speakers

i am wellington visionary of the year... again.

Posted Sun, 07/02/2010 - 14:11 by Shiny

btw, i won again.. i wouldn't mind being defeated by Jo, but couldn't let myself lose to mauricio.

It was my first evening out on my own since Casey was born - i was mega tired, and i had no time to prepare. basically had to make it up. sadly I missed out a bunch of stuff i wanted to say about OLPC and ACTA.

my summary of the other speakers:

Miraz: apple will take over the world
Mauricio: microsoft will take over the world
Me: robots will take over the world
Jo: non-geeky people will still not take over the world
Phillip: you're all predicting the obvious

this was organised by the ppl at http://up.org.nz, who alas haven't updated their website with anysummary 2 weeks later. there was someone filming the talks, but these never seem to make it to the web either.

so, you'll have to take my word for it

Unlimited Potential - the crowd

LCA2010 - quick summary for the lazy

Posted Mon, 14/09/2009 - 18:51 by Shiny

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.

LCA Miniconfs of the past and future

Posted Thu, 25/06/2009 - 12:18 by Shiny

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.

Microsoft adventure Day Two

Posted Mon, 01/09/2008 - 09:12 by Shiny

hurrah for Mauricio - who arrived with a cdma <-> wifi router thingie and provided us with intartubes at the hotel.

Sunday involved lotsa slide preparation for my colleague (there really is nothing like the last minute) - for me i meet a lot of people, some i've only known online.

We picked up loot - the usual conference bag and paper spammage - a bottle of wine - shirts (not t-shirts, first noticable opensource/microsoft difference).

GadgetFreedom User Group

Posted Fri, 29/08/2008 - 11:15 by Shiny

A (very) small group of Wellingtonians met last night at mojo bond street, to discuss how and what to plan for a Gadgets user group. The overall theme was doing things. Be that just learning how to make your bluetooth go, through to learning every possible thing you can do with bluetooth, through to building your own gadgets.

We want to get out out of our gadgets and gizmos - perhaps in ways the manufacturer never intended.

Topics we can already think of speakers for are:

* Wiimote use for other things -- e.g. unlocking your front door.

Girl Geek Dinners is tomorrow

Posted Mon, 04/08/2008 - 21:59 by Shiny

!!!!!!!!

Unfortunately a couple of our speakers have cancelled due to illness - the hazard of an event in August.

We've filled that gap with a couple lightning talks - will be awesome.

Update: WOW!!! There are so many awesome geek women in Wellington. And they're mostly all coming to dinner tomorrow - from amongst them we had no trouble finding a GIANT LONG LIST of speakers to fill the gap.

women speakers.... still looking for you.

Posted Sat, 10/05/2008 - 13:13 by Shiny

I've got requests from the occasional conference organiser (more so now that geekspeakr exists) when they discover that every single submission to their conference was by men - or the women are only submitting the traditional women's topics, (graphic design, community management.... ) and not the hardcore stuff. They want more balance.

(i need a better word than "hardcore".. because graphic design and community management can be hardcore too)

somethingto covet.

Posted Mon, 04/12/2006 - 16:00 by Shiny

Beautiful black speakers for my ipod

Wellington Perl Mongers

Posted Tue, 10/10/2006 - 14:36 by Shiny

Perl Mongers (http://www.pm.org/) is a "Loose Association of Perl User
Groups".  The Wellington chapter (http://wellington.pm.org/) meets on the second Tuesday of each month (ie: today) at 6:00pm for:

  • interesting talks
  • the opportunity to ridicule other people's code
  • networking with other Perl users
  • and of course beer

The venue, the web hosting and the beer are kindly provided by Catalyst

Tonight's three speakers are