linux.conf.au this year was a lot of fun in Dunedin New Zealand. The NZ team put on an awesome conference that is up there with the best of them. I certainly had an absolute ball. I met loads of new people, got into inspiring and thought-provoking discussions, and generally set about changing the world 🙂 Also, to top it off, to my absolute delight and shock Rusty awarded the Rusty Wrench, an award for service to the community to me at the Penguin Dinner. We also did an auction for the John Lions Chair which raised a substantial sum of cash which was great. I was coordinating a lot of media people for the conference and so missed a lot of talks, but with daily local coverage, international coverage _and_ NZ prime time TV coverage, it was great practice for next year. I’m hoping to get linux.conf.au on Aussie TV January next year! 🙂 For anyone who doesn’t already know, linux.conf.au will be in Sydney next year. Hooray!
So the conference was great, but the thing we are missing is how to educate our bosses about FOSS so we can spend more of our working days on it. Enter Linuxworld Conference and Expo. Every lca attendee should have a Linuxworld brochure in their bag. If you scan the programme you’ll see words like enterprise, TCO, strategy, certification and emerging technology. All lovely buzzwords your boss needs to hear about 🙂 Linuxworld coming to Australia presents our community with a first opportunity to take the message to the Australian business and government community in a way relevant to them, and I believe it will be a bit of a milestone in the takeup of Open Source in Australia.
So go on, send your boss to Linuxworld, for their sake and yours, and we’ll see YOU in Sydney next year!