Launching Geek Girl Dinners Melbourne
May 18, 2008
Not strictly Open Source, but I’m hoping that we’ll get lots of support and interest from the Open Source community. 
Anne-Marie and I would like to invite each and every Melbourne geek woman to join us for the first Melbourne Geek Girl Dinner on Thursday, 29 May.
We’ll be meeting at 6.30pm for a 7pm start. Dinner is at 100 Mile Cafe, Level 3, Melbourne Central, 211 La Trobe Street.
This is the first dinner for the Melbourne Group, so we’re calling it 0.1 – a planning dinner. The usual format will be an informal dinner with a technical talk by one of the members or guests. The first dinner won’t have a speaker, we’ll be brainstorming and planning what we’d like to do with the Melbourne group – and most importantly creating a list of the technical women who are based in Melbourne who we’d like to invite to speak at future dinners.
If you’d like to attend, please RSVP to sarah.stokely AT gmail.com by Thursday 22 May. Feel free to contact me with any question you might have too.
Oh and by the way – guys who are interested in coming along are welcome to do so if they have a female geek to escort them.
The group’s blog is here, and if you’re on Facebook, join the group!
Vote with your dollars
April 28, 2008
I’m going over my notes from LCA 2008 as I write a feature on open source for MIS magazine, and this quote from Dirk Hohndel, Intel’s chief technologist for open source, still stands out to me:
“Next time you buy hardware, think very hard about a way that you can signal to the vendor that you don’t want Windows. The message gets passed on as soon as its loud enough.”
He was talking about desktop computers, but of course it’s equally applicable to servers and other hardware.
Bravo to the vendors who do offer alternative operating systems on their desktop PCs and laptops – including Dell, HP (later this year) and ASUS.
If you think this post is just a way for me to justify buying an Eee PC, shame on you.
The Penguin’s Big Day Out: LCA writeup in Linux Magazine
April 21, 2008
My writeup of Linux.conf.au (LCA) 2008 has appeared in the international Linux Magazine. I googled and found it for your reading pleasure – you’ll need to open it in PDF format, but it’s a fun little read (if I do say so myself). The guys at Linux Mag did promise to send me a copy, but I haven’t received it as yet – the only reason I knew my story was out was through bumping into Paul Fenwick (of Perl Training Australia) at the launch of the Waugh Partner’s Australian Open Source Community and Industry Report the other week. So thanks, Paul!
Penguin’s Big Day Out [Linux Magazine]