Digital Media (incl. Video Gaming on OSS, 3D Printing)

Ubuntu is an operating system used by millions of people everyday throughout the world. It ships with free software, and is built upon free software principles. I will come and talk about the ways that Ubuntu puts free software into the hands people who have never used free software before, and next discuss the ways that Ubuntu gives back to free software, that will ultimately showcase where Ubuntu fits into the wider free software world.

My talk will showcase a system that is both loved and hated. Ubuntu is an operating system that is making headlines these days, both good and bad. Because of this controversial system in the free software community, this talk will be unique in that I will highlight just exactly how Ubuntu helps and contributes into the Open Source world.

Digital Media (incl. Video Gaming on OSS, 3D Printing)

In 2012, major changes to Canada's Copyright Act came into effect. In particular, the Act now contains anti-circumvention provisions: prohibitions on circumventing Digital Rights/Restrictions Management (DRM) and Technological Protection/Restriction Measures (TPMs/TRMs). In this presentation, I will explain those changes and there implications for Linux and open source. In particular, I will look at the implications for distribution of libdvdcss, DeCSS, and other multimedia DRM circumvention software as part of Linux distributions. I will also look at the legal implications for rooting Android devices and ARM-based Windows 8 devices which come with a locked and/or encrypted bootloader, or offering such rooting as a commercial service.

My presentation would then offer the perspective of someone with a legal background who also understands open source software; a very effective combination for a presentation on copyright law and open source software.

Digital Media (incl. Video Gaming on OSS, 3D Printing)

Junior schools like to let kids play with applications, and they call it "computer class." But they don't teach the kids anything about computer science. I know it doesn't have to be this way, because when I was in grade four we learned BASIC. So to fill the gap, I ran a computer club at my girls' school and taught the kids simple website programming. In this presentation I'll share the technical and non-technical challenges I faced, the materials I used to introduce HTML to kids as young as eight, what the kids liked and didn't like, and the software I ended up using to make it all possible.

I'm not aware of any other initiatives to introduce real-life programming knowledge to children in this age group. I think a lot more can be done for young kids, and I will endeavour to share all the knowledge and materials necessary for other capable developers to run similar programs in their own schools.

Digital Media (incl. Video Gaming on OSS, 3D Printing)

The developers of BigBlueButton will share their experiences integrating WebRTC as a server-based solution (not P2P) for both audio and video in BigBlueButton. WebRTC has matured a lot over the past year, and this presentation will cover the successes, challenges, and failures faced during the integration.

We have tried to integrate WebRTC into a large open source project using a server-based architecture, not P2P.

Digital Media (incl. Video Gaming on OSS, 3D Printing)

An introduction to Processing.js(Pjs), an image and input processing library that can be used in any HTML5 enabled browser, including mobiles, through the '< canvas >' tag. The presentation will go through the basic functionality of Pjs, such as image rendering, animation, and user input processing. It will also highlight Pjs's ability to interact with HTML elements through JavaScript, allowing Pjs animations and HTML pages to easily compliment each other. Finally, the benefits and capabilities Pjs will bring to web development will be outlined.

The presentation is on a unique open-source JavaScript library that many people may not have heard of yet.

Digital Media (incl. Video Gaming on OSS, 3D Printing)

A survey of where OSS is with respect to computer graphics. Computer graphics OSS is mature. There are 3D animation studios operating using 100% OSS. We will demo Blender 3D animation software (hair, fur, particle systems), GIMP photo editing software (bump mapping), and InkScape, a vector graphics software (raster to vector conversion).

Level of maturing of the applications we will be demonstrating.

Vertical Markets (Healthcare, Government, Infrastructure, Business)

Presentation will present an overview of the MongoDB NoSQL database, its history and current status as the leading NoSQL database. It will focus on how NoSQL, and in particular MongoDB, benefits developers building big data or web scale applications. Discuss the community around MongoDB and compare it to commercial alternatives.

I will be presenting with real world experience deploying and supporting MongoDB in large scale applications. NoSQL is a fairly new market and therefore may be unique when compared to other relational DB talks.

Vertical Markets (Healthcare, Government, Infrastructure, Business)

Granted charitable status last year, Open Source Text Canada (OSTC) is working to build a comprehensive OER resource and publishing organization for Canada. Inertia in institutions, ingrained relationships with for-profit publishers, and lack of awareness about the Open Source movement are some of the issues OSTC must overcome. Another issue is the limited functionality of device-independent EPUB readers, leading OSTC to call for the development of a classroom-dedicated EPUB reader extension starting with Mozilla’s Firefox and Google’s Chrome which can offer student collaboration, smart board interfaces, and other features teachers are looking for in the modern classroom. We will look at the state of Canadian educational publishing and our vision for OSTC and propose some ideas for an improved browser-based educational tool. OSTC is especially interested in hearing your ideas for moving Open Educational Resources forward in Canada and invites you to become involved.

Open Source Text Canada is Canada's only federal charity focused on OER materials.

Vertical Markets (Healthcare, Government, Infrastructure, Business)

Although Open Source has flourished in North America, Africa and Asia it has not been thoroughly embraced in mainland Europe. At best, non-English speaking countries such as the Netherlands, Germany, France, Belgium only have pockets of development (the most notable being SUSE in Germany, and various hacker groups). Although Northern European countries are very progressive in their approach (Norway, Sweden, Finland), mainland Europe is very reluctant to embrace Open Source. With first hand experience in these countries as well as input from Windesheim University in Zwolle, the Netherlands, this discussion will examine the reasons why and potential strategies to encourage the Open Source movement in mainland Europe.

It is unique as on sabbatical I spent 8 months living in the Netherlands, research Open Source in Europe. Speaking face to face to various businesses and universities in the Netherlands, Germany, France and Belgium about Open Source. It is hands-on as I was there, therefore it is not disputable what I learned. In addition, my intent is to involve two peers from Windesheim University in Zwolle, the Netherlands whom I have had many discussions with. Once I have the details on that settled they will be listed as co-presenters.

Vertical Markets (Healthcare, Government, Infrastructure, Business)

People who participate in FLOS communities bring with them their individual social identities. These identities interact with the identity of each FLOS community as a whole, with varied positive or negative effects such as increased productivity, satisfaction, motivation, lack of sense of belonging, stress, and emotional experiences. This presentation looks at the impact of the interaction of multiple community membership on the individuals that participate in those communities. In some cases, individuals join complementary communities, where different facets of their identities are confirmed in different ways by each community. In other cases, individuals who are bound to a particular community (such as a job, city, specialty) address identity-mismatches by seeking out communities that are a better identity match.

My research, and this presentation, bring together the current hot areas of research in organizational behaviour and organizational management theory (in business schools) and the concerns of growing FLOS communities that are interested in improving membership, participation, and satisfaction. As more and more organizations become involved in FLOS, merging traditional business research areas becomes even more important to ensure that the benefits of FLOS participation are well understood by organizational decision makers.

Vertical Markets (Healthcare, Government, Infrastructure, Business)

OSCAR (Open Source Clinical Application Resource) is a proven Electronic Medical Record (EMR) designed to help improve health care from individuals to populations while reducing costs. OSCAR, which currently supports over 1.5 million patients across Canada, offers a versatile, browser-based, EMR with high clinical functionality and advanced research capabilities. This highly customizable EMR has no licensing fees. Its low cost of ownership makes OSCAR one of the most efficient and affordable EMR solutions in Canada for practices of all sizes and specialties. OSCAR is deeply rooted in its user community as reflected in its motto, ‘Connecting Care, Creating Community’. This community has members from academic and research institutions, community practices, hospitals, ambulatory and outreach programs, public health departments, other social service agencies, and the OSCAR Canada User Society (OCUS). OSCAR also interfaces with an interoperable Patient Controlled Health Record: MyOSCAR.

OSCAR is one of the most efficient, versatile and affordable EMR solutions in Canada that is used by many types and sizes of practices.

Newbies (incl. Alternatives to Proprietary Software)

One area in which proprietary JDK releases have traditionally shown superiority over OpenJDK is in serviceability tools. Thermostat is supposed to change this. It is a scalable, open source serviceability tool for OpenJDK that allows anyone to examine what's going on in their Java Virtual Machines. This talk will cover two aspects of Thermostat: as a tool and as an open source project. At this talk, you'll hear about (and see) what makes Thermostat's design unique, what features are available right now and what are in the works, and how you can add more features through plugins. If you are a developer, sysadmin, or QA, if there is Java in your IT stack you will want to learn how Thermostat can make your life easier. You will also hear about how thermostat works as a project, our development roadmap and issues we faced working towards a 1.0 release of thermostat.

This presentation will talk about a small open source project and how it has used the power of open source to implement lots of complex features and how it plans to do more of the same in the future. The presentation will also cover some of the challenges that we faced getting a 1.0 release out that other projects will also likely run into, such as api stability, documentation and goals for a 1.0 release.

Newbies (incl. Alternatives to Proprietary Software)

It will explain the concept of accessibility as it applies to the web, and describe how it affects the audience. It will go through existing guidelines and regulations for developing accessible applications. Furthermore, it will discuss the use of accessibility in a real-world project, used by millions of people, its challenges, and the difficult process of building this inclusive software. An extra showcase of successful websites that were able to convey accessibility principles in their construction will also be shared. Moreover, it will present how to configure and evaluate accessibility testing, how screen readers translate your project, and how to apply accessibility principles to new and existing websites using standards-compliant markup and CSS, so you can expand your project boundaries. All in all, it will show a variety of tools that can be used to assure that accessibility will be, from now on, always part of your working flow when designing or developing user interfaces.

It presents a potentially innovative concept, a new paradigm for designing User Interfaces being oriented by accessibility. Therefore, it discusses a new perspective that can affect creative and development processes, the design and development of rich interactive applications truly applying accessibility principles, which is highly desirable, commonly difficult, and rarely accomplished.

Newbies (incl. Alternatives to Proprietary Software)

For a lot of self-described geeks communication skills can feel unnatural. We spend a lot of time polarizing the concept of the software engineer as the opposite of a socially capable communicator. The thing is successful communication has a lot in common with mathematical and scientific proofs, we just don't usually think of it that way. As a (divorced!) mother, long time open source contributor and user support specialist, I have a lot of first hand experience with difficult communication, what works and what makes things worse. I'm also a math geek at heart and I equate a lot of my best practices with dealing with people to best practices when solving equations. I'd like to share this perspective to help people with a math and science background see how they can apply problem solving skills they already have to problems they have with people.

It's sort of a touchy feely subject, but without a touchy feely take on it.

Security

Current e-mail protocols are inherently insecure. Often they do not comply with privacy law requirements. Additionally, new subpoena powers make choice jurisdictional locations paramount. Furthermore, there is no clean server-client architecture that allows easy transition to the cloud and efficient implementation of clients in particular on low resource devices. Because of all these new developments, the issue of how e-mails are transmitted, stored and accessed should be revisited. Some new ideas and solutions will be presented.

Presentation will show distinct examples from real world experience where the current e-mail protocols and server/client solutions fail to provide secure communication and retention of information and the legal and technical challenges associated with this.

Ubiquitous Computing (Mobile, Wearables, Cloud)

The presentation will hinge on two basic questions that commonly occur in the software industry. 1) Why are things so slow? 2) How does this piece of software work? This first question is about gathering information, and furthermore, the right information. In many cases this is unique to the software involved, so it's also important to work with a tool that's malleable and extensible to the situation. In comes PCP and an introduction to the tool. The second question usually comes into play when you've found the source of the problem, however are looking into how to fix the issue. Drilling down into a running program can be tricky. This is where systemtap comes in handy, and we'll show some common approaches to solving problems using systemtap.

Open source software as an ecosystem is continuing to evolve and grow faster than ever. Unfortunately, with ever greater complexity within the system of software, comes the ever growing complexity of software bugs and performance issues. This talk will provide the attendees with some perspective and possible solutions to turn to when the inevitable bug is encountered.

Ubiquitous Computing (Mobile, Wearables, Cloud)

OpenCL is a standard for heterogeneous computing, with implementations provided by nVIDIA, AMD, Intel, Apple, Altera, and many others. An OpenCL application can portably target multi-core CPUs, GPUs, and compute clusters. This means that OpenCL applications can offset computational tasks to idle components of the PC, or to a remote cluster. AJ will introduce the OpenCL programming model and philosophy at a high-level so that no prior experience with the standard is required. He will outline the changes proposed by OpenCL 2.0, along with his own proposed adjustments to the model. This presentation is targeted toward both a technical and non-technical audience.

I have extensive real-life experience with OpenCL that has guided the development of my presentation material. I am currently debating (via my blog) the future of the OpenCL standard.

Hardware, Electronics, Physical Environment

- Introduction - Brief background on the technology - Why/How this technology is beneficial to the present market - Environmental benefits/application of ARM - What direction the technology is headed

I feel that ARM technology is not understood as well as it could be by the general public and would like my presentation to convey a general basic idea of what ARM is and its importance as a new emerging platform. Also by focusing more on the physical applications of ARM technology I can spark more interest about this technology.