Getting the message across to businesses

I was really happy to see today that Dahna McConnachie from Linuxworld covered my short presentation on building a FOSS strategy for business at Linuxworld last week. I was a little nervous and wasn’t sure if I got my points across ok, but going on how Dahna reported it, I did pretty well at getting my points across 🙂

“Balancing commercial interest with community interest is important for businesses looking at open source, said open source consultant Pia Waugh”

Very happy with that story. We managed to get a lot of positive press around Linuxworld Australia and I’m looking forward to participating next year. In the meantime I am also on the committee for linux.conf.au 2007 and we are starting to ramp up our organising, even though that event isn’t till January. It is certainly lining up to be a very busy year!

Peter Quinn – the “sandals and ponytail” man :)

So it was great to have Peter Quinn at Linuxworld, he is a sweet guy and really understands FOSS. Unfortunately his tongue in cheek comments about sandals and ponytails was taken quite over the top, so we arranged this little photo to show the guy is a great ally of FOSS and that he has a sense of humour 🙂 Thanks for playing along with us Peter!

Peter Quinn - The

Open Source Tasmania, and beyond!

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!

Linuxworld rocking :)

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 🙂

GPL held up in court

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.

Fund our ABC!

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.

Linux in Aussie school

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 🙂