Let me begin by saying that POSSCON was fantastic! This was the first professional conference that I have attended, though I've been behind the scenes for several. As I had stated in my first post about POSSCON, I was pretty nervous about the day, figuring that not many of my classmates would be interested in the same sessions that I was and about introducing myself to complete strangers. It was definitely outside of my comfort zone, but it turned out to be rather fun!
The first breakout session I attended was led by Allen Tucker, of Bowdoin College. He was one of the people who started the HFOSS Project to get college students involved with open source software. To be honest, I chose to attend this session simply because it was in the Education track, but as I listened to his presentation I was so glad that I had! He spoke about a few different projects that were of particular interest to me because of my experience with non-profit organizations. The first is the Sahana project, which is a disaster management software. He didn't go into much detail about that, but sparked my interest and I hope to investigate it further this summer after graduation. The second was the Ronald McDonald House (RMH) Homebase project, a web-based volunteer scheduler! This project was actually one of Dr. Tucker's projects, so he had more to say about it. This is really something that I'd like to get into because I had started working on the basics of a similar MySQL database for a class project. I know that there is a great need for this kind of software among non-profits because the available software is either inadequate or beyond their budget. I spoke with Dr. Tucker about Homebase briefly after his session and he was eager to work with me, which was very encouraging!
After that boost of confidence I was far more ready to speak with other presenters. I got to speak with Walter Bender and ask some of my questions about OLPC. I even spoke with some of the 3D Printing guys during one of the breaks. And the last session I attended was the Data Governance Imperative with Steve Sarsfield. Although this session was barely attended (only about three people, including myself), this was by far my favorite! As acting DBA at my last job, I dealt with poorly collected and organized data on a daily basis, struggling to clean up thousands of entries and motivate change among my colleagues. Steve Sarsfield works at talend*, one of the conference's sponsors. They have created an open source solution, several really, to take care of data cleanup, integration, analysis, etc. I actually plan to get his book and read it, and I may also be interested in working with someone at my old job and Mr. Sarsfield to set them up with this program. I at least really want to look into it.
At the end of the day, I guess it's a good thing that I'm not looking for work. Sticking with these open source projects would provide a way for me stay involved with the CS community, keep developing my skills, and work from anywhere with as much or as little time as I have to be involved - giving my the exact level of flexibility I need as I become a mother and move across the country! I'm so excited about these possibilities and now just need to remember to contact the people I met and get through the semester. Here we go!
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