[Chicago] Registration open for Flourish! 2012 Conference, March 30th - 31st

[Aisha Halim]

Hello all,

Below is the updated call for registrants for Flourish! 2012. It's
approaching really quickly so take a brief moment and check out our
speakers(http://www.flourishconf.com/2012/speakers.php) and schedule
(http://www.flourishconf.com/2012/schedule.php) pages.

We're also partnering with Pumping Station:One to host an Arduino
Workshop on Saturday, March 31st, so that might be fun. Stay tuned for
more details regarding that.

We haven't yet picked a venue for the social networking event (i.e.
after party), so if you have any ideas for a venue, feel free to shoot
us an email at event at flourishconf.com

Thank you for bearing with us!

Regards,

Aisha


CELEBRATE INNOVATION WITH CHICAGO'S LINUX & OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE ENTHUSIASTS
AT FLOURISH! 2012

*From March 30th-31st, Free Technology Conference Brings Sixth Year of
Insightful Talks and Hands-on Workshops about Open-source Software,
Technology, and Culture*

WHAT

An annual gathering of, for, and by enthusiasts of open-source software,
technology, and culture, taking place at the University of Illinois at
Chicago.

FEATURED SPEAKERS and TOPICS

Flourish! 2012 Speakers include:
 - Brian Fitzpatrick, Engineering Manager at Google, on Data Liberation
 - Bryen M. Yunashko, a prominent voice of accessibility, on the
openSUSE project
 - Chris McAvoy, Product Lead at Mozilla's Open Badges project
 - Meg Ford, member of the GNOME foundation, on GNOME outreach efforts
and opportunities to contribute to the project
 - Jason Huggins, co-founder of SauceLabs, on extreme mobile
testing...with robots!
 - Phil Gomes, Senior VP at Edelman, addressing the outcome of
corporate involvement in engaging Wikipedia
 - Julie Samuels, Staff Attorney at EFF
...and more on our speakers page: http://www.flourishconf.com/2012/speakers.php

FEATURED WORKSHOP

Get some hands-on experience with soldering and electronics at our
Beginner's Arduino Workshop. For the first time, Flourish! Conference
has partnered with Pumping Station: One(http://pumpingstationone.org/)
to provide a workshop to learn how to program Arduino chips. Arduino
has been used to create some cool projects ranging from a miniature
pocket piano to an RGB combination door lock!

WHEN

March 30th - 31st, 2012
March 30th, Afternoon Program
Reception 12:30pm-1:00pm
Keynotes start 1:00 pm

March 31st, Day-Long Program
Morning Reception 9:00 am - 10:00 am
Conference starts 10:00 am
Android Workshop starts 1:00 pm

Tentative schedule posted here: http://www.flourishconf.com/2012/schedule.php

WHERE

UIC Student Center East
750 South Halsted Street
Chicago, IL

WHO

Flourish! is organized by the Computer Science department of the University
of Illinois at Chicago's (UIC's) School of Engineering, as well as the
University's Linux user group and chapter of the Association of Computing
Machinery (ACM). The conference is sponsored in part by Google, Linux
Journal, Linux Pro Magazine, Spantree Technology Group, Orbitz, and Dotomi.

HOW

Registration is free at http://www.flourishconf.com/2012/registration.php

SUPPORT

If you would like to become a part of us financially, we would be
delighted. Sponsorship has helped us quite a bit in the past with
providing attendees more interactive pieces to the conference, like
social networking events, workshops, and other mini-events.

Do check out the sponsorship page here for more about what could be
possible with any help in this vein:
http://www.flourishconf.com/2012/sponsorship_proposal.php

CONNECT

Join us on Facebook at http://facebook.com/flourishconf/

as well as Google Plus: http://gplus.to/flourishconf

Conference updates and conversation-starters on Twitter at
http://twitter.com/flourishconf/.