what are we doing today, brain?

Since last blog, I have travelled to Cairns to give a presentation on open source to a consulting firm, which went great, I have changed jobs to working full time with the same company on their open source strategies, I went to a kung fu camp and learnt even more weapons and today is my birthday. I’m one of those rare people who absolutely _LOVE_ birthdays. I get excited, I run around happy all day, I look for presents. I seriously love having something wrapped up and knowing I can’t unwrap it till the next day. What can I say, I love surprises!

I also managed to pull together some great speakers for a software patents forum. Information will be up on the Linux Australia site under Australia and Projects soon. I’m really glad the LA committee has some awesome dudes on it that put such an effort into these things. Yay, team!

I found out one of my bosses is going to China. I’m pretty excited because I may be able to tee up my love of China and my job this way Look out Simon, I told you I’ll be back! The Beijing Linux Users Group was an awesome array of individuals, and I’m looking forward to catching up with them again.

So after having booked almost three months ago to go to the GNOME Boston Summit, I had to cancel. Why was I going to the Boston Summit? Several months ago I came across some potential funding for accessibility and language stuff. I started asking around and realised we have lots of people interested in this stuff and wanting to work on it. I thought that maybe I could tee up those who want to work on it, and fill the gap between the GNOME accessibility developer team and the Australian developers, users, and organisations willing to back it. I am still hoping to do this, but unfortunately due to the summit being announced quite late, most of the accessibility team were not going to attend. I was thinking it would still be interesting, and was going to swing past London to see some people, but then lots of great open source stuff came up in Australia and I thought it’d be better not to go. I was targetting GNOME because almost all the people I’ve spoken to said the GNOME accessibility stuff is well on the way to being really usable, and so a little development and getting some serious feedback from users might be able to take it there

My interest in accessibility and languages has come from a realisation that Linux is something that cuts across all boundaries - cultural, religious, gender, age, physical, language - and so making it something truly for everyone is such a great goal. It delivers equal opportunity to people in a way that I really love.

Anyway now with the NSW gov tender for open source on the cards, life is going to be quite exciting for a while Rock on Australia!

So I have some outstanding items to blog

I went to Brisbane last weekend and met up with Software Queensland and HUMBUG. Software QLD are a new group there bringing together ICT companies to have education and discussion about issues and opportunities that face them. They also only allow people from Australian owned companies to join, and thus can suggest they represent Australian best interests for QLD ICT companies. This is quite a leap, and very interesting because some other organisations in Australia claim to represent Australian best interests but have mainly foreign companies on the boards. Anyway, the people I met were great, and we found some areas to collaborate on, namely the support and protection of IP creators in Australia. The idea that the Australian ICT sector can only really flourish in its own right by focusing on IP creators is such a good goal, and one that many Australian organisations and companies can agree on. Especially in a time when a lot of the chokeholds on innovation are mainly owned and practised by non-Australian companies. I digress… I think that we (the OS community) can protect and educate ourselves using LUGs for local perspective, Linux Australia from an OS national community perspective, and OSIA from an OS business perspective. Organisations like Software QLD can take a broader Australian ICT perspective, working with orgs like ACS. Anyway information can be found on them at http://www.softwareqld.com.au.

I also attended the HUMBUG AGM, which was a lot more fun than it sounds I got to catch up with some old faces, meet some new ones, and generally see another LUG in action. I had some great conversations, my only regret was my work told me a few days before leaving that I had to be back in Sydney by 11pm for work (disaster recovery foo). So I had to cut short the trip and wasn’t able to participate in the beers and food post meeting GAR! Anyway thankyou to all the HUMBUG gang, and especially to Rob Brockway for a breakneck rush to the airport when we all realised the classroom clock had stopped. Also, many thanks to AJ for the hospitality. Rock on QLD!

Back a few months in Brazil one of the people I got to catch up with was Bdale, who is one of my heros, influences and examples of leadership. In January last year, when I was speaking to a lot of people about Linux Australia, what they wanted out of it, and how we could make it more useful to the community. I was planning to run for the committee, and then someone (I’ll find out who someday!) nominated me for President. At first I was quite shocked, and I wasn’t sure whether I was the right person for the job. Anyway I had seen Bdale speak that day, his “Herding Cats” talk and thought if anyone knows about working with the community, it’ll be Bdale. I chatted with him for ages at one of the dinners, and he convinced me that I could probably do a pretty good job and gave some awesome advice, particularly about establishing common values before common goals. I spoke to him again in one of the theatres after a talk, and someone got this picture:

Which is amusing as Bdale looks pretty huge compared to me. It circulated pretty quickly, and even had Bdales lovely wife asking who this was Anyway we took the opportunity in Brazil to even the odds with this:

Apart from it being a hideous photo of me, I think we can safely say we are even