Small as the new big

I attended the CPOSC (the one-day open source conference in Harrisburg,PA) this week-end. It was a rejuvenating experience, with excellent technical sessions on various technologies.

Open source conferences come in various sizes. The big open source conference is OSCON, with three thousand attendees and running for five days. It is the grand dame of open source conferences. But lots of other conferences are smaller, either in number of attendees or days and usually both.

The open source community has lots of small conferences. The most plentiful of these are the BarCamps, small conferences organized at the local level. They are "unconferences", where the attendees hold the sessions, not a group of selected speakers.

Beyond BarCamp, several cities have small conferences on open source. Portland OR has Open Source Bridge (about 500 attendees), Salt Lake City has Utah Open Source Conference, Columbus has Linux Fest, Chicago has a conference at the University of Illinois, and the metropolis of Fairlee, VT hosts a one-day conference. The CPOSC conference in Harrisburg has a whopping 150 attendees, due to the size of their auditorium and fire codes.

I've found that small conferences can be just as informative and just as energetic as large conferences. The venues may be smaller, the participants are usually from the region and not the country, yet the conference speakers are just as passionate and informed as the speakers at the large conferences.

Local conferences are often volunteer-run, with low overhead and a general air of reasonableness. They have no rick stars, no prima donnas. Small conferences can't afford them, and the audience doesn't idolize them. It makes for a healthy and common-sense atmosphere.

I expect the big conferences to continue. They have a place in the ecosystem. I also expect the small conferences to continue, and to thrive. They serve the community and therefore have a place.