Unfortunately, we are bad winners and losers

So I always a most embarrassed about my country around the time when some hugely publicised sporting event comes up that Australian teams are participating in. Don’t get me wrong, I admire athletes and their trainers, and how they can achieve so much, however I am embarrassed about how the average Aussie deals with winning or losing such events. If we win, as is the case in the soccer recently against Uruguay, Aussies are gloating, some are even saying “oh the poor losers, it’s not like they have anything else to do” (yet another silly demonstration by a few individuals who are uneducated in the world), and generally not being in my opinion good winners. We tend to like rubbing it in to our competitors and I find such behaviour dishonorable and pathetic. Anyway, when we lose such events, we find every excuse under the sun rather than concede that the other side may simply be superior for that event at that time. There is rarely a graciousness to Australian participation in sports, and it’d be great if we could be competitive _and_ somewhat humble, or at least gracious in our participation.

Come on Aussies, lets take a little more joy in the participation of sport (and life), and a little less at other peoples expense. Lets try to match our competitive sporting attitudes with a positive and gracious attitude of participation.

Moving and Journos

Well on Sunday, I moved Jeff and I into a new apartment, what a day! Many many thanks to all those who helped out. That means you MIL (Kathryn), Silvia, Sue, Mick, Matt and Mark 🙂 We got almost everything done, and now I’m going to take all week to move the last 10% 🙂

Also, just a quick note to Rodney in relation to his latest post. We love ya Rodney, even if we are also your harshest critics. I think he has a good point that runs deeper than how our community treats journos, in that our community is very _bad_ at appreciating people. We are the first to bite, and the last to say thankyou. I think there’s a message in that for everyone, don’t you? 🙂

Thank someone today! I say thankyou to Rodney for all your efforts in getting FOSS into the mainstream consciousness, and for all your help and participation in the Linux Australia community 🙂

ACS – ICT in Government conference

So yesterday I went to the ACS ICT in Government conference, and was chuffed to see a lot of Open Source mentioned in talks, when it looked like there wouldn’t be any 🙂 In Edward Mandlas opening talk I listened to his points about needing to grow “IP” creation in Australia (he said we barely make any software here, he should check out the Open Source scene), needing to address our trade deficit, needing to become creators and not just users of ICT and asked the question whether we should leverage Open Source more as an industry to solve these and other issues. He only hesitated for a moment, and then very strongly said yes, which was great. Always good to get that kind of affirmation, particularly from bodies that are quite middle ground.

We got to hear about what the Bureau of Statistics in a new project completely based on Open Source, the National Data Network. Unfortunately they’ve made the system a client/server system and the client only runs on Windows, but it is nice to see Government agencies at least satisfying their technical needs with Open Source all over the place 🙂

Computers in Nhulunbuy – success!

A couple of days ago I received a news article about our implementation of Linux computers in Nhulunbuy. Rock on! 🙂 It is hopefully the first of many small successes of Linux in Australia, where the communities that most need help can help themselves through the use of FOSS. Open Source solving our social problems, and not just business or technical problems 🙂

Spain and the Open Source World Conference

I`m in Spain for the Open Source World Conference, which has an fantasic array of people to speak and hear from. In only 24 hours I’m already meeting the most amazing people! I’ve already met FOSS advocates, users, teachers and policy makers from Mexico, Spain (obviously), Venezuela, Colombia, The Dominican Republic, Argentina, Brazil, and more. Obviously Spanish is the language of choice for the conference so I am rapidly picking some up. I’ve made a deal that if I learn working Spanish by June, I’ll go to a FOSS conference in Colombia, which would be awesome! I’ve been bouncing my talk ideas around and people are very keen to hear it, which is a relief. It is the worst when you aren’t sure of your audience, but I am covering enough that even the most knowledgable here will get something out of it, I hope 🙂 The plan is to cover the evolution of FOSS, how it is going from a technology solution, to a busienss solution, to a social solution. Already here I am seeing countries at all three stages. I’ll also be covering what makes up ‘Open Love’, or Open Source/Licences, Open Knowledge, Open Community and Open Standards, without any one of which you wouldn’t be able to succeed. I’ll also be covering some case studies around the world, what we are doing in Australia, and the many challenges and opportunities for FOSS around the world. Should be fun 🙂

I’m looking forward to seeing Maddog this afternoon, Maureen tomorrow, Jeff tomorrow, and who knows who else I’ll meet here 🙂

I’m gonna be on TV!

So tonight I was on the set of Insight (SBS) for the topic of the potential of a bird flu (or other) pandemic in Australia, and our ability to cope with that. It was a fascinating night, with speakers from Australian Government, the World Health Organisation and a few local experts. I even got to say my piece about my SARS scare in Adelaide after getting back from China (which is the annoying reason why I missed most of LCA 2004). Check it out Tuesday night, 7:30pm on SBS of course 🙂