Bye Bye Conroy – Three predictions for 2009
January 29, 2009
Last night on Byte Into IT’s first radio show for 2009, we made predictions for the year ahead in tech. The podcast will be online soon, but I thought I’d share mine here. Let’s count them down…
3. This is the year that Microsoft’s browser domination will finally end. Internet Explorer’s market share will drop to 65%, having its lead eroded by two open source browsers - Firefox (which will stay about steady at 20%) and Google’s Chrome (launched late last year) which will claw 15% of the market away from IE by the end of 2009.
(This prediction inspired by a conversation with Rusty Russell last week at LCA.)
2. The awesome philanthropic venture, One Laptop Per Child, will become hardware independent in 2009, meaning that it won’t be sidetracked by arguments or politics about hardware (or software, for that matter) and won’t be limited by the number of its own XO laptops it can produce. So the folk who create and support Sugar – software designed to be a tool for kids to learn, even if they’ve never used a computer before – will be able to get on with taking this awesome learning tool to kids who need it, everywhere in the world.
1. The Australian Minister for IT, Senator Stephen Conroy will resign in 2009. He’ll resign to take up a posting as the ambassador to China, where he’ll be a special attache to the Ministry for Internet Censorship. He’ll be replaced in his IT portfolio by Deputy PM Julia Gillard, whose first announcement as IT Minister will be that the Rudd government is going to make good on its promise to fund laptops for *all* Australian secondary school kids – and will be extending the program to include primary school kids too. The government will also announce it is working with OLPC to ensure that kids in remote and poor areas of Australia won’t be left behind.
2009. The year we conquered the digital divide.
We can hope. 
Interview with Jeff Waugh tonight on RRR
October 14, 2008
I’ll be interviewing Jeff Waugh tonight on RRR’s technology show, Byte into IT. Jeff will be giving us an update on the local work being done with the One Laptop per Child laptop, the XO. OLPC volunteers are hard at work in the south pacific region and right here in Australia.
If you’re in Melbourne, you can tune in from 7pm til 8pm on 102.7FM. Or you can stream the show from the RRR website. The show will also be available as a podcast at a later date (but I’m not sure how much later).
Pia Waugh on Volunteering in Open Source and IT
March 31, 2008
Another interesting event coming up is an event being hosted by the ACS which will feature Waugh Partners consultant Pia Waugh talking about her involvement in volunteering in IT and the Open Source community and how it’s helped her achieve as a business person.
Pia’s talk will cover her experience with Open Source, One Laptop per Child, technology in developing nations, encouraging girls (and Generation Y across the board) to get into IT, and the experience of starting her own IT business in Australia.
The event is being held on Monday 28 April from 12pm – 2pm. It costs $20 (free for ACS members) which includes light lunch and refreshments included. It’s being held at The Mitchell Theatre, Level 1, 280 Pitt Street, Sydney.
For further details or to register go to www.acs.org.au/nsw/events.
ICT volunteerism: driving career and personal advancement!
ACS-Women – Level 1 280 Pitt Street, Sydney – Monday 28/4/08 – 12pm -
2pm – Light lunch and refreshments. Go to www.acs.org.au/nsw/events to
register.
Pia is a technical woman working with Linux and Open Source. She has a
global reputation and has spoken all around the world on topics ranging
from women in ICT, Open Source business benefits and opportunities, the
digital divide and more.
She always wanted to somehow apply herself to making the world a better
place and at one point was going to leave the industry in order to do
this in the traditional sense by going to a third world country to feed
the poor. She she quickly realised, however, that the best way she
could benefit the world was by using the skills she already had and
apply them in new ways to help others.
In her experience, volunteerism has brought so many opportunities
including career, travel, personal satisfaction and she believes her
participation in communities such as the Open Source community has got
her to where she is today.
One Laptop Per Child on its way to Australia
February 1, 2008
The One Laptop Per Child initiative, a charity which is attempting to create and distribute educational laptops to disadvantaged children, is on its way to Australia. OLPC Australia was unveiled at the Linux.conf.au open source conference this week.
The Australian group is still being put together, but organiser Pia Waugh said its goals will be to get the OLPC XO laptops out to disadvantaged children across Australia – particularly in remote and rural areas.
Although the OLPC’s XO laptop was designed to be used as a beginners computer, it has become a cool, low cost laptop favoured by geeks – as proved by the number of LCA attendees carrying them around this week.
The local OLPC chapter will be selling XOs to the public, although it’s expected they’ll be sold in small batches of five units or so, rather than one at a time.
The website for the group isn’t live yet, but should be up in about 2 weeks at www.olpc.org.au.
OLPC hands out XO laptops at LCA
January 29, 2008
The One Laptop Per Child association surprised attendees at Linux.conf.au this morning by handing out 10 of its XO laptops to attendees of the conference. The gift is hoped to encourage software engineers to contribute to the OLPC project by testing the laptops, particularly their group-computing abilities such as mesh networking.
The announcement was made by Jim Gettys, the vice president of software engineering for the One Laptop Per Child foundation. The names of the recipients were randomly selected from the attendee list.
Jim Gettys is speaking about the OLPC project at LCA today at 2.30pm.