What a flurry of ACTA stuff today -- here's a press release from InternetNZ on their "PublicACTA" initiative.

InternetNZ to take public message to ACTA negotiators
Media Release
2 March 2010

InternetNZ (Internet New Zealand Inc) will assist the public in voicing its concerns about the controversial international Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) through an open conference to be held next month in Wellington, New Zealand.

“We’re going to give the public the chance to have their say - in contrast to the secrecy of the negotiation process,” says Jordan Carter, InternetNZ Policy Director.

PublicACTA will be held on Saturday, 10 April 2010, two days ahead of Round 8 of the ACTA negotiations on 12-16 April in Wellington. The outputs of PublicACTA will be provided to the New Zealand government negotiators.

PublicACTA will be an open and public opportunity for people to critique the known and likely content of the ACTA proposals, providing a counterpoint to the secrecy of the negotiations.

“These plurilateral negotiations appear to extend well beyond the area of trade and physical counterfeiting to potentially cover non-commercial infringement of copyright material by ordinary citizens and digital rights management,” Carter says.

Despite the high level of secrecy surrounding the process, some of the proposals have leaked and demonstrate cause for concern.

Tonight i defend my claim to a sparkly pink tiara at Bloggers Predict 2010
Thursday 28 January 2010
5:30pm - 8:00pm
Where: Wellington Regional Chamber of Commerce, level 28, The Majestic Centre, 100 Willis Street

The 2010 lineup
Brenda Wallace (@br3nda) Current tiara-holder, Brenda was UP Visionary of the year for 2009, can she defend her title in 2010? The Capital City’s geek girl extraordinaire and queen bee of the software community, Brenda is to mobile technology and open source what honey is to brown bread, she makes it taste better! Brenda blogs on Coffee.geek.nz about coffee, gadgets, opensource, wellington, new zealand, music, and above all things: freedom.
Philip Fierlinger (@skyrize) From Silicon Valley to Silicon Welly, Philip’s web design expertise and has been eagerly sought after by online businesses and conference-goers alike. Currently design chief at Xero, blogger at Turntable Media Philip’s passion for web usability also led him to establish his own consultancy.
Mauricio Freitas (@freitasm) Geekzone head honcho and microblogging enthusiast. If there’s a new gadget being launched you can be sure Mauricio has an opinion about it. Been renovating his kitchen for last 6 months and has forgotten how to cook, however is on first name basis with all the (good) cafe owners in town. Possibly Wellington’s most avid “Tweeter”.

Why you should go to LCA, by Selena Deckleman
http://www.chesnok.com/daily/2010/01/27/why-you-should-go-to-lca-2011/

LWN articles (subscription required while the stories are new)
An LCA 2010 overview http://lwn.net/Articles/371044/
LCA: Static analysis with GCC plugins http://lwn.net/Articles/370717/
LCA: Cooperative management of package copyright and licensing data http://lwn.net/Articles/370308/
LCA: How to destroy your community http://lwn.net/Articles/370157/

Another brilliant LCA! by Tridge http://blog.tridgell.net/?p=21

Computer World NZ http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/devt/376AB6C5B174B722CC2576B2007B7F93

75% of Linux code is written by paid devs http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/17365/1/

Smarter Linux file structure aims to ease software management http://www.techworld.com.au/article/333549/smarter_linux_file_structure_...

Make Meeting Times Inconvenient To Get Better Results http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2010/01/make-meeting-times-inconvenient-to-...

That rather counter-intuitive suggestion came from Leslie Hawthorn, a program manager at Google. during a presentation at linux.conf.au on how to get involved with open source software

Illuminating the elephant in the open source room http://www.linuxworld.com/news/2010/012110-illuminating-the-elephant-in-...

it's in Wellington New Zealand - 18th Jan to 23rd Jan.

There's still time to submit a speaking proposal to a miniconf:
http://www.lca2010.org.nz/programme/miniconfs

There are 3 funding programmes, if you're an open source contributor and need $$$ to get to Wellington for the conference.
http://www.lca2010.org.nz/media/news/89

The Programme is out - checkout the speakers and topics:
http://www.lca2010.org.nz/programme/schedule

There's is a partner's programme -- details coming soon.

Accomodation - there's student-style accomodation (which I reccomend) - also 4 star, 5 star, and apartments for groups/families.
This year there are couple and family accomodations available.
http://www.lca2010.org.nz/register/accommodation

The primary sponsors, who you should all be thinking good thoughts about now, are: Internet NZ and Google....

other sponsors: Catalyst, Canonical, Egressive, 3months, amberDMS, Dreamhost, Ingres, iwantmyname.com.

Testing summary - 27 June 2009 Wellington NZ
Who - Tabitha, Tom, Grant, Callum and Brenda

back at the Southern Cross, tried getting devkeys, changing dates, played cellgame-1 and XOlympics-1

Spent more time looking at different ways of upgrading Sugar on XO
hardware and also how to run Sugar on other hardware in an emulator.

Wrote proposal draft for Mini conf at the Linux Conference to be held
in Wellington, New Zealand, January 2010. Looking for other
contributors/supporters so feel free to put your hand up! http://www.lca2010.org.nz/

=== linux.conf.au Call For Papers ===

linux.conf.au ( http://www.lca2010.org.nz ) is pleased to announce the
opening of its Call for Papers for the coming linux.conf.au, LCA2010!

LCA2010 will be held from Monday 18 January 2010 to Saturday 23 January
2010 in Wellington, New Zealand.

linux.conf.au isn't just a Linux conference. It is a technical
conference about Free and Open Source Software, held annually in
Australasia since 2001 - covering everything from the Linux Kernel and
the BSDs to OpenOffice.org, from networking to audio-visual magic, from
hardware hacks to Creative Commons.

=== Important Dates ===

Call for Papers opens: Monday 29 June 2009
Call for Papers closes: Friday 24 July 2009
Email Notifications from Papers Committee: Early September 2009
Registrations open: Mid September 2009
Conference Dates: Monday 18 January to Saturday 23 January 2010

=== Information on Papers ===

The LCA2010 Papers Committee is looking for a broad range of papers
spanning everything from programming and software to desktop and
userspace to community, government and education but there is one
essential:

The core of your paper must relate to open source in some way,
i.e., if it's a paper about software then the software has to
be licensed under an Open Source license.

The LCA2010 Papers Committee welcome proposals for Papers on the
following topics:
* Kernel and system topics such as filesystems and embedded devices
* Networking topics such as peer to peer networking, or tuning a
TCP/IP stack

Miniconf are mini 1 day conferences (or sometimes 2 days). They happen on the Monday and Tuesday of LCA Linux conferences. The 2010 conference is in Wellington, and the call for miniconf proposals is open now.

By proposing a miniconf you're agreeing to host it: you find the speakers (usually you do your own call for papers after you announce your miniconf) and you find volunteers to do the MC announcement of the next speaker etc. The Main conference will find you a room, and AV gear etc.

They mini confs provide great variety to the conferences - the topics are diverse

Here's a list i've compiled of miniconfs from the past.

2009:

Open Source Databases
Linux Kernel
System administration
MythTV
LinuxChix
Mobile Devices
Business of Open Source
Linux Security
Multimedia
Virtualisation
GAming
Freedom

2008:

Community Wireless
Debian
Education
Embedded
Fedora
Multimedia
Security
Virtualisation
Distro Summit
Gaming
Gentoo
Gnome
kernel
LinuxChix
MySQL
System Administration

2007

Debian
Gnome
Education
Embedded
Virtualisation
MySQL
Research
Gaming
Kernel
Postgres
OpenOffice
LinuxChix

Here are some things I know the NZ opensource community is into, and I'd like to see proposed by somebody for Wellington 2010:
Linux/opensource Automobiles
Opensource in Governments
Opensource in Mobile and/or Telecommunications.
One Laptop Per Child / Sugar.

Here's the worst kept best secret in Wellington - Linux.conf.au is heading to wellington for 2010. This was finally officially announced at the 2009 conference final dinner in Hobart last night.

It began as a lunch time conversation in Sydney - then someone made a wiki page - then people volunteered, and we put together a team, picked Andrew Ruthven as our mighty leader, and created the winning conference bid. (with a huge amount of research and negotiation with wellington businesses and government in between)

Linux.conf.au varies from other opensource conferences I've attended, in that it's technically focused. Many conferences are targetted at management, and business owners making purchasing decisions. Linux.conf.au isn't. It's the actual hacker/coder/tester/degisners coming together to do face to face meetings, technical talks, and announcements from the people who actually build the opensource awesomeness we love.

It's a conference that's easy to get involved in. LCA was definitely a big part of my own decision to write more and more opensource code. (and there are plenty of ways to contribute, not just code).

marchingCubes.com HomeSource: marchingcubes.comBased in the city of Wellington, New Zealand - marchingCubes.com is a business that specialises in applying the power of computer technology as a tool to solve problems.    Wellington based opensource ninja company.
    

Simon Phipps - Open Source Forum - EventbriteSource: www.eventbrite.comWellington JUG presents Simon Phipps - Open Source Forum -- Monday, January 26, 2009 from 4:30 PM - 7:00 PM (GMT+1200) -- Holiday Inn - 75 Featherston Street - Wellington - New Zealand

Kiwicon - New Zealand's Hacker ConSource: kiwicon.orgHoly fucking sheepshit, Kiwicon 2k8! Yup, hold on to your hacking panties, we're at it again - Kiwicon 2k8, 27th & 28th September, 2008 in Wellington, New Zealand.

The Wellington linux conference australasia bid was all submitted on time yesterday... thanks to the huge amount of work by Susanne our team barrister, and the mighty leadership of Andrew (aka puck).

Even if we aren't successful (and i seriously hope we are, our bid is kick ass!), it was a great thing to see so much of Wellington, New Zealand, and Australia's opensource community help out with the Bid organising and the final document.

a collection of creative commons photos of Wellington, New Zealand

a collection of creative commons photos of Wellington, New Zealand

The usual suspects have put out a CFP for Wellington's Kiwicon security conference.

Kiwicon2k8 is intended to be an informal conference, drawing on the wider security community of Australia and New Zealand. It will be held in Wellington, New Zealand, on the weekend of the 27th and 28th of September, 2008.

Kiwicon's focus is on sharing information; ideas, code, and good whisky, in a rabelaisan carnival of security, nerdery, and *nix beards.

Collected "Press"

Google Open Source Blog - Wellington Girl Geek Dinners

By Brenda Wallace, Catalyst IT and Geek Girl at Large

There's a few events website for Wellington New Zealandbut why oh why do NONE of them have RSS feeds, or vcals?do they expect us to revist their site again and again, searching through day after day of result on the off chance something new and interesting is added?