TAG | New team takes over at Linux Australia |
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| by Sam Varghese | |
| Wednesday, 06 February 2008 | |
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Page 1 of 2 He was the sole person to cast his hat in the ring for the post of president. Smith served on the committee for four years from 2003; hence, despite his relatively tender age, he is no greenhorn. Last year he took a break from being a committee member but played the role of a volunteer at the 2008 conference which was held in Melbourne from Jan 28 to February 1. As with every other president, Smith's main focus will be to see that, "we must have a kickass conference in 2009". The annual event is unique in that it is the only Linux conference that still retains a broad technical focus; the US conference has become more of a tradeshow while the Ottawa conference concentrates on the kernel. The conference also serves to provide Linux Australia with most of its operating income for the year. There are some minor fund-raising activities during the year but the conference is the big one as far as the operating budget goes. Smith said one of the things he would be looking at during his tenure was to channel funds under the organisation's grants scheme; for example, if students who were involved in an open source project needed some assistance due to their hardware going bust, then they could approach Linux Australia for help. Assistance was also provided to people who wanted to attend the annual conference but could not do so due to financial considerations. Another area which could do with some improvement, he said, was communication between user groups. An inter-LUG mailing list had not been very successful and he planned to start having phone conversations with other LUGS. In particular, he mentioned the LUGs in the Northern Territory; Whenever the conference is hosted in a particular place, it always tends to raise the level of interest in Linux in that area and with Hobart set to host the conference next year, every state and territory in Australia would have played host by then apart from NT. |
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