What started out as an idea to help out some colleagues stranded in state by travel restrictions will become a reality. Kyle Banerjee and I hatched our plan in late March — since really no-one from the west coast was able to attend code4lib in providence (and won’t next year as well) — we figured we would bring it to the PNW. And thanks to Oregon State University, the University of Oregon (who is providing facilities in Portland) and the Orbis Cascade Alliance — it’s on. At present, there are just over 50 people registered (it’s capped at 60 due to the location) and I think we have a pretty good schedule of speakers. We’ll have lighting talks, 9, 20 minute presentations, and a raffle (with secret prizes) that would make the formal Code4Lib conference drool with envy (thank you Karyle and OSU). Whether or not we can record the sessions (we might) is still up in the air — but the closer we get, the more I’m looking forward to it. Hopefully, this will be the first of many meetings in the PNW, with an eye towards maybe trying to bring the main conference back to its unofficial home, Oregon :), in 2 or 3 years. I’ll post more after the conference wraps up next Thursday.
–TR