One week till FOSSY in Portland, Oregon
Are you registered?
July 6, 2023
One week from today (July 13-16), we will be gathered at the Oregon Convention Center for the first ever Free and Open Source Software Yearly (FOSSY) conference, which will be an engaging, educational, inspiring four days of presentations and conversations. Whether you are a long time contributing member of a free software project, a recent graduate of a coding bootcamp or university, or just have an interest in the possibilies that free and open source software bring, FOSSY will have something for you.
Are you coming? It's not too late to join us. Even walk-up registrations will be possible, but if you can register online by tomorrow (July 7), you'll help us get accurate counts for the lunch we're providing and enable us to have your badge ready for you. We sell tickets because the event can't happen without funding, but please don't let that cost be a reason you can't attend -- see below about ways to volunteer, or email us at conference@sfconservancy.org.
If you register by tomorrow, you'll have a printed badge just like this one!
If you've been leaning toward coming but haven't booked yet, now is the time. If you're not sure which way you're leaning, please allow us to give you a push with the following updates on what we have planned for you:
Keynotes announced!
We have three timely keynote sessions, and they are all collaborative, to highlight what people in this movement can achieve by working and thinking together.
Friday's will be an in-depth discussion about Red Hat's recent announcements concerning Red Hat Enterprise Linux led by Bradley M. Kuhn with of a panel of very special guests close to the situation.
On Saturday, we'll talk with activists like Kyle Wiens of iFixit about current topics in Right to Repair and how they impact free and open source software communities, from participating in the "1201 process" for Digital Millennium Copyright Act exemptions with the US Copyright Office, to strategies that might work to increase Right to Repair legislation and bringing lawsuits to compel companies to respect consumers' rights.
Sunday's session will invite all FOSSY attendees to come celebrate an important milestone thirteen years in the making: Outreachy surpassed 1,000 interns with its current round of internships! Members of the Outreachy organizers (Anna e só, Karen Sandler and Sage Sharp) will be on stage to reflect on the program's evolution, its successes and the people who have made it possible.
FOSSY is a community conference so of course there is no connection between sponsorship and our keynote sessions. We are very grateful to our sponsors for supporting the event.
Schedule updated!
Please check the schedule again to see updates we've made over the last couple weeks. We're very excited about the work our track and workshop organizers have done to assemble sessions on FreeBSD; BSD Unix; XMPP; FOSS for Education; Growing your Project; FOSS at Play; AArch64/ARM64 Servers; Sustainable Open Source Business; Community: Open Source in Practice; Copyleft and Compliance; Diversity, Equity and Inclusion; Science of Community; FOSS in Daily Life; Issues in Open Work; Right to Repair; Containers; Open Source AI + Data; Software Worker Coops; Security -- and more!
The schedule is also available in the free mobile apps Giggity and Confy.
Thursday night social event
Thursday night we will be hosting a social for all attendees at 7pm at Punch Bowl Social Portland, 340 SW Morrison St Suite 4305, Portland, OR 97204 which is a quick ~15 minute Max ride from the convention center. We are providing appetizers, and the bar will be open to purchase your choice of beverages. All attendees and volunteers are invited!
Volunteers, we appreciate you
As a very small nonprofit, we can't make this event happen without volunteers. We have a good crew in place, but we really could use more! We appreciate our volunteers by thanking you profusely, and by providing a gratis ticket for all four days. Volunteering is also a great way to meet people and make connections. We're scheduling shifts so that you can still have plenty of time to enjoy other parts of the conference too. If you are able to pitch in a few hours to help make the first FOSSY awesome, please sign up and let us know what you'd like to do.
Hotel discounts
There are still discounted rooms available at the conference hotel. To be able to offer the discount, we committed to a block of rooms, so booking here is actually another way to support the conference.
For additional travel and lodging info, see the webpage.
Health and safety
In-person events bring so much positive energy and inspiration. They also do come with some risks. We are aiming to provide a welcoming and safer environment for people who are immunocompromised, disabled, elderly, have support needs, or are caregivers for children, and those of us who share households with or caretake for people in those groups. Face coverings will be required of everyone inside the conference venue. If you are feeling sick or exhibiting symptoms of COVID-19, or test positive for COVID-19, prior to the start of the conference, or on any day of the conference, please contact us at
Exhibit Hall
We're proud to offer a carefully curated exhibit hall, which will feature: GNOME, FreeBSD Project and Foundation, Apereo Foundation, SeaGL, XMPP Software Foundation, Open Source Initiative, and CHAOSS.
Sponsors, it's not too late
Thank you to the sponsors who have helped make the first FOSSY possible!
It's not too late to invite your employer to sponsor. Please share our prospectus with them, and email your commitment or questions to conference@sfconservancy.org.
If you can't make it
We really hope to see you in-person next week. But, this movement is all about sharing, and we want to share these valuable sessions as widely as we can. While we could not pull off livestreaming this year, we are working hard to make session recordings available after the event. You'll also be able to follow along during the event via our posts on Mastodon.
