Mash Pit

Thanks everybody for coming out and braving the crazy weather here in Portland … what are the odds we’d get our 20 year storm on the day of the Mash Pit?!

We still had about 20 people turn up and David Recordon and I did an update on OpenID. We’ve got folks hacking away on a new version of the Ruby OpenID plugin, people getting help configuring OpenID for their sites and all kinds of general questions.

Well, here we go and schedule this amazing event … this fantastic Mash Pit for OpenID … we get people all over the world looking to do the same thing on the same day. Then what happens? Well, we get the 10 year storm here in Portland:

Have I mentioned that people don’t know how to drive in the snow?!

In any case, the show must go on! The Mash Pit will still happen, we’d never let a little silly snow get in our way. So c’mon out, we’ll still have snacks, food and plenty of connectivity for learning about OpenID and hopefully helping you make the OpenID connection.

Some fantastic articles have come out in the last couple of weeks talking about OpenID. The momentum is growing and I’m going to go out on a limb and say it; we’re at a tipping point.

the mashpit concept explained

Originally uploaded by Chris Radcliff.

A couple of weeks ago I announced a Mash Pit event for OpenID to be hosted here in Portland, OR. Its a chance for folks to come and do some hacking on OpenID and learn what it would take to implement it on their own sites. We’ll have all hands on deck here from JanRain with help for folks in Ruby, Python, PHP and Perl. I’m really excited because we’ve got 36 people watching or planning to attend this event! I can’t wait.

I’m even more excited because other people are picking up and running with the idea. On the same night, we’ll have OpenID Mash Pit’s going in Austin, TX, Boston, MA and Paris, France as well as one in Vancouver, BC. The one in Vancouver we’ll be doing a live webcast between JanRain and the Sxip offices. It’ll be like being in Canada and Portland at the same time … :-)

Don’t be afraid to start your own event. If you need help from me or any of the other folks in the OpenID community in organizing or finding your identity brethren don’t hesitate to ask. Copy, engage, repeat … :-)

Hope to see you there!