User:Jdmumper/sandbox

The Central Pennsylvania Open Source Conference (CPOSC) is a one-day technical conference about open source software and related industry issues. Attendees are a mix of professionals, hobbiests, and students from local high schools and universities.

Overview
As the technology footprint in Central PA continues to grow, so too grows the need for information and experiences to be shared and discussed among developers and users alike. This dialogue serves as an integral component in cementing Central PA as a recognized hub of technological innovation. At CPOSC, speakers, attendees and sponsors are all equally relied upon to fuel the fire of that innovation, whether presenting on a topic, asking a question or representing a useful product or service.

Founding and Development
The CPOSC (pronounced “see-posk”) was founded 2008 by Eric Andreychek, Lon Farenwald, and John Mulligan. The idea behind CPOSC was and still is to provide a time and place for the community of technologists to converge, converse and connect around Open Source software and related subjects. More recently, the conference has added topics on diversity and inclusion as those topics have come front and center in both the workplace and within the Open Source development community.

Operating Entities
The conference has been maintained by the original founders and different companies over the years. For the first four years, ticket revenues, paid sponsorships, and the organizing individuals personally financed the conference. Starting in 2012, xForty Technologies took over when a CPOSC cofounder (Long Farenwald) began working there. The torch was then passed to Industrial Resolution where it remained until 2020. Starting in 2020, CPOSC is operated by Local Area Networks, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

Venues
CPOSC was held at IIT Tech in 2008. For the next four years it was held at Harrisburg University. Since 2013, CPOSC has been held in the greater Lancaster, Pennsylvania area, first at the Lancaster-Lebanon Intermediate Unit and then at the Millersville University Ware Center in historic Downtown Lancaster, Pennsylvania. In 2020, due to Covid-19, the conference was moved to a virtual platform called Hopin.