what are we doing today, brain?

So I recently did a casual interview with Liz Tay from IDG about working in IT and being a woman in IT. It was a casual discussion and I thought it would be done in a short one page interview. It turns out she wrote it down verbatim for a 4 page article about “an interview with Linux Australia’s cover girl”. Funny!!

These last four weeks have been pretty crazy. I haven’t had a moment to really catch up on anything, but I’m slowly getting there so for people waiting on me please keep being patient

First there was two weeks on the road. A week in Canberra talking to Government people, universities, corporate types and of course community people about FOSS. I’m putting together some pretty interesting documents which should get some good support from Australian Government Agencies, so stay tuned for that.

Then I helped run a seminar for ASK-OSS and spent a few days in Brisbane running the same conference up there. Both events were a lot of fun and very interesting. It was great to meet Dan Ravicher who is a great speaker, and his partner Alex who is a street smart lawyer defending the rights of disadvantaged people in New York! Alex was a very cool lady to meet! It was wonderful to meet with Mark Webbink again, I hope everything is going ok Mark.

Then this last two weeks, I’ve been sick. ‘The flu with my RSI starting to play-up again’ sick. Not very nice, particularly when one has soooo much to do!

I had loads of wonderful people from SLUG come around on the 26th and pitch in to help pack up all the global Software Freedom Day team packs for shipping on Monday. It was a great day, and we packed up basically 150 packages in just under a day. Many thanks to all those people (plus Jeff and Sridhar) who put in a champion effort!

What else. We’ve had teams register late for Software Freedom Day almost every day, so it looks like there will be over 200 teams this year, and it is only the third year! I’ve got an event running in Sydney which has technologists, journalists, politicians and culturalists giving talks, as well as some useful workshops so it should be a lot of fun for anyone in Sydney who can come along And I’m chatting to Alice Brennan today from Triple J about covering Software Freedom Day on HACK, the week day afternoon news on Triple J (and one of my favourite radio shows). More details on that when I know.

Phew! What are we doing today, Brain? …

Yesterday afternoon a bunch of wonderful people came to meet for a coffee/beer at the All Bar Nun in Canberra. It was a great few hours and awesome to catch up with everyone that came (and a few new faces to attach to nicks :). I met up with Chris Smart who is behind the Kororaa project, Kristy Bennetts, David Symons (bimberi), Paul Wayper, Steve Walsh, Ingrid Finnane, Antti Roppola, Justin Freeman and more Thanks everyone! I’ll definitely be coming back to Canberra soon as there were so many yummy dinners offered

I’ve also been talking to a bunch of Government agencies about FOSS and there will be some great new case studies of FOSS in research available on the ASK-OSS website in the coming weeks. Also, anyone in Sydney next week should take the opportunity to come along to a free legal and research seminar about FOSS, with Mark Webbink and Dan Ravicher speaking. Details on the ASK-OSS website.

So I’m in Canberra all week this week, mostly in meetings about the ASK-OSS project, and a few Government meetings talking about FOSS. It has already been great, and there is a group of us putting together a statement recommending the use of Open Standards in Australian Government, which I’ll post as soon as it is finalised. We are also looking at doing a guide for FOSS software development in the public sector. Pretty cool stuff

I’m hoping to catch up with some of the local FOSSers, but I’ve missed the CLUG meeting, so I’m hoping to catch the programmers SIG and maybe a few people for a coffee/beer

For all those interested in research and legal matters, the ASK-OSS project I’m working on is holding a great event including Mark Webbink (Red Hat Deputy General Counsel), Dan Ravicher (Legal Director at the Software Freedom Law Centre), Rob Pike (Google), Gernot Heiser (NICTA Program Leader) and Carl Middlehurst (NICTA General Counsel). It should be an awesome event, so check it out and click thought to the NICTA page for registrations. August 15th In Sydney, and a related event happening 17th August in Brisbane. Both linked from the ASK-OSS page.