The annual O’Reilly Open Source Convention won't roll around for another six months, but the time is already here for those who want to get their foot in the door and their message on stage. Conference organizers are ready to hear what you want to say, and they want to hear it now.

OSCON is one of the leaders among Linux and Open Source conventions, drawing thousands to its mix of tutorials, keynotes, and presentations, as well as a renowned Expo Hall — where a Linux Journal editor or two have been known to wander. After a short detour to the city by the bay, the convention will rendezvous from on July 19 - 23, 2010 in its old home, Portland, Oregon.

Providing the multitude of sessions conventioneers expect to find falls to members of the Open Source community with a message on their minds. OSCON organizers are looking for individuals active in Open Source to share "inning techniques, favorite lifesavers, the system you’ve made that everyone will be using next year, ways they can be more productive or write better code, and what’s new" in the form of both sessions and tutorials. Those who fit that description are encouraged to submit a proposal, and to do it posthaste.

Several different formats are available for sessions. Presenters have their choice of undertaking a presentation, panel,or group discussion, each scheduled for forty minutes, or offering a three-hour tutorial. Additionally, sessions may be targeted at any experience level — organizers request that the appropriate one be specified, to aid in balancing the schedule — whether for complete beginners or life-long gurus. Sixteen conference tracks are available, covering everything from Open Source in business to programming languages to cloud computing and mobile gadgetry.

Among the suggested topics for potential presenters are:

• Doing more with less, the opportunities of a constrained economy
• Design and usability: tools, techniques, and success stories
• Open source in smart phones and mobile networked devices
• Cloud computing, openness in distributed services
• Parallelization, grid, and multicore technologies
• Open web, open standards, open data
• AI, machine learning, and other ways of making software smarter than the people using it
• Open source in democracy, politics, government, and education
• Best practices for building a business model around open source
• Virtualization, appliances, and their creation and deployment

More information on proposal submission is available on the O'Reilly website, as are a variety of resources, tips for writing proposals, and other specifics about the convention — the online submission form can also be found there. Time is of the essence, however — the submission window closes on February 1, just over a month from now.
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Justin Ryan is the News Editor for Linux Journal.
Look for him in the #linuxjournal IRC channel.