Knowing that open source communities are everywhere and after reviewing the many years’ worth of OSCON demographic data, we’re excited to announce OSCON 2016 is moving to Austin, Texas May 16-20, 2016. Austin is home to many software communities from Austin’s All Girl Hack Night to their very own Google Development Group (GDG). Several major tech companies make their home in Texas as well, just to name a few: Rackspace, Dell, SoftLayer, Continuum, and OpenStack. In addition to amazing software engineers and developers, Austin is a very vibrant city much like Portland. As with OSCON in Amsterdam (October 26-28, 2015) we want to explore these communities and offer those software engineers and architects the OSCON experience.

As Eric S. Raymond wrote in his essay The Cathedral and the Bazaar, open source software creation should take on the form of a bazaar filled with “differing agendas and approaches.” Taking OSCON to Austin and Amsterdam is one way in which we are ensuring that a wider range of open source voices are heard. We’re excited about these new locations for OSCON, and as always, we welcome your thoughts!