what are we doing today, brain?

So I’m pretty pleased to see not one, but several Australia State Governments with Open Source initiatives. The most recent to come to my attention is Open Source Tasmania, who are having a conference in a week that I’ll be going to (and speaking at a focus group the night before). This’ll rock! We also have Open Source NSW, and Opensource WA. Open Source Victoria isn’t a Government agency, but it is Government funded which is a good step. AGIMO have been quite knowledgable about this space for a while, and the ASK-OSS project is also Government funded. I think the message is getting through and particularly after the last few days (and in anticipation of tomorrow) I am very optimistic that Open Source has gathered momentum in business and Government in a serious way. Now we get to see all the projects people have been working on for years popping out of the woodwork.

Rock on Australia!

So The last two days have been the business day sessions of Linuxworld have been great. Over 2000 people registered for the trade show which has been buzzing everytime I’ve visited. The Linux Australia stand has also been consistently busy so it has been great!

The conference itself hasn’t had quite the crowds we had hoped for, but like any conference, it has to build a reputation, and for the first Linuxworld locally, we did quite well. The content has been great, I’ve been the MC and the timing has been fine (apart from one minor glitch, sorry Sophos!) and people are pretty happy with the results. Government Day is tomorrow which will be fantastic. I have Peter Quinn from Massachusetts speaking, Sunil Abraham from the IOSN, Dr Yusseri Yusoff from the Malaysian Government, and Edwin Bruce from the New Zealand Government. Plus the local state and federal Government people including Patrick Callioni from AGIMO, Elizabeth Gordon-Werner from NSW Dept of Commerce, Michael Carden from National Archives of Australia and Kevin Russell from Opensource WA. All have awesome stories and were great presentations. It’ll be great!

Anyway, maybe I’ll get a few more hours sleep tonight, but I have had a good time, and I hope everyone else has too To be fair, it needs to be made clear Linuxworld is a business and Government conference and not a tech conference, but hopefully it’ll fill the void in Australia for such information and get our business and Government communities more educated about this space, and also about the Open Source community.

So I’m turning on comments for this blog post, and would love peoples feedback about Linuxworld. Obviously people that were actually there would be really useful (at the trade show or conference or both

This is about the cutest thing I’ve ever seen! Sara’s kids made some Pia and Jeff penguins!

This reminded that I hadn’t yet posted Edale’s (Bdale’s wonderful daughter Elizabeth) lentil impersonation of Jeff and I at our wedding last year

I saw this a few days ago, but only just now remembered to blog. Check out the link on Groklaw but basically this is good news for the GPL!

“[T]he GPL encourages, rather than discourages, free competition and the distribution of computer operating systems, the benefits of which directly pass to consumers. These benefits include lower prices, better access and more innovation.” - Judge

Nice.

So there is a petition to the Australia Government about funding for the ABC which is a fantastic source of Australian culture and independent broadcasting. I have to say the underlying issue unfortunately comes back to the same old thing. We have a Government who is doing a great job at creating surplus, but often at the expense of services, education and health. I look forward to a big wake up in Australian politics on all sides and I am optimistic enough to think that we are getting there, but slowly.

I saw this in the news and loved the quote:

“School education should be about cooperation and sharing knowledge, which is exactly what open source is about - that’s why I can’t understand why schools don’t embrace it on that level,” he said, adding there is a “big black hole” when it comes to Linux in education.

Rock on for FOSS in education!

I’ve also been flat out with last minute things for Linuxworld next week. The event is going to be fantastic for business and Governments understanding FOSS, I am looking forward to meeting a bunch of people speaking, including Peter Quinn (ex-CIO of Massachusetts Government), Sunil Abraham (IOSN), Yusseri Yusoff (Malaysian Government), and Martin Fink (HP). Of course it’ll also be great to see Maddog and Bdale there

Nature can be a wonderful thing, and both Jeff and I thought Debian as soon as we saw this

I met Peter Quinn in Spain on a FOSS around the world panel, Peter as most of you would know is the force behind the adoption of an Open Standards policy and Open Source take-up in the Massachusetts Government. He left the job after unexpectedly finding himself the target of anti-FOSS FUD, but the Open Standards/Source approach of Massachusetts has prevailed and Peter himself is very FOSS saavy and a great speaker.

Anyway, I managed to twist his arm into coming to Australia and speaking at Linuxworld at Government Day (the last day of the conference, the 30th March). I’m really excited about this as his rationale behind why FOSS is relevant to Government is very useful to our Government. I hope to see a huge increase in awareness of and adoption of FOSS after Linuxworld. We also have representatives from the Malaysian and New Zealand Governments as well as a bunch of Aussie Government agencies.

Currently nominations are on for the Sydney LUG and I nominated a a guy called Jamie Honan, who is a prior president of SLUG, all round great guy, and a very sane backboard for bouncing around ideas. He is also very softly spoken, and thoughtful. Anyway, unfortunately he declined, but he had these wise words which I think are relevant for LUGs all around the country:

People may wish to think a bit about the future of SLUG. For many years, out of neccessity, we have been a ‘geek’ group. Users of Linux were also like that. Linux is now mainstream, and I believe is poised to take prominence in the desktop.

This prominence presents its own challenges. While Linux becomes ever more ubiquitious, it is ever more easy to ignore the ideas and ideals that drove the formation of Linux. Now, millions of web surfers have the benefit of Linux and know nothing of the fears, the dreams that drove its inception.

How do we cross that divide? How do we reach out to the new users of Linux and show them that they too can become connected. That to give, a small gift only please; a bug report, show a friend how it’s done, is to join in and become part of something much larger.

The challenge for us in SLUG is to reach out, beyond our comfort zone. To try to connect with people who don’t share our technology biases and starting points, to make not so much the technology accessable, but to make our humanity, our ideals and ideas accessable.

Can I make one small suggestion? We have to listen first.

Sometimes in the excitement in getting our ideas across we lose touch with our audience. Sometimes they are trying to tell us what they need, what their problems are, and we don’t listen. Think about it

I strongly agree, and I think LUGs are going to remain important in the future both as a place of technical expertise and for ideas to flow, but also as a place where the underlying values of FOSS remain strong. Some people see LUGs getting less relevant as FOSS hits the mainstream, I see them becoming more relevant. People will be picking up the technology but still disconnected from it and the community, but LUGs provide the grounding to both technical creativity and community values that have made FOSS what it is today. We teach and practise the importance of software and information freedom that sometimes is either taken for granted or forgetten about.

So the new consulting business Waugh Partners is going well. I’ve nabbed my first few consulting jobs, and I’m making a name for myself as a consultant. I thought long and hard about my skills and what is needed in Australia, and I realised that vendor-neutral strategic consulting is what people really need in order to go from ad-hoc FOSS jobs to a planned approach to FOSS for their businesses. For example, understanding how to skill up, how to find commercially viable versus non-commercially viable software, where to get support, how to modify existing policies to be FOSS friendly, such as procurement policies, and finally how to understand the wide world of FOSS and how it can benefit businesses and Government alike. I look forward to helping grow the industry generally, and in particular helping all the little FOSS companies become more competitive and knowledgable about what they need to compete in the large corporate and Government arenas.

One of my main aims is to get Australia being more globally competitive in ICT and to also start using FOSS to solve the technical, business/economic _and_ the social challenges of this country, but baby steps at a time

I am seriously looking forward to Linuxworld as I think it’ll help me achieve my business and personal goals, and I am so happy that we are finally starting to realise the broader benefits of FOSS in my own country.

Rock on Australia!