So after over a decade, LinuxConf came back to Sydney.
The week started as usual with the two days of mini-confs. This time I attended the Open Source Bioinformatics and the Open Education mini-confs. I was quite impressed with both of them and they had a good level of attendee participation. The endnote for the Open Source Bioinformatics talk was a gentleman who put an Opal Card reader into his hand ABC news article Opal card bio-hacking. That certainly ended the day leaving everyone with alot of questions and learning more about another aspect of bioinformatics, bio-hacking.
I ended up volunteering for speaking introductions because it was my hometown and also I got to introduce some people whos work I respect.
There was a Free Software Foundation Lunch, Open Source Initiative Lunch and Google Education lunch. To be honest this year there were so many lunch initiatives going on that it was impossible to attend all the association ones and still have time to catch up with friends.
The highlight of the conference for me was Karen Sandlers keynote, there is not much I can say except I was in tears, laughter and an overwhelming sense that the work is never done and tomorrow is not set in stone and can be changed at any minute. She also raised some good points on how we need as stewards and creators of Open Source code ensure that we have an equal playing field which caters to the individual, not just the large corporation. She also raised the importance that foundations like Software Conservancy do for Open Source Code. And if you are ever thinking of what license to use then you should visit their website and drop them a line as Karen and Bradley are happy to assist.
It had been two years since I had been to a LinuxConf due to travel and work limitations so it was so good to be back in my local community again. So many faces to see and also a good healthy percentage of new faces in the crowd which shows the community is still growing strong.
There where so many good talks it would be impossible to say my favorite, but I will tried to compile a short list of talks I enjoyed.
and next year it looks like we are off to ChristChurch, New Zealand… see you there \O/