Organizer Confirms Both POSSCON and ‘Great Wide Open’ in 2015

This year IT-oLogy, the organization behind the annual POSSCON conference in Columbia, South Carolina, cancelled the event in order to focus on launching the Great Wide Open (GWO) conference in Atlanta. At the time, some expressed fear that this might signal the end of the Palmetto State event, that Great Wide Open actually meant a move and new name for the conference. At the same time, others were speculating that GWO would be a one-off event, essentially making it a one year move by POSSCON to Atlanta, which would then return to its native home in Columbia, which is where IT-oLogy is headquartered.

As it turns out, neither rumor was correct. A few days back, Todd Lewis, the Executive Director-Columbia for IT-oLogy, told FOSS Force that both events are very much on the slate for 2015. “We’ll be doing POSSCON and Great Wide Open in 2015,” he wrote in an email. “We’ll announce dates at All Things Open [(ATO), another open source conference hosted by IT-oLogy] and both will take place in the spring. The Call for Speakers for both events will be open and we encourage anyone with an interest to submit a talk and participate.”

Although this should come as good news for those who have become regular attendees at POSSCON since it was launched seven or so years ago, it doesn’t yet lay to rest all speculation. Currently, visitors to the POSSCON website are given the dates October 22-23, 2014 and the location as Raleigh, with no indication that these are actually the dates and locations of the upcoming All Things Open conference. The site also offers a list of speakers that seems to correspond with this year’s ATO speakers.

This is very probably just IT-oLogy’s way of getting the word out to folks in their hometown of Columbia that there’s another world-class conference happening just a short ride to the north. If not, we’ll let you know during our coverage of ATO.