And I can't help but think that while, you know, is obviously a great programmer, he's created a community around that language that is welcoming and, you know, continues to move that language, uh, forward, I think in great ways. And yeah, that's, that's the first person because you, you know, you mentioned that before, and that's the first person that came to mind.

So the person named is again? Guido van Rossum. Guido van Rossum. I'll have to get the show notes link for that one.

Oh yeah, no, I, yep. Unless you know the URL by, by, uh, just off the top of your head. I don't. Or Twitter handle or something.

I don't know GoKit is an interesting library, and Peter Bergan is a really good speaker on it. We had him on, actually, season 3 of Beyond Code. He'll be in that with GopherCon, and he was on a recent episode and gave a talk at GopherCon, too. So, if you think about that, that's an interesting fellow to talk to.

Yeah, that's interesting. That's really interesting. Go is interesting anyways because it was sort of like built for this distributed systems. But, yeah, I'm definitely gonna, I'll actually reach out to that guy.

Yeah, Peter's awesome. Fan of the show, and, you know, all-around good guy, you know, can't go wrong with Peter. Nice guy. But that does wrap up what I was thinking of for the show.

Rachel, is there anything else that you wanted to add to the end here? I would add one thing. Okay. Basically, I want to hear from you.

When we put OSCON together or any of our content together, it only gets better if we know what sort of information you need. If you have something that you think people need to hear, we'll work with you and see if that's something that we believe in. So, for instance, software architecture call for proposals is open, so I want to hear from, you know, people. And OSCON will be open in a couple of weeks.

So, I guess I just want people to be involved and know that we are, we want to hear different voices and new voices. And so definitely get in touch with us in some way. What's the best way to go about getting in touch with, let's say, specifically those two conferences or any, what is the best way to reach out? Would it be you or would it be someone else?

So the best way for the conferences, truly, I mean, I'm on Twitter, so I can answer your questions on there, certainly. I suppose in the show notes, right? Yeah, we'll put that in the show notes for sure. But going to the CFP, we do put a lot of copy in that saying what we're looking for, and then that is how we intake all the proposals.

If you have another idea, there is, I'm just looking this up as we speak. I think there's a work with us email for O'Reilly. It's literally like workwithus at O'Reilly. And I'm looking that up right now.

If it comes up really quickly. Yeah, there's a work with us page. It's literally workwithus at O'Reilly.com. So that's a good way to sort of come in.

The person that's this next to me mans that and, you know, and it will get thrown to the right person. So that's the best general way to do it. And if you are at one of our events, please come up and speak to me or one of my colleagues, depending on the event. We like I said, I mean, like, I, our program is only as good as sort of the information that we gather and the people that we work with externally.

It's an interesting sort of system for our business because our network makes us so much stronger. So those are the best ways. Well, cool. Well, Rachel, it was definitely a pleasure to have you on the, here on the show.

It was great to kind of hear all about the ways that open source has changed over the years and just the ways that O'Reilly's conference has changed over the years and even your, your new work in Portland and then now in Amsterdam and the work you're doing for the future conferences. It's really great to hear about and just being so open. I'm excited to hear about that. So we'll put your Twitter in the show notes.

If you're not familiar, there's a site called O'Reilly.com, O-R-E-I-L-L-Y.com. Go there. Tons of information, books, conferences, videos, podcasts, you name it. And Rachel and team are there.

And if you're interested about OSCON OS, CLN.com, that's where you can find that conference. And right now the homepage is focused on the European version of it. So Rachel, you mentioned a couple of weeks, the CFPs will open up for here in Austin. So something will change on the front page, right?

Yeah, it should be the first full week of October. It should be up there. Okay. Awesome.

Well, Rachel, thank you so much. We, for those who listen to the show, we know that we have something new out. It's called Beyond Code. If you go to beyondcode.tv, that is our brief interview series that we shoot only at conferences after parties.

So sometime soon you might actually see us release a season from OSCON here in Austin. So we'll be excited about that to, to get those who come out to that, that conference to share what they think about open source software development and everything we cover here at the ChangeLog. And we also have two emails, ChangeLog Weekly and ChangeLog Nightly. Go to changelog.com slash weekly or changelog.com slash nightly to subscribe to those super awesome emails.

And Rachel, I don't know if you subscribe to those, but for me, I do obviously. So you subscribe to those emails. I do. Yes.

Fantastic. And they're always informing me on what's fresh and what's new and a show we're about to put out today actually was informed by that. And a recent, recent episode was also informed by our email. So if you're not tracking with those emails, you've got to check them out.

Make sure you do so. But that's all I wanted to cover in this show, Rachel. So at this time, let's, let's say goodbye. It was a pleasure.

Thanks so much. Thank you, Rachel.