Tom,
Hey there, how's things? Sorry I've been so quiet lately, but I've been watching a the FamilySearch API hacking events coming out over the past few months, looks pretty good. How are things at tech.lds.org? Good I hope.
As you might have guessed from the title of this email, we're gearing up for UTOSC 2008. Announcements of the call for papers are a few days away as we clear up some of the last few bugs in our new system. But we thought we'd get you involved earlier rather than later because there is a specific piece of the conference with which we'd like to enlist your help.
On Saturday, August 30 (the conference runs Aug 28-30), we'll be having a "Family Day in Open Source". This day will be the day where registered attendees can bring their immediate family (or a few friends) and participate in open source activities. We're planning on having movies and games for the kids (MythTV, and Edubuntu), some digital scrapbooking for the wives and others interested, and of course, some genealogy and open source too.
The last component, genealogy and open source might be a perfect fit for you and the LDS Church's technical staff with a good challenge. I'm sure there are other areas you'd like to focus, and we'd love to hear what else you might have in mind for the conference. Here's some links to get you started:
http://utos.org - read the last few blog posts as we're really gearing up to get people excited.
http://wiki.utos.org/UTOSC2008 - this page has much of the current plan for the three day conference (and should be regularly updated as well)
http://2008.utosc.com - this will become the new site for registration, call for papers, call for volunteers and the blog during the conference as well.
In addition, we've started having planning meetings, which anyone is welcome to attend. They are on our google calendar which can be obtained on the right hand side of our http://utos.org site.
I hope this email reaches you well. If you have any questions, comments or want to get further involved, please feel free to email back anytime.
Cheers,
Clint Savage
Founder, Utah Open Source Foundation