what are we doing today, brain?

What a fortnight! Holy moly. In the last fortnight I have:

- Driven down to Canberra and back for a meeting with NOIE/AUUG/ACS/OSIA

- Attended and spoke at the Open Source Forum in Sydney (a small do mainly for government. My talk was on community, why it is important and where it fits)

- Worked overtime to meet a whole heap of work schedules.

- Released a press release (which required an all nighter effort) and commented on various inquiries.

- Rusty and Alli were up for the weekend, so there was much Teppanyaki, Yum Cha and happy cup all round Also tried to subtly pack that weekend for the move.

- Rusty and I met with ZDnet who were nice enough to give us some media advice about press releases and the like. Thanks guys!

- Met up by chance with some friends I haven’t seen for ages. Hi Viv, Louise! HUGS!

- Attended the SLUG AGM. Congratulations to the new ctte. Rock on!

- Had Richard Keech from Red Hat for dinner. Now this is embarrassing! I got an email from Richard saying he was in town on a Red Hat training thing, and for some reason I thought it was Richard Ford from Beijing Linux Users Group who also does Red Hat training. I was all excited and asked him to dinner at our house, told him to bring his swimmers (because coming from a Chinese winter I knew he’d appreciate it) and saying to pass on hello to Jenny. Of course this Richard had no idea what I was talking about and just agreed. He came along, and as the lift opened, I was expecting a huge Aussie footballer ex-pat, and so went straight past Richard K, whom I hadn’t met before. Once the confusion was sorted, I was at a bit of a loss, but it was a pleasant evening, and nice to meet him

- Moved house over basically 4 days (sat packing, sun new furniture move, mondayour stuff over to new house, old stuff to donation place, and tuesday we got pro’s to finish it off as we were so screwed)!! DRAMA !! I now share Jeffs hatred of moving, although I must say I have _NEVER_ had so much trouble moving. We have both been quite sick throughout the whole episode, and just looking to relax. LA, ACS, work, study, rest, and sanity have all come second place while the moving went on. Now to catch up!

- Organised our next Kung Fu demo, this weekend at the Newtown festival. Should be super sweet!

PHEW! Now I just want to curl up in a ball and sleep a while. Luckily the new place has a sauna, spa and pool. Winter Sauna parties at our place!! Rock! This evening, I am going to surrender myself to Kung Fu, and then have a swim. Yay!

I forgot to blog about this I was in line at uni, and listening to a couple of Software Engineer students chatting behind me. They brought up Linux a few times, and I started chatting to them. It turns out their uni only really uses Minix and Solaris to teach which was interesting. Anyway one of the guys was _really_ keen on Linux, I suggested he come along to SLUG some day. As we were rambling about random people, I mentioned Jeff and how kewl it is to see the GNOME world at that level, and how proud I am of him. This dude looked at me in shock, grinned, and explaimed “Are you….Pipka!” to which I buried my head in my hands I forget that people know of/about me from random places, it really is like a big family sometimes He knew about the infamous “The Little Furnace” GNOME release which was also amusing

For those interested, I study politics in the Middle East and Mandarin, go figure

Had a nice weekend, catching up with sleep and rest from the busy week last week. Last week included a drive to Canberra and meeting with NOIE, AUUG, OSIA and ACS. It also included a meeting with the Editor Group, to organise our LA media training and such. The weekend saw Rusty and Alli come up. Rusty came to a meeting with a supportive publisher with me, where they gave us some hints and tips on dealing with the media. Rusty, Alli, Jeff and I enjoyed Teppanyaki, Yum Cha, and Thai over the weekend. I want to have visitors more often so we eat out more Rusty and Alli are a lot of fun, I just wish we’d already moved so they could enjoy the new place which is much nicer It was a nice weekend, Jeff and I finally caught up on sleep, and the future is looking rosy with moving next weekend! (even though we haven’t packed yet)

Got to see my family, which was great. I really miss them a lot, and it is wonderful to catch up. One day I will give up some of this madness and have more time for such things. Right now, it is all engines go, and I find it hard to sit still.

Well our press release was successful, has been published by a couple of people, and more to come. Many positive responses from the community, and most importantly, people are ready to act. We are putting together a FAQ sheet of how people can do their bit about the FTA issue. Anyone concerned can certainly contact their local parliament member, or write a letter, or go to the appropriate link when I link it from my blog

Going to have a meeting tomorrow with NOIE, AUUG, OSIA, and ACS about communication strategies and the like. I’m so glad that it is starting to come together. I love our Open Source landscape, all the groups with their own characters and ideas, all the open communication and sharing of ideas. Some people think we should have _one_ group to do everything and more efficiently allocate resources and such. My thoughts are that many groups grew from a need, a need they couldn’t fulfill from existing groups. Having a wide range of choice full of interesting characters and different points of view is the Open Source way, is the Australian way If one group saying they are the _ONE_ was created tomorrow, 10 more would spring up simply in protest if nothing else. Getting the groups talking together and being able to define their places in the landscape is important, however multiple groups can only be a good thing. It ‘keeps the bastards honest’ if you don’t mind my Australian I tried to define the Open Source landscape in a way to explain to outsiders. I think the Opensource.org.au site as a portal will certainly simplify things. There is certainly a need for an interface for government and such, however it doesn’t need to translate as one organisation. It can be an abstraction layer, to whatever groups are involved. Enter opensource.org.au.

On that topic, opensource.org.au will certainly have more work done to it. Still needs case studies, and heaps of stuff. If anyone is interested please feel free to mail me (pia at linux.org.au)

My Mum and Dad bought a theatre in Yass! I am so proud of them! The place has been out of use for 30 years, and they are putting money into it to reinvigorate the already active theatre group in Yass, and give something back to their home. Rock on!

So LA did some press releases recently as well as some position papers on the FTA. We are doing a fairly intensive inquiry as to the actual effects of the FTA on Open Source in Australia, hiring lawyers are all Rusty did an AWESOME job in getting everything together and researched, and then the Press team did a great job on their first assignment offering suggestions and advice. All in all quite a successful little project, but the fight is far from over. There is only about 9 weeks left to make an impression on the right people if we can even hope to not be screwed in the FTA translation to legislation. Got to stay on our toes and make sure the word gets out.

Also check out the new Open Source portal. We are talking to several groups to get buy in to this idea of having a single portal into the Australian Open Source world. A sinlge place to figure out which organisation is good for you (and they all have their uniqueness), what Open Source is, where to find case studies etc etc. Also have the Open Source Experts Group up on a web page. This group of people are doing advisory work on Government policy, an Open Source FAQ, and some other projects, all in collaboration with nearly all the Open Source organisations in Australia in some form or another. The people involved are working independently, but with industry and community input and concerns in mind. Rock on! Anything created by this group will of course be run by the linux-aus mailing list for input and advice.

A funny little ditty from personal life, I recently watched Natural Born Killers again, I LOVE that movie! There is a line that Mal says to Mickey “being with you is like kindergarten”. It reminds me of Jeff we have so many silly little games and fun in our life, he really is my best friend, playmate, lover and partner in crime. Not a moment goes by when I don’t love him utterly. We put the ‘ow’ in shower.

Aww, the Bubby