It's a Community Event
REST Fest is a community event focused on the REST netowrk architectural style and RESTful implementations of the style. Based on the OpenSpaces model, REST Fest puts developers front-and-center with a handful of selected speakers, "open mic" style Lightning Talks where anyone can present about anything, and round-the-clock access to a "Hack Space" where people can get together and work on whatever interestes them.
It's all about Hands-On
In it's first year, REST Fest will encourage developers who have direct experience building RESTful applications for the World Wide Web to share their successes and their frustrations in an informal atmosphere. Talks that emphasise practical solutions will be favored over theoretical presentations. Showing your code is encouraged! The event is platform and technology agnostic with a leaning toward Open Source and OSS-friendly environments.
Call for Presenters
Presenters are encouraged to submit a title, short abstract (250 or less) and an indication of the "level" of the talk (beginner, intermediate, advanced). "How To..." talks are encouraged as well as "How Do I?" talks. A small number of talks (about five) will be choosen as a "Selected Talk" with a format of 30 minutes plus questions. All talks are automatically accepted for the "Lightning Talk" section (Five Slides in Five Minutes). If you want your talk to be considered only for one category (Lightning or Selected), indicate that on your proposal.
Hacking Is Encouraged
This year, REST Fest includes a full Hack Day and will maintain Hack Rooms where attendees can get together and work on any project they like. The Hack Rooms will be open throughout the event with power and wireless access provided free of charge. Attendees are also encouraged to propose talks that result in Hack Room participation including frameworks and library authors who are looking for help coding open source libraries.
What is REST Fest?
REST Fest is an unconference developed by Mike Amundsen and Benjamin Young.
Our objective is to give people interested in REST, Hypermedia APIs, crafting web service APIs, or any related topics a chance to get together in an informal setting to share ideas, trade stories, and show examples of current work.
Mike Amundsen, co-chair
An internationally known author and lecturer, Mike Amundsen travels throughout the United States and Europe speaking and teaching on a wide range of topics including .NET programming, Cloud computing, Web application development, and other subjects. He has more than a dozen books to his credit and recently contributed to the O'Reilly book "RESTful Web Services Cookbook" by Subbu Alamaraju. Mike is currently working with, and doing research on the topic of, Hypermedia programming using the REST architectural model. When he is not working, Mike enjoys spending time with his family in Kentucky, USA.
Benjamin Young, co-chair
Benjamin Young, aka BigBlueHat, is an Upstate, SC inventor and evangelist in love with the Web. Benjamin enjoys researching and develping with "edgy" technologies (which at least were edgy when he found them) such as XML (ah, the 1990's), Apache Cocoon, REST, JavaScript, JSON, and Apache CouchDB. Promoting good technologies has also been a passion and what brought about his involvement with REST Fest. Benjamin is pleased to again bring REST Fest to Greenville, SC this August.