In addition to being a showcase of open source state of the art, OSCON is great focal point for local open source events. Of the many opportunities to connect with the local open source community, these are a few highlights:
The Ruby Rodeo, on Wednesday night, is organized by the Portland Ruby User group. There’s a great deal more to Ruby than Rails, demonstrated here with talks on distributed computing in Ruby, ruby2C and metaruby, productivity tips for Ruby developers, and the welcoming nature of the Ruby community.
PDXPHP, the Portland PHP user group, is hosting a meeting at the convention center on Thursday night. Rasmus Lerdorf is the star of the show, and a number of other PHP speakers from the conference will be on hand in a more approchable forum than your usual conference fare.
On Friday after the final session there will be a walking tour of Free Geek. Free Geek is a non-profit that recycles computers, gives away refurbished computers running Linux, and offers free training in Linux and other open source software.