I am going to postpone the codeathon at OSCON in Portland and instead do a codeathon during the supercomputing conference in Austin Nov 15-21 (not sure of exact dates yet but will solidify in the next 2 weeks.

 Several reasons I moved it.

1) It is in Austin

• this means free food and drinks (cause I know tons of people in town)
• I already have a core group of volunteers from previous events (that will dress as superheros for me J)
• I have Doryan (my primo event manager)
• I know the possible locations and can get them inexpensively!!! <- this is a MAJOR reason

2) Not enough time

• Because of fundraising snafus’ I was running late on getting this organized
• Most companies have a 90 day approval process for fundraising
• I want people to fly in and now they have enough time to arrange things w work

3)  Still tied to a nifty Conference – Super Computing

• Will bring in some truly awesome NPO projects directly related to HPC
• Have some larger players that I hope will be willing to donate serious cash
• This is a crowd that knows transparent legislation is possible and can be eventual!
• Will have more creditability w those large projects
• Get some recognition w larger foundations

The parts that make me sad:

1)  Not tied to OSCON – This is huge issue for me and was almost a killer of the event for me

• I wanted it to be in the hearts and minds of all the OS programmers in the world
• I will miss out on some truly great OS programming teams
• I love OReilly (not Tim -you perv- the COMPANY)

2)  Perhaps less blogger traffic since not part of OSCON anymore

• Up to you and me to generate more!!!

3) No FLOSS luminaries

4)  Not in Portland – and there were some truly awesome people that were going to help me throw it there!

• No Dawn Foster
• No John Mark
• No Corprew
• No Selena

5)       Though I sincerely hope that everyone can travel to it!

6)       I am still going to OSCON  and will be promoting the codeathon like a mad woman

I plan on EVERYTHING being solidified by OSCON on this one.  The only real work is getting on everyone’s schedules.  I am planning on this being a huge event for LoTV.

I also have to send a very tough personal email to OReilly.  I’m probably going to commit to doing a codeathon NEXT yr at OSCON with more OReilly support... I am hoping.

Needless to say this was a tough personal decision but one I felt I had to make.