OSCON 2010 kicks off Monday, July 19, in Portland, Oregon with two days of tutorials followed by three days of sessions and an expo. This year's schedule offers a nice mix of sessions led by women, ranging from highly technical topics to the perfectly practical.

On Wednesday, Mel Chua and Karsten Wade's talk, 5 FOSS in Edu Projects that Changed the World, will cover Humanitarian FOSS, Undergraduate Capstone Open Source Projects, Professors’ Open Source Summer Experience (POSSE), Teaching Open Source, and Sugar on a Stick.

Anna Martelli Ravenscroft's talk, Diversity as a Dependency, will look at the practical benefits of diversity in organizations.

In their talk, Build it Locally, Spread it Nationally, Jennifer Pahlka and Bryan Sivak will discuss opportunities for open source in municipal government.

Denise Paolucci and Mark Smith will talk about how to broaden your contributor base by converting your users into contributors in their Build Your Own Contributors session.

Kristina Chodorow offers an Introduction to MongoDB.

And then there are sessions that are a blend of technical, practical, and geeky good times, such as Mary Jane Kelly's Hacking IRL: Crafting for the Modern Geek.

On Thursday, Deborah Bryant, Joseph Hall, and Gregory Miller lead a session called Reinventing How America Votes Through Open Source Solutions, which looks at the TrustTheVote Project.

Kirrily Robert's talk will cover Open Source, Open Data.

Heidi Ellis, Gregory Hislop, and Luis Ibanez look at Opportunities for Students to Contribute to FOSS Projects.

Mozilla's Laura Thomson discusses when to Rewrite or Refactor. She says, "Attendees should walk away with a plan of attack for fixing their legacy apps."

ActiveState's Diane Mueller and Trent Mick examine Python & Finance (U.S. Government Mandates, Financial Modeling, and Other Snakes in the Grass).

Akkana Peck discusses Writing GIMP Plug-ins and Scripts.

Mel Chua returns with Asheesh Laroia for their talk, Junior Jobs and Bite-sized Bugs: Entry Points for New Contributors to Open Source.

Friday's offerings include Karen Sandler's talk, Free Software on Medical Devices: Unchain My Heart.

After lunch, Allison Randal, Gina Blaber, and Edd Dumbill lead the OSCON Town Hall, which is a great opportunity for attendees to offer feedback on the 2010 OSCON event and make requests for 2011.

Phew! These are just a few of the many sessions attendees can attend this month at OSCON. The OSCON site allows you to log in and create your own personalized schedule -- which sessions are your top picks?

Pick up a free copy of Linux Pro Magazine and meet the editors at OSCON in Portland (booth #609). Register now and save 25% with discount code OS10lpm:
http://www.oscon.com/oscon2010