OStatic

For four years now, it's been one of the harbingers of OSCON -- the opening of nominations for the SourceForge.net Community Choice Awards. Open source fans are welcome to nominate their favorite projects from now until May 29th. In late June, finalists will be announced and voting begins. The winners will be announced at OSCON on July 23rd.

Five new categories have been added to the competition, including what's affectionately referred to as the Swimsuit Competition (Best Visual Design/UI) and the broadly defined (and slightly anxiety-inducing) Most Likely to Change the Way You Do Everything.

How do you manage, grow, and foster active involvement in a community? One way might incorporate planning several events at approximately the same time and venue. This is why you can rest assured that the organizers behind the Community Leadership Summit can help you learn to manage your project's community in the most effective way possible.

Jono Bacon, Ubuntu's community manager, officially announced the unconference (an event so focused on discussion that an open, organic schedule is required) on Sunday. The event itself takes place the 18th and 19th of July in San Jose, California. The summit is mere hours before OSCON 2009 kicks off -- in the very same convention center.

Successful open-source projects have strong communities. What can you do to ensure that the community around your project is as strong as possible? At least two talks at today's OSCon in Portland, Oregon, will address this issue. They will look at antipatterns, things that are known not to work when building a community. These talks come just a few months after the publication of Clay Shirky's new book, Here Comes Everybody, in which he describes how society is changing as a result of the fact that the Internet massively reduces the cost of communication, publication, and distribution.