Upcoming OSIA talk: Open Sourcing PR
April 6, 2009
I’ll be talking about “Open Sourcing PR” at OSIA this month. The meeting starts at 7pm, on April 16 here in Melbourne town. Details of the meeting are here and the blurb for the talk can be found under the cut.
Linux.conf.au 2009 roundup
January 28, 2009
Linux.conf.au is done and dusted for another year, and its been revealed that we’ll be heading to gorgeous NZ in 2010 - yay! I didn’t have even a spare second to blog from the conference (running a miniconf and giving two papers will kind of do that to you!) but I did write a couple of news stories for ZDNet.
- LCA ‘09: Wikipedia’s new mobile platform - a writeup of Angela Beesley’s keynote. The news hook was the new mobile platform, but I was much more interested in the fact that WikiMedia has set a goal to remove tech roadblocks and get more editors involved in Wikipedia this year, but they hadn’t identified the need to get rid of some of the social barriers which might put people off.After her keynote, Angela told me she’d raise that as a suggestion – I hope she does. Wikipedia is such an incredible resource, it would be a shame if things like the ‘deletion wars’ and other actions by a minority of the community continue to dissuade people from participating.
- Sysadmins after the cloud - my writeup of Tom Limoncelli’s keynote. As I noted on Twitter, he used his employer (Google) as an example of taking an abundance approach to tech support via it’s famous Tech Stop, but unfortunately they recently laid off a bunch of contractors, including making cuts to Tech Stop headcount. So tech support’s not as abundant at Google as it used to be. (Tom responded here, but unfortunately we didn’t get to discuss it further than clarifying that it was contractors rather than inhouse Tech Stoppers who’d been laid off).
- NZ location for Linux.conf.au 2010 - LCA weathered the economic crisis despite 8 speakers pulling out, plus LCA raised $38,000 for the Tasmanian Devil.And finally, many thanks to Donna Benjamin for helping out with photos of Linus Torvalds shaving Bdale Garbee’s beard to raise money to help Tasmanian Devils. I’d prefer to have seen Linus in the dunking pool circa 2004, but maybe I’m just a cruel person.
If you’re attending Linux.conf.au in Hobart later this month, I strongly recommend you look at the lineup of talks which Brianna Laugher has organised for the Free as in Freedom miniconf on Tuesday, 20 January.
I’ll be speaking on journalism in the age of citizen journalism at 1.45pm (“It’s all fun and games until someone wants to sue you”). I’m also really looking forward to the other talks, especially Matthew Landauer from OpenAustralia.org, who was recently voted best speaker at the Open Source Developers Conference in Sydney. Matthew won’t be speaking at the main LCA conference – so this will be your only chance to see him speak – so make sure you come along to Free as in Freedom. 
On Geek Parenting – call for panelists
November 25, 2008
I’m co-convening the Linux Chix miniconf at Linux.conf.au (LCA) in Hobart in January. I’ll be able to post the lineup of speakers for the day soon, but in the meantime an overview of the day can be found here. But one of the cool things we’re planning is a panel session on Geek Parenting, which will be open to all LCA attendees.
We are now looking for some experienced geek parents as well as an expert or two (educator, counsellor or other professional who is experienced in matters parental) who would like to share some ideas, tips and discussion on the challenges that being a parent can present.
Read on for details including how to nominate yourself for a spot on the panel.
Kate Lundy to host “Foundations of Open” event this week
March 31, 2008
I spoke with Senator Kate Lundy this morning ahead of the “Foundations of Open” event which she is hosting in Canberra on Thursday. In the leadup to the national 2020 summit, Senators and Members were encouraged to host their own local summits – and Senator Lundy elected to focus on Open Source technology. I was intrigued and asked her why.
“I had a look at all the big public policy issues that I think have the most capability to change the way we do things for the better, and Open Source was the standout for me. I’m involved in a lot of different policy areas ranging from sport and health promotion, right through to things relating to IT, but this one has the greatest potential because it’s a different way of solving problems, and it’s a way that I think can help organisations capitalise on corporate knowledge and share that knowledge”
The program for the event is online here. The day will look not only how Open Source technology is being used in government and private sector, but also at open standards and free access to information.
OSCON 2008 – call for participation
January 20, 2008
OSCON – the O’Reilly Open Source Convention is being held in Portland Oregon this September – and this year will be celebrating not only 10 years of OSCON, but also ten years of “the Open Source Initiative, of Mozilla, and of the term “Open Source”, blogs Allison Randall at O’Reilly Radar.
OSCON will be co-located with the Ubuntu Live conference, if you need another reason to be there.
Submissions for OSCON presentations close on February 4th, and they’re especially keen to see proposals for papers on state-of-the-art open source technology, which also look ahead to the future of open source.