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Hugh Blemings's Blog, A Diary and Miscellaneous ramblings
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Fri, 30 Jan 2009
Was fortunate enough to attend linux.conf.au again this year and it remains my favourite Free Software centric event. For me it's a great mix of technical and social happenings - as I joked to a couple of folk it's good that we have such events or we'd never get the whole family together!
All involved did a great job, the organisers having made nice tweaks to what has become quite a well established and successful formula. I particularly appreciated the availability of decent espresso in the main conference venue :)
During the miniconfs I alternated between the Kernel, Business/Legal and Free as in Freedom tracks and found some good food for thought in both. That as a community we are attracting talented people from disciplines outside Computer Science/Engineering to our ranks is a great thing.
Thursday right after lunch I co-presented a session with Jon Oxer on hardware hacking with the Arduino. It seemed to go over pretty well though we both noted things we'd do differently next time. It was the first time I'd worked with Jon on a session and it was a delight to work with him - sharp guy and boundless ideas.
Thursday afternoon I presented "Tricks of the Trade: Learning Free Software Hacking from Clever People" - a session based on what I'd learned from working with smart folk in the community and the guys at OzLabs. I'd presented similar sessions in the past which had gone very well but this time around it didn't quite flow as I'd have liked. Not helped it seemed by me forgetting not to mumble and some connectivity issues that hosed a couple of the planned demos. Have some thoughts on how to re-work should I do it again though - we live and learn :)
Friday morning was humbling for me - Linux Australia announced the Community Recognition Awards at linux.conf.au. Janet Hawtin and Alli Russell received awards for their work in the community in Graphics Design and Speaker Liaison for LCA respectively, thoroughly deserved both.
I was completely caught by surprise when it was announced that I was the third recipient, the endorsement reading "For helping build and maintain the Linux Australia and IBM relationship in support of linux.conf.au over the past 10 years"
I've been fortunate enough to be involved one way or another with CALU/LCA since it's inception. Over the years I've been an attendee, speaker, general volunteer, company representative and occasional sounding board for the organisers and have been delighted to have had such a broad involvement in an event I enjoy so much.
Guess I just saw it as doing my bit but to have it recognised by my friends and colleagues in the community just blew me away. I don't think I managed to string anything terribly coherent together at the time so will re-iterate my thanks here :)
Chris was kind enough to send a photo.
Last but by no means least, props for Arjen, Paul et. al. for taking the initiative to setup bluehackers.org and distributing stickers for same at the conf.
See you all Wellington :)