Open Source Arts Contributor’s Conference

We are currently accepting nominations for the Contributors Conference at University of Denver in Denver, Colorado on Thursday, April 13th, 2023. From April 13-15, the community will gather together for a conference to contribute to and discuss the challenges and issues within the Open Source Software for the Arts (OSSTA) ecosystem. 

For those who participate in the OSSTA community, we would like to invite you to consider who you might nominate to be an attendee, including yourself. We are looking for applications from people who are current or potential contributors to the Open Source Software for the Arts communities. Contributors include those who are advocates, active forum participants, authors of documentation and tutorials, as well as those who contribute to the codebase or addons/libraries. We are especially interested in people who might be part of underrepresented identities within the OSSTA community. We need your help finding new or less visible community members who may not yet call themselves contributors. We are especially interested in those who will bring new ideas and perspectives to our community. 

We hope for broad participation in this conference. Specifically, we would like to include high school teachers and their students’ in the event. You can nominate educators via the form and the organizers will work with the educators to bring them (and some students) to the conference.

Please nominate yourself by filling out this form, or nominate someone else by sharing this form with them by Nov 20: https://forms.gle/6gXzZf2h6KJNMPrY6 

The Contributors Conference is co-organized by the Clinic for Open Source Arts and the Processing Foundation, and hosted at the Emergent Digital Practices program at the University of Denver. The 3-day event is focused on building and supporting open source tools for the arts and has three foci:

• Providing various OSSTA projects time and space to work and plan in-person
• Connecting OSSTA contributors across projects to have meta discussions about challenges, issues, and best practices
• Onboarding new contributors to OSSTA projects in a healthy and engaged way with focused training sessions and mentoring

There is no charge for attending. All food and drinks onsite will be provided for free. COSA and the Processing Foundation are working to provide funding for the lodging and travel costs for as many attendees as possible. Accommodations and accessibility needs (e.g., childcare, large type printed materials, ASL interpreter, etc.) will be queried via the official registration form.

Sponsors are welcomed and would allow us to bring additional contributors. This might mean you are at an institution that can cover your costs and/or those of a peer or student. It could also mean a donation to help another participant attend. Please contact cosa@du.edu to discuss further.

If you have any other questions in the meantime, please get in touch!

Steering Committee:

Chris Coleman, Director of COSA

Saber Khan, K12 Educator, Education Community Director, Processing Foundation 

Kate Hollenbach, Board of Directors, Processing Foundation

SHAWNÉ MICHAELAIN HOLLOWAY, Artist

Qianqian Ye, p5.js Lead, Processing Foundation 

Xin Xin, Board of Directors, Processing Foundation

This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. To

find out more about how National Endowment for the Arts grants impact individuals and

communities, visit www.arts.gov.