Sam Varghese
Monday, 28 January 2008 07:06
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 2
A conference without a single suit. At least for the first four hours of its existence, Australia's national Linux conference has been just that.
There are T-shirts and shorts of various descriptions floating around, jeans in various states of disrepair, laptops running a wide variety of Linux distributions and plenty of food - for the most part, healthy stuff.
There are anything between 600 to 700 people milling around at these conferences - and, believe it or not, those who get involved on the organisational front say they do so simply because they find it fun.
It wasn't much fun this morning with networking problems but the geeks have battled through and prevailed.
When I had problems connecting to the wireless network, Mr Wireless hmself,
Kim Hawtin , was there to provide timely advice. Hawtin is organising the wireless miniconference.
But that's a small hiccup in what must be a massive organisational effort; the dark circles under the eyes of conference director Donna Benjamin testify to the sleep lost and the headaches endured up until this day.
Some of the bigger names in the tech industry stand behind the conference each year and it is, at times, a bit surprising that they allow a bunch of people who could be called amateurs organise what is the only Linux conference with a wide technical scope.
But the geeks have shown themselves more than equal to the task and year after year they turn out in sufficient numbers to get the show on the road - and they do put on a pretty good show too.
