Call for speakers for the 2007 conference is now closed. We had a tremendous response - thanks for your submissions and referrals. We look forward to sharing the news of the quality speakers and new projects through conference site and mailing list throughout the month of August.

How we're building our program:

Our focus for 2007 is Open Standards and Interoperability. We’ll be popping the hood on open source – facts and hoopla - and looking under the lid at the most fundamental values of OSS and where big benefits may exist for public agencies. We’ll also revisit some of the fundamentals for first time attendees.

Public Agency Personnel: GOSCON attendees are keenly interested in hearing from other public agency personnel on their experiences with Open Source on a wide range of topics; development projects, getting started, operational policies, migration from legacy systems, addressing staff skill sets, implementation of OSS such as a CMS and so forth. If you work for a public agency or institution, you already appreciate what your colleagues may benefit from hearing about.

Vendors: Beyond the traditional reasons vendors participate in industry conference, vendors should view participation in GOSCON as an opportunity to learn more about their customers’ interests and needs. Speaking opportunities are not tied to conference sponsorship and rather are weighed based on broad audience interest, the expertise and experience of the speaker along with their ability to communicate effectively to a non-technical audience. GOSCON attendees are most interested in hearing from non-government speakers on topics of broad interest (such as organizational readiness or licensing issues rather than specific technology). You may want to consider co-presenting with an agency customer. Attendees have also expressed a strong appreciation for the absence of marketing pitches at past conferences.

Speakers’ Consideration: GOSCON remains a not-for-profit conference and committed to maintaining a modest conference fee to keep the barrier to participation low for the public sector. Conference admission is complementary for invited speakers. Some limited funds are available for speakers from travel and budget-restricted public agencies or institutions where they would otherwise be unable to participate. Requests for assistance will be considered as part of the proposal review process by the steering committee and decided on an individual basis. A copy of the conference reimbursement policy will be provided upon acceptance of an accepted proposal.

Deadlines:

• Speaking proposals are due no later than July 27, 2007.
• Speakers will be advised no later than August 8, 2007.
• Courtesy to staff: confirmation of travel arrangements & attendance at Speakers dinner by September 24.
• All presentations must be made available for inclusion on the conference web site for full public viewing, provided in digital format to staff on site at the conference, Oct 15-16, 2007.