I have moved on from Volante, and am now starting the most exciting period in my career. I realised very quickly that my biggest asset at the moment is my neutrality in the Open Source market. I have not aligned with any vendors and thus am in one of the best positions to give neutral and practised advice about creating Open Source strategies, doing research on Open Source in Australia, assisting Aussie Open Source companies to succeed, and generally driving Open Source in Australia forward. I also plan to use this opportunity to solve social and economic problems with Open Source by participating more in commnity centre and school rollouts (such as recently in Nhulunbuy), and by getting Open Source onto the political agenda by speaking to as many politicians as I can with a polished set of points and examples (currently on discussion on osia and linux-aus for anyone interested). This is something that needs to be done, and I’m quite excited to be taking the opportunity to our pollies.
My first actual contract is doing some consulting for Linuxworld Australia which is in March 2006, ensuring they have a relevant conference programme (to be announced in about 3 weeks), that all the right people are there, and that the business and Government community in Australia get all the information they need to move forward, with all the right partners. My biggest challenge is to get the word out there. So few people even know it is on at the moment, and yet it is the biggest and first real opportunity for Australian business and Government to get the information they need, see the case studies all in one place, and meet the businesses working in Open Source. If anyone is interested in sponsoring or speaking at LWE, please drop me a line at pia at waugh.id.au.