Category: Government

I had to give a Joomla course recently, so I put together a basic guide to explain Content Management Systems (CMSs) and used Joomla as our example. I refer to loads of great Joomla guides in the guide, and try to assist people in a full Joomla implementation right through from the planning to adminstration and management. Check it out on my new publications page for Waugh Partners 🙂 Loads more will be put there in the short term future.

Last year Linux Australia had a stand at a massive event called the Education Expo in Sydney. Our stand was extremely popular so we are doing it again this year! This event has over 10,000 attendees including parents, teachers and students and we’ll be giving out information, software, giveaways and hosting a “Linux Challenge” for kids where they complete some tasks and then get a “Linux pack” with certificate, badge, toy and CD 🙂 Will post thanks and photos after the weekend.

So while working for the ASK-OSS research project, which is looking at the use of FOSS in Australian research and education, I keep coming across some absolute pearlers. The most recent was the FOSS policy put forward at Buffalo University in the US:

direct unmediated unfettered access to information is fundamental and essential to scholarly inquiry, academic dialog, research, the advancement of research methods, academic freedom, and freedom of speech

the free flow of information has for many years been hampered by incompatibilities between Microsoft software and non-Microsoft systems caused by Microsoft-specific modifications to open protocols (such as Kerberos[1]), document formats (such as HTML[2]), and programming languages (such as Java[3])

open-source software provides an alternative through whose use the core missions of the University at Buffalo can be preserved, nurtured, and enhanced

And so on and so forth. It makes for very interesting reading. I’ve also compiled in last months ASK-OSS newsletter the rationale of some well known Australian research projects about why they choose OSS. Check it out at the May Newsletter and join the newsletter for free (low traffic, very interesting!) if this sort of stuff is interesting to you 🙂

This year at CeBIT Open Source was a big deal. We were told this was because the previous years survey had an open ended question asking what people wanted to see, and the overwhelming response was “Linux”. Linuxworld coming to Australia for the first time was also probably an incentive 😉

Anyway as such, at CeBIT Linux Australia was a big participant. We had a large popular demo zone, our booth was extremely popular the entire three days and we ran two panel sessions. We were told that VioCorp would be recording the panel sessions and would a) have it all online within a few days and b) provide us with the video footage. Not only have neither of these happened as expected, but one of the panel sessions were missing from the CeBIT guide, you have to register to view the videos with an email address (and untick the “please bug me” option), they only have one of the panel sessions up, and they only offer videos in Microsoft Media Player format (when asked about Real Player as another option, they said “sure!” and proceeded to put a Real Player option up that has _NO CONTENT!_). Needless to say, I’m pretty annoyed. I would have brought a video camera for our sessions had I known. If anyone else wants to bug VioCorp about this, speak to Ian Gardiner there. Details on the website.

Melbourne and Tasmania are the current contestants for LCA2008. I have to say, the logo choices are pretty cool. Melbourne went with a tangram logo while Tasmania had a very cute Tasmanian Devil pretending to be a penguin. Awesome 🙂