One of the things that every OSCON has had in the past is to close out with a Town Hall meeting. People bring up ideas, things that occurred to them while they were here this week, things that they think need to merit at least being heard by the Open Source community, or just to thank certain members of the Conference team for their work.
But, this year, there's no Town Hall scheduled.
To me, the Town Hall was always indicative of what made the OSS community unique. That, annually, you could show up and speak your mind about where the community had gone, was going, or - more often - should go.
I wonder if its disappearance is a by-product of the Microsoft sponsorship of the lunches. Just kidding, I'm not that much of a conspiracy theorist.
I'm figuring that blogs replaced it.
Of course that presumes that other people will actually read them, but hey, it's an imperfect world.
I'm glad you're not that much of a conspiracy theorist, but you wouldn't be the first to think it, heard 2 friends mentoin just that already...
ah, come on. Do you really want to hear more of "do it on the east coast!" "well, it doesn't make economical sense for these fifteen reasons ...."?
- ask