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Our Blogs Open Sauce linux.conf.au: Look Tux, no wires
Our Blogs Open Sauce linux.conf.au: Look Tux, no wires | linux.conf.au: Look Tux, no wires |
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| by Sam Varghese | |
| Tuesday, 15 January 2008 | |
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Page 2 of 6 Hawtin's curiosity was not sated by all that he had learnt uptil this time; in 1997 he built his own IR network devices to use between houses, and then discovered HAM radio and people who were using packet radio and early implementations of 802.11. Featured Whitepaper
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In the years leading up to his graduation he worked as a programmer, doing work on the Mac and Linux platforms (multimedia and embedded), some Y2K compliance work (on what he describes as databases and weird platforms) and also functioned as a networking and help desk coordinator at a rural ISP. And now we are back to the UK. From the year 2000 to 2002, Hawtin worked for various companies but the group which interested him most was Consume.net. He joined two user groups - the Greater London Linux Users Group and Lonix, a London-based social group for Unix/Linux people. "I met lots of 'old' Unix guys in these two groups and my appreciation for the old ways of doing things and the 'keep it simple philosophy' took root." he says. He also remembers attending talks by Eric Raymond and Richard Stallman on freedom and openness, events which, no doubt, influenced his thinking. "During this period I went to see as many talks and presentations that I could find about folks that make stuff and more social things, like Dorkbot, Strange Attractor, various underground arts groups, 2600," Hawtin says. "I did presentations at some, like to Strange Attractor on wireless and Consume.net. This was my first 'real' presentation in front of 100 or so people, a 15-minute talk with over two hours of questions. I had planned for 15 minutes of questions. There was an amazing interest in wireless at the time, especially from the media (who were) coming to terms with the safety issues." Back in Australia in 2002, Hawtin started working with Ratbag Games in Adelaide. "I was IT support for a while, then IT manager for about three years, until Midway bought and closed the studio. It was interestingly different to the internet services industry, but intense," he says. The community orientation in him manifested itself as well - he spent some time volunteering with ITShare. Four years later, Hawtin moved to Adelaide University as a Unix/Linux sysadmin. He began working on a couple of projects to do with DNS and mail; from last year he has been focused on home projects and the community wireless miniconf. His interest in LCA stemmed initially from having missed the 1999 LCA; he was keen to attend one and there was no conference in 2000. Four years later, he finally got the opportunity to attend the LCA in his home town as the organisers were hunting for volunteers to support the speakers and do the audio-visuals. "Working on the registration desk was an amazing experience. I got to meet many of the speakers. I knew some of their names as I had been using their software for the last ten years!" he says. "I also got to see some of the talks and some of the miniconfs. I was specifically interested in IPv6 and other network/router areas, as part of my interest in community wireless networks." |
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