Why linux.conf.au continues to amaze 20 years on!
Steven Hanley, Angus Lees, Hugh Blemings
- Three people who have attended every Linux.conf.au
- What has happened to keep it relivant and how it has evolved
- Focus on Open Source Software , These days hardware too
- Pre-history
- Australia big in early Linux
- late 90s Linux and LUGS growing in Aus
- CALU
- In 1998 Rusty toured LUGS and organised CALU in July 99 in Monash
- 9 July – 11 July
- 6 tutorials and 16 talks
- Post-CALU
- Lots of excitement
- Height of dotcom boom, Big Linuxcare Expo in Darling Harbour in 2000. Very commercial
- Push for another one
- 2001
- UNSW interested in Lions memorial conference
- CALU type conference would be good
- Sydney big due to Olympics
- Domain picked
- Challenge of early events
- Everythign was new
- CFP wasn’t formalised
- Linux Aus still in infancy
- Open Source was new and Few conferences
- Few people worked fulltime in FOSS
- sceduled over a weekend cause people didn’t get holidays
- Early objectives we hold on to
- Community rather than commercial, modest size
- Easier for students and hobbists, low price
- tech/non-tech balance to encource interesting delegates
- Miniconfs
- Speakers treated well
- Timeing to make conference attractive (Summer!)
- University venue, dorms, communal accom, Holidays
- Miniconfs
- First in Brs in 2002. more in 03, formalised in 2004
- Open to all delegates
- Incubate possible future conferences
- Fill the week without adding more effort
- Try out nice topics, extended BOFS
- Practice ground for new speakers
- Growth and Roaming
- Change of location helps
- New team help avoids burnout and bring fresh ideas
- Allows more people to contribute
- Repeat city visits with new people involved
- Allows people who are less-technical to help out
- Bid process introduced, overseen by LA
- Specifics of venue and location help teams structure their event
- New locations add tourism aspect, encourages aspect
- Positive experience shared by work-of-mounth
- Expansion
- Will anyone go to Perth? NZ?
- Infinite growth is not a goal (complexity, conference atmosphere)
- New activities and events are continuously evaluated
- Call for papers
- Originally ad-hoc
- Seperate Panel since 2005
- See Mary’s blog post in 2006
- 4-5 times proposals to slots
- Process
- Actively solicit hot speakers / topics
- Review submissions individually
- face-to-face to reach final as group
- Conference organisers set overall theme, choose keynote speakers
- Conference MNGT software
- Much NIH
- New software in 2004, 2005, 2007, 2017
- Mainly for CFP has hooks to other conference components (scheduling, badges, website)
- Ghosts of conferences Past
- Mailing list to ask
- Visit conference organisers
- Some people have remained over multiple years
- Giving Back
- Donation to a charity, action off a shirt singned by speakers
- Event Style and Flow
- The current event is typical
- Moved from Weekend to week as people get paid by employer
- Less Beer, More Food
- Giving back to the technical commons
- Regional delegate program ( 2004 for a few years )
- Stories of laptops being fixed by the guy who dev’d it
- git is an outcome of “no more bitkeeper” in 2005
- Encouraging work done once talk has been accepted
- The Debian couch had no back so he had to sit around and support each other
- Sponsorship
- Some Very long term
- Some years had to educate sponsors on how to participate
- Local vendors and sponsors
- Nurturing sponsosrs takes consious effort
- Learning lessons
- Floods (Brisbane 2011)
- Budget issues (where LA comes into play)
- CFP feedback loop has sought to tweak technical/non-tech focus
- Code of conduct has made conf better
- People step up to make things happen
- Resources
- Mirror
- Mary Gardiner’s post on getting a talk accepted
- Simon Lyall’s guide
Right to Not Broadcast – Karen Sandler
- Thought the problem with the propitiatory device in her heart was about transparency, now feels it is more about control
- Got a new device where the programmer (controller) only worked when it was touching, rather than over a distance.
- Research team bought a device on ebay that had patients data still in it.
- On the other hand the Keynote Speaker this morning had to hack into her own device to get the info.
- Sleep Apnea machines transmitting data to both doctors and insurance companies
- Smart TVs
- Listening for wake words all the time
- Sending viewing data to 3rd parties
- Various Legislation
- HIPAA , NZ Health Information Privacy Code, Aus Privacy Act, GDPR
- GDPR – Europe’s gift to the rest of the world
- ” Incorporating connectivity means we can never be totally in control of our critical information “
- The environment/reason we provide the data in now may change
- Often the non-connected option is marginal or doesn’t even exist.
- [ Laptop ran out of battery here ]
- Things need to be worked on
- Raising the awareness of the non-networking, privacy-first issue
- Even among the LCA-type crowd
