Category: Uncategorized

One of the big presentations at WSIS was the OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE: PROS AND CONS FROM A DEVELOPMENT PERSPECTIVE. It had a proprietary supporter dude being slammed by all the ‘developing country’ reps over why FOSS is more relevant to them. Reasons from Peru such as the information fo the government belonging to the people, and if it is controlled by a vendor then it is at risk. Really sweet stuff, check out the documentation, transcriptions, and audio/visual from all presentations over the coming weeks.

NOIE has a booth at WSIS, and compared to the otehr countries it is sooo weak! I was a little embarrased. Giving out showbags with ACA stuff, and NOIE stuff that isn’t interesting compared to the Malaysian efforts, or the many African countries present, or any of the other countries here. The Malaysians are particularly awesome. They have amazing initiative, they created a site for open and free discussion about Islam online, with texts, 3d artifacts, forums and mailings lists. Will be trying to get Australia into the loop on that one 🙂

The Malaysians also have about %70 women in IT, which just blows me away, they have initiatives to get MEN into IT! Funny for us, but it certainly made redundant all these ideas that women are ‘genetically not suited to technical work’. Some of the crack I’ve heard over the years is amazing. Australia, and several other countries still have a long way to go.

Having LPI meetnigs with all the affiliates, we have 10 countries represented here, Brazil, Germany, Switzerland, Australia, USA, Canada, Jamaica, Pakistan, Bulgaria, and China. They are a great group and it has been a pleasure working with them. As soon as I get this stupid Canon digital camera working under linux, pics will be up.

Also the Skolelinux guys. Very kewl little project, am bringing back the iso to play with and distribute to the educonf at LCA2004 (if david lets me )

So the Activists meetings happening downtown (see geneva03.org and hubproject.org) has some interesting aspects. I have a few gripes, firstly they are not organised particularly well, when you are passionate about something, being organised about it is a must 🙂 secondly, one of the big philosophies floating around is of the Yomango dudes, who basically encourage “shoplifting as a form of social desobedience and direct action against multinational corporations”, which I completely disagree with. On the flip side there was an awesome bunch of people there to chat with, they had a decent web access (FINALLY!) and I went to a great talk on Morphix by Mako, and another talk I already blogged about.

Hubprojects is their main site for anyone interested. They have been abused here in Geneva and for that I sympathise. They turned up to the planned venue and were stopped by Swiss RIOT police and told to go to another location. Upon getting there were told they hadn’t heard of them. I’m not sure why there has been so much objection but I’m led to believe it is because of previous protests they have held.

I have spent the last few days at WSIS working at the LPI booth, chatting to corporate and government types about open source. I assisted in the LPI presentation by presenting a business case for adopting the open source methodology. It has been great in terms of getting the right message across, speaking to HEAPS of other countries about their schemes to get computers to socio-econimcally disadantaged areas, and how it has improved the quality of life, speaking to the Malaysian groups about them having 70% WOMEN IN IT! and many other rocking things.

6th Dec – Linux Australia Meeting

Meeting with Linux Australia ctte (except Leon and Anand). Went extremely well!

While we have not done everything we wanted to do, we have managed to nearly completely sort out the problems we unknowingly inherited. New constitution draft is up, membership registration page is nearly done (and constitutionally happy), plans for the new web site, to be done with a kewl app called drupal (drupal.org for those interested) early next year, a new charter! My favourite thing at this point was finding a way to incorporate transparency into a document that matters to the organisation and how it is run. It was suggested to me to release a document about Linux Australias’ dedication to transparency, but putting it in the actual charter creates a precedent and expectation that is more enforcible by the community.

We spoke about the AGM/SGM at LCA, and decided we want to add a small discussion point after the AGM (if we have time) to approach the subject of Linux Australia as an advocacy organisation. Thus far this year has been about damage control, fixing the issues, increasing the trust and buy-in, finding out what the community wants and needs and how Linux Australia can best facilitate these issues. We are still a long way from the desired communication with the entire community, mainly due to the inherited issue. With these addresses and out of the way, next year Linux Australia will be in a position to rock on.

Pumped for NZ

Boarded flight to Auckland in Sydney, felt odd to actually be getting on a plane again. Nice short flight, only 3.5 hours, nice dude to chat to about real estate and politics 🙂 Read most of the Australian papers on the plane.

Auckland – Saw the trailer for Lord of the Rings (III) on the plane, am completely pumped to come back to NZ for a real holiday (and I will be in a few months!!! Hey Mike I expect the grand tour!), however the closest I got was to see the airport and gaze into the distant mountains…am preparing for WSIS (http://wsis.org), is going to rock.

Auckland -> LA – Going to go straight through to Geneva, I can’t really afford US$200 a night at New York 🙂 Great movies on the plane, mind racing 1000 miles an hour, but the rest is doing me good!

There is an excellent conference, read up on geneva03.net for details, but I am now in a discussion about applying open source methodologies to other aspects in society, such as the media. Very interesting, I believe these talks will be available online, so look out for them. I will post them as soon as I am able.

This rocks, so much is happening, so much forward thinking and coordinated efforts.

I will be writing more about the last few days when I have time, lots of amazingy stuff! In the meantime there is some live streaming for you to see! Check out geneva03 and what is happening. Thanks for the tip Mako 🙂

ACT set to adopt open source bill

Hadn’t even seen this coming, rock on Canberra!

So I ended up travelling about 42 hours straight to get to the WSIS conference. All of the people around me complaining about 17, or 11, or 6! hours, pfft! Watched the trailer for Lord of the Rings III on the way to New Zealand, and got all psyched to see the country forgetting I would be there all of 2 hours. Ah, well, I will be returning there in a few months (Mike! I am expecting a tour and a drink 🙂

New York was snowing, 18 inches 😀 Like many Australians, real, thick, overcoming snow is fascinating. We have to supplement our ski fields with snow machines, I loved the place, and although I spent only a few hours there, am very keen to return.

So my flight path was Sydney -> Auckland -> LA -> New York -> Frankfurt -> and then Geneva. Phwoar!