SiteGround at OSCON 2014

You’ve probably heard that before, but here at SiteGround, we love Open Source. Our hosting platform is built on open source software, we host more than 150 different open source apps, and we sponsor various open source events and communities. Yet, this was our first time we sponsored OSCON – the biggest conference about everything open source, that happened in Portland last week.

We shared our knowledge…

The scope of the event and the amount of information that flew around was amazing. One could really see and meet the best of the best from all major IT companies (using or developing open source software) sending teams and speakers there. That is why we were very proud to have our Head of the Development Team – Mihail Irintchev talk about his currently favorite Phing – a tool that helps our development team streamline the app building process and minimize the code errors. And believe me, coming from the project management side of it, this phing is a good thing!

One of the hottest topics at OSCON was the container-based server technology. Our Chief System Architect – Marian Marinov had a great BOF (birds of a feather session) where he and his quite knowledgeable audience discussed some poignant problems with the Linux containers, sharing ideas on how they resolved them. You probably wonder what does Marian know about Linux containers, as our current platform is not built on such? Well, it’s not that we’ve kept it a secret, just didn’t really had the chance to talk about it yet, but for the last 6 months Marian and his team have been working hard to develop a highly scalable and redundant hosting platform on Linux containers. It won’t be long before you hear more of that platform and how it will add value to our service.

…and we had fun!

And of course a serious conference like OSCON always comes with some serious party time. It started the first evening with an electrifying “Glow Run”, where we all had to run (some of us mostly walk) 5K in some of those glittering bracelets (and other accessories for those who wanted to go wild). Then we kept it going with a fun jenga game at our booth, awarding both the most skillful player who moved 26 pieces in 2 minutes without breaking the tower and the luckiest one who won the raffle for a Pebble watch. Finally, our team ended up OSCON with a great local craft beer at the impressive 27th Oregon Brew Fest. Technically, the Brew Fest wasn’t part of the OSCON, but the two events coincided so conveniently in Portland that we just couldn’t miss it. Mihail, a huge fan of craft beer and a huge fan of sharing a good drink with a good company, invited the most active members of his session’s audience for a beer at the Brew Fest to award them for their active participation and wonderful questions.

Indeed, we love Open Source and we loved OSCON just as much! Now go ahead and see some of the great moments we had there.