linux.conf.au 2013 News

Wednesday Night BOFs

Submitted on 2012-12-11 21:04

So it turns out there are a whole heap of things that need to be organised for an LCA. But, just like in the rest of life, sometimes the best parts are the impromptu ones. You’ll have heard people refer to the ‘hallway track’ at conferences, and we here at LCA HQ want to make sure there are plenty of opportunities for you to meet up with your friends in the hallway in between talks. But what happens when you really want to meet up with other people who are interested in the same things you are, and five minutes between talks just isn’t enough? Well, you have a BOF of course!

Birds of a Feather sessions are a regular feature at LCA, and this year we decided to change things up a little so that there is more time for more BOF goodness. Normally, the Wednesday night of an LCA is given over to the Professional Delegates’ Networking Sessions (PDNS). We decided to reshuffle the PDNS to a breakfast, so we can give over Wednesday night to BOFs instead (we heard you liked BOFs, so we added more BOF to your BOF!).

Basically, the plan is thus: Wednesday afternoon, once you’ve gotten your fill of the day’s sessions, you have a choice. You can head on back to your accommodation, go out for dinner with friends, or just chill out for a while (let’s face it, by Wednesday afternoon we’re all feeling pretty exhausted!). Or you can grab your fellow birds, check their feathers, and head off to a meeting room in the conference venue to kick on.

So, if you want to organise a BOF, we suggest you head over to the wiki page, and start organising! If you just want to join the BOF party, then keep an eye on that page, and keep Wednesday night free.

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Debian Guru to Keynote Linux Conference

Submitted on 2012-11-30 21:23

linux.conf.au, Australia’s premier open source conference, have announced their third keynote speaker for 2013. Bdale Garbee is best known for his pioneering work with Debian, and for open source community-building efforts with the Linux Foundation, Freedombox, and Software in the Public Interest (SPI). He is a regular presence at linux.conf.au, wowing many recent conference-goers with his rocketry exploits and other hobby activities turned into open source projects.

Bdale made his first contribution to free software in 1979, and has extensive experience in hardware design, Unix internals and embedded systems. He recently retired from long service as HP's Chief Technologist for Open Source and Linux, and now serves as President of Software in the Public Interest, and on the boards of directors of the Linux Foundation and the Freedombox Foundation. In 2008, Bdale became the first individual recipient of a Lutece d'Or award from the Federation Nationale de l'Industrie du Logiciel Libre in France.

The keynote speech, titled "The Future of the Linux Desktop", is inspired by Bdale's observation that free software has been less successful in the traditional desktop and notebook markets than in many other contexts. After a long period of optimism, it is becoming less and less clear when "the year of the Linux desktop" might happen, if ever! Bdale will discuss how and why he thinks we ended up in this situation, and offer thoughts on how the Linux desktop software community might refocus on building a compelling Linux desktop environment.

For more information on the talks scheduled to be presented at linux.conf.au this year, visit https://linux.conf.au/programme/schedule.

About linux.conf.au

linux.conf.au showcases the best of open source and community-driven software and hardware, and it’s coming to the Australian National University from 28 January to 2 February, 2013. The conference provides a great opportunity for open source developers, users, hackers, and makers to share their ideas and further improve their projects.

Contact

Michael Still (Conference Director) +61 2 6140 4546 media@lca2013.linux.org.au

Golden Ticket Winner Announced for LCA

Submitted on 2012-11-28 17:04

Open source conference, linux.conf.au, is being held in Canberra at the Australian National University in January 2013, and the organisers have just announced the winner of a free 'Golden Ticket'. The Golden Ticket draw offered a free professional level registration to one submitter who did not have a presentation selected for the conference programme. The intention was that adding a prize to papers submissions would encourage people who would otherwise not submit to "give it a go".

linux.conf.au is pleased to announce that the winner of the Golden Ticket draw is Gavin Jackson. Gavin is a Canberra resident who has attended several linux.conf.au conferences previously at his own expense. He says he is "absolutely thrilled and grateful to be attending the event as a delegate and [I am] looking forward to networking with other members of the LCA community and sharing war stories, tips and beers."

Apart from the obvious cost savings of using Linux and open source software, Gavin says he appreciates how responsive and helpful the open source community is, and how much technical knowledge exists locally in the Australia and New Zealand region, which is clearly demonstrated at linux.conf.au

At the time of this announcement, the 2013 conference has already sold well over half the ticket allocation. With two of the four keynote speakers still to be announced, tickets are selling fast and are likely to be sold out before the doors open on 28 January.

For more information about the conference, check out the website http://linux.conf.au.

About linux.conf.au

linux.conf.au showcases the best of open source and community-driven software and hardware, and it’s coming to the Australian National University from 28 January to 2 February, 2013. The conference provides a great opportunity for open source developers, users, hackers, and makers to share their ideas and further improve their projects.

Contact

Michael Still (Conference Director) +61 2 6140 4546 media@lca2013.linux.org.au

Internet Pioneer to Keynote Linux Conference

Submitted on 2012-11-23 09:48

Australia’s premier open source conference, linux.conf.au, has announced its second keynote speaker for 2013. Radia Perlman is famous for her work on the Ethernet spanning tree protocol (STP), the ISIS routing protocol, TRILL (the recent standard that improves upon STP), and other technologies that are fundamental building blocks of the Internet as we know it. She has also made many contributions to network security, including assured deletion of data, the protocol for authentication and key establishment in IPSec,  trust models for PKI, and network infrastructure that is robust against malicious trusted components.

Radia is currently a Fellow at Intel Labs, specialising in network and security protocols. She is the author of the textbook "Interconnections: Bridges, Routers, Switches, and Internetworking Protocols", and coauthor of "Network Security". She has a PhD from MIT in computer science, holds over 100 issued patents, and has received various industry awards including lifetime achievement awards from ACM’s SIGCOMM and Usenix, and an honorary doctorate from KTH.

The keynote, titled "Reasoning about Networks", intends to show that a lot of what everyone thinks they know about network protocols is actually false. Radia will demonstrate that the field is shrouded in hype and rivalry between competing teams. It is difficult to know what, if anything, is true, since any of the designs can be changed to incorporate ideas from other designs. The talk will cover topics such how to get to the heart of what might be intrinsic differences, separate out orthogonal issues rather than focusing on complete specifications, and comparing technologies without emotion. Radia will also discuss some recent technologies, and help you to separate the hype from the facts.

For more information on the talks scheduled to be presented at linux.conf.au this year, visit http://linux.conf.au/programme/schedule.

About linux.conf.au

linux.conf.au showcases the best of open source and community-driven software and hardware, and it’s coming to the Australian National University from 28 January to 2 February, 2013. The conference provides a great opportunity for open source developers, users, hackers, and makers to share their ideas and further improve their projects.

Contact

Michael Still (Conference Director) +61 2 6140 4546 media@lca2013.linux.org.au

Chumby Co-Inventor to Keynote Linux Conference

Submitted on 2012-11-16 14:22

linux.conf.au, Australia’s premier open source conference, have announced the first of four keynote speakers for 2013. Andrew "bunnie" Huang is best known as the lead hardware developer of "Chumby", a device designed from the ground up as an open source gadget, complete with open source hardware, and whose designers encourage hackers to get into the device and make it their own. He is also the author of "Hacking the Xbox", a book about reverse engineering consumer products and the social and practical issues around doing so.

bunnie is currently a Research Affiliate of the MIT Media Lab, technical advisor for several hardware startups and MAKE magazine, and shares his experiences manufacturing hardware in China through his blog. He takes what he calls a "push-and-pull" approach to open hardware. He contributes original open designs, as well as liberating closed designs. He recently released an open implementation of a man-in-the-middle attack on high-bandwidth digital content protection (HDCP), a method of copy protection used by many media outlets, which enables overlays on encrypted video without circumventing copyright controls.

The keynote, titled "Linux in the Flesh: Adventures Embedding Linux in Hardware", embraces the idea that Linux is not just for desktops and servers, but exists, in one form or another, in millions of smartphones, routers, set top boxes, and other hardware appliances that we encounter in everyday life. bunnie will share some his experiences with embedding Linux in various hardware clients, the interplay between hardware and software architecture, system planning for embedded applications, and the challenges of hardware manufacturing and building a business selling physical goods.

For more information on the talks scheduled to be presented at linux.conf.au this year, visit http://linux.conf.au/programme/schedule. .

About linux.conf.au

linux.conf.au showcases the best of open source and community-driven software and hardware, and it’s coming to the Australian National University from 28 January to 2 February, 2013. The conference provides a great opportunity for open source developers, users, hackers, and makers to share their ideas and further improve their projects.

Bus Information

Submitted on 2012-12-11 21:02

One of the things that is really important to us here at LCA HQ is being as environmentally responsible as we possibly can. Which turns out to be not actually all that easy when you need to get seven or eight hundred people from all over the place into the city for the event.

So one of the first things we thought we wanted to do when we put together our bid was to try and make travelling to the conference as green as possible. We’ve managed to pull together a few different things that we hope you can work into your travel plans, and do a little bit to help our planet:

If you’re travelling from Sydney consider taking a Murray’s coach to Canberra. The coach only takes three hours, and the carbon impact of a coach ride is around 36 kg of carbon versus 190 kg for a flight. Even better, the coach is only $15 each way! Bargain! We’re also going to run a free shuttle from the Jolimont Centre where the buses come in to the conference venue and accommodation. The shuttles will run from 10am to 6pm on the Sunday before the conference, and 9am to noon on the Monday. To get you back after LCA ends, shuttles will run from noon to 9pm on the Friday at the end of the conference, and from 10am to 6pm on the Saturday.

If you are flying to Canberra then we have a free shuttle service to and from the airport, so you don’t need to take a taxi. The shuttle is the same one which stops at Jolimont for the bus people, so it also runs from 10am to 6pm on the Sunday before the conference, and 9am to noon on the Monday. To get you back after LCA ends, the shuttles will run from noon to 9pm on the Friday at the end of the conference, and from 10am to 6pm on the Saturday.

The ANU campus is big and we understand that for some people a ten minute walk to the keynote in the morning is a bit of a challenge. We of course want to encourage you to walk, but for those who would prefer to take a bus, we are running limited shuttles from the ANU accommodation to the keynotes each morning. We will also provide limited shuttle service back to the accommodation at the end of each conference day.

We are providing buses for all the off-campus social events as well. Details will be provided as we get a bit closer.

Don’t forget that we are also stealing 2012’s excellent idea and selling trees as a carbon offset option during registration. It doesn’t cost much, but it makes a big difference.

We’re all ears if you have other ideas about how to make the conference as environmentally friendly as possible. Send them to contact@lca2013.linux.org.au!

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LCA2013 Earlybird Registrations Open

Submitted on 2012-10-02 14:45

Let the Celebrations Begin!

linux.conf.au, one of the largest open source conferences in the southern hemisphere, has now opened registrations. For a strictly limited time, discounted 'early bird' tickets are available through the conference website at http://linux.conf.au.

The 2013 conference builds on a long tradition of sharing technical know-how between seasoned open source gurus and newcomers to the community. Since its inception in 1999, the conference has moved around Australia and New Zealand, most recently to Ballarat, Victoria, and Brisbane, Queensland. This year, the conference is in Canberra in celebration of our national capital’s centenary year. The conference was last hosted in Canberra in 2005, and it has grown significantly since then, bringing some unique challenges to the organising team.

In true open source style, the conference is run entirely by volunteers, who are often drawn from a local Linux user group. This year is no exception, with the core organising team all being long standing members of the Canberra Linux Users Group (CLUG), which hosts meetings at the Australian National University (ANU) once a month. CLUG and the ANU have been major supporters of linux.conf.au for many years running, and are proud to be involved again this year.

Many of the original 2005 organisers have returned for the 2013 effort, including Michael Still, who has stepped into the shoes of Conference Director (and is affectionately referred to as “The Grand Catamaran” for reasons known only to the core organising team). Michael says that, while the role of Conference Director is time consuming and sometimes stressful, it also can also be very rewarding: "the opportunity to work with so many talented people, to rub shoulders with the open source elite, and of course to develop skills in new areas, is very valuable and also a whole lot of fun".

The current organising committee has been working together since mid-2011 in order to bring the 2013 conference together. There's a lot to do, with the conference running over six days, offering over 100 presentations (including four keynotes and twelve miniconferences), four formal social events, delegate accommodation, hundreds of giveaways, and moving over 500 potential delegates into and around the city. The group is as diverse as the tasks they need to complete, though, with highly experienced developers, systems administrators, engineers, and technical communicators amongst the team.

Perhaps the most important part of any conference is the speaker lineup. linux.conf.au has broken with tradition and announced their conference programme much earlier than usual. Featured on the programme this year are open source luminaries such as Jonathan Oxer, Noirin Plunkett, and local developer Andrew Tridgell. The conference organisers, together with the papers committee, have gone to great effort to ensure that the programme is stocked with deep technical content. The focus this year is on what's coming on the technical horizon, from the latest developments in the the Linux kernel, to working with remote clusters and cloud technology. Still to be announced, however, are the four keynote speakers. Traditionally, conference keynotes are big names in the open source space, with previous years boasting such respected speakers as Jacob Applebaum and Vint Cerf.

The social events are also an important part of the linux.conf.au experience for delegates, with the main conference dinner, called the 'penguin dinner', the highlight of the week. This year, delegates are being treated to a relaxed evening on Mount Stromlo, where they will be able to delight in some of the best views the city has to offer, and enjoy a relaxed 'backyard barbecue'-style dinner. The team are also promising some other events for the evening, just in case the view isn't quite exciting enough for you. The other highly anticipated event is the Professional Delegates' Networking Session (PDNS), which for the first time is being held as a breakfast, located in the breathtaking Gandel Hall at the National Gallery of Australia.

As an open source event, the conference is largely reliant on their sponsors. linux.conf.au is overseen and managed by Linux Australia, who use the conference as their primary incubator for open source development throughout Australia and New Zealand. This year, linux.conf.au is also supported by IBM, HP, Anchor Systems, Defence Signals Directorate, and Linux Magazine. Without the generous help of these partner organisations, there would be no linux.conf.au.

Canberra is expected to be in full party mode during 2013, with the ACT Government spending over $30 million to ensure that the city celebrates its 100th birthday in serious style, and linux.conf.au 2013 will be no exception. Head on over to http://linux.conf.au now and grab your discounted early bird ticket quickly while they last. Then go and put your party shoes in your suitcase, because you're going to need them.

About linux.conf.au

linux.conf.au showcases the best of open source and community-driven software and hardware, and it’s coming to the Australian National University from 28 January to 2 February, 2013. The conference provides a great opportunity for open source developers, users, hackers, and makers to share their ideas and further improve their projects. More information and tickets are available from http://linux.conf.au.

Conference Programme Announced

Submitted on 2012-09-20 13:23

This year linux.conf.au, Australia’s premier open source conference, has broken with tradition and released their draft programme (http://linux.conf.au/programme/schedule) and partner’s programme (http://linux.conf.au/programme/partners) schedules before registrations open on 1 October.

The conference will feature six streams of talks across five days. The first two days will be for miniconferences, with the rest of the conference dedicated to eighty-four talks and six tutorials, on topics ranging from software engineering to systems administration. This year, there is a heavy focus on deep technical content, including many talks on the Linux kernel, and various hardware platforms. The conference also boasts four keynotes from pivotal industry figures, which will be announced in the next few months.

The partner’s programme has become a traditional element of linux.conf.au, but this is the first year to announce a draft schedule before tickets for the programme go on sale. The partner’s programme consists of a family friendly tour of tourist attractions around Canberra.

Conference Director Michael Still said “releasing the schedule for the conference is a significant milestone and I’m very pleased that we hit it ahead of our internal timeline. We are also proud to have a series of simply fantastic presenters this year, and expect to be presenting a solid conference that offers great value for money.”

Early bird registrations for the conference open on 1 October, and discounted tickets will be available until sold out. The number of early bird tickets is strictly limited, and they usually sell out very quickly. Delegates will need to get in quickly after 1 October to make sure they get the best deal.

About linux.conf.au

linux.conf.au showcases the best of open source and community-driven software and hardware, and it’s coming to the Australian National University from 28 January to 2 February, 2013. The conference provides a great opportunity for open source developers, users, hackers, and makers to share their ideas and further improve their projects. Early bird registrations open 1 October, see http://linux.conf.au for all the info.

LCA2013 Programming Miniconfs Announced

Submitted on 2012-09-15 10:45

linux.conf.au, Australia’s premier open source conference, have announced the final miniconferences for 2013, all of which address open source programming. Miniconfs are day-long sessions on a specific topic. As the name suggests, they are expected to be run as a miniature conference, with a formal schedule published ahead of time listing speakers and sessions for the day.

Underpinning all open source development is one single thing: programming. Open source programming tools are fast becoming the language of choice for many developers. According to one study*, Python is consistently listed within the top ten languages by popularity.

Open Programming: This miniconference provides an opportunity for application developers to share their techniques and practices for development with free and open source tools. It provides an opportunity to discuss programming techniques, best practices, and developer values across all open source programming languages.

Developer Automation and Continuous Integration: The Developer Automation miniconference discusses the current state of the art of open source developer tooling and testing automation. It will cover tools like Jenkins or Buildbot, build event triggers like Zuul or Tarmac, and code review systems like Gerrit or Launchpad.

Browser: The humble web browser is a key component of the modern internet. The browser miniconference is focused on the capabilities of browsers, and how to provide web developers with new and open technologies to deliver web users an experience like never before.

About linux.conf.au

linux.conf.au showcases the best of open source and community-driven software and hardware, and it’s coming to the Australian National University from 28 January to 2 February, 2013. The conference provides a great opportunity for open source developers, users, hackers, and makers to share their ideas and further improve their projects. Early bird registrations open 1 October, see http://linux.conf.au for all the info.

* http://www.langpop.com/

Papers, Papers, Papers!

Submitted on 2012-09-09 15:30

It’s been a couple of weeks since we closed the for Call for Presentations, and the papers committee has been working really hard to review all of your submissions. We had well over 300 proposals to read, and even with a team of twenty people to review them all, there were some days where it just didn’t feel as though we would be able to make it. In the end, we did it, though. It took us four weeks, and we made over 3000 reviews all up. That’s a lot of reviews!

It turns out that that wasn’t even the hard part though. The hard part was where members of the papers committee came from all around Australia and New Zealand to do the final cut, and create a program. It was a long weekend, and everyone needed a beer or three once we were done, just to get over the shock of it all. But the good news is that we’ve come up with something that we think is really awesome. Like, REALLY awesome. LCA in Canberra next year is going to be AMAZING.

So now we’re busy contacting everyone who has been accepted to make sure that they can actually come and give their talk. This is happening in stages and it might take us a little while. So if you haven’t heard from us yet, DON’T PANIC. We’ll get through the list soon, and everyone will know if they’ve been accepted or not before too long. This is partly because we want to make sure our system doesn’t break down from overload, and partly so that our speaker liaisons don’t break down from overload and set the system on fire. Or something.

But, once all that has happened, and assuming nothing gets set on fire, we open early bird regos on 1 October and the real fun starts. So make sure you know where your party shoes are, you’re gonna need them real soon now ...

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