Category: Uncategorized

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 🙂

Yesterday Google had their opening party for the new Sydney office. They sent out invitations to the broader community and had about 300 people turn up, most of whom were of the technical variety 🙂 I had a fun night chatting to loads of SLUGgers, researchers, and of course the Googlers. It was probably one of the most diverse technical crowd gatherings in Sydney, which meant a load of fringe people got to meet each other.

Google have something like 15 engineers in the local office (mostly Google Maps people) and they flew in 15 engineers from their New York office who were fun and interesting. Google’s office is, very cool to say the least. Bright colours, loads of room, nice hardware, a pool table and excellent kitchen. It actually reminded me of when I worked at OneTel, whose offices were Feng Shui compatible (seriously!) with loads of fish tanks, bright colours and a spacious work environment.

Google are very proactively getting more women into Google, and it was interesting to talk to Lars about some of the rationale behind that:

1) they want the best engineers out there, female and male
2) they want their workplace to reflect the diversty of ideas and approaches in the global community
3) they want a great workplace that is comfortable and fun for everyone

Pretty sensible really 🙂 They had some cool Google girl shirts, and I’ll wear mine to the next slug meeting 🙂

Hats off to you Google, I can see why it has become an engineer’s Mecca and it is great to have a team on the ground in Sydney. We look forward to your engineers participating in SLUG and the local technical community 🙂