The penguin begins the march south

Sam Varghese
Tuesday, 26 February 2008 07:21

Opinion and Analysis

He said the core organising team was responsible for most of the ideas but "we went around and asked people what they thought, what sorts of ideas would work.
Powell laughed when I asked him what he got out of being a co-organiser. "It's a great thing to put on a great conference though, unfortunately, you're always so busy you don't get to go to the conference that you've set up," he said.

"It's a good way of putting something back into the community. We get a lot out of it, so it's important that people put something back in whether that's code or organising a conference. That's the community spirit of the Linux community, I guess."

As to what his measure of success would be, Powell said there was the the hard-nosed bit, that if the conference made a good profit then it was successful. "But there's more to it than that - that we've got good speakers, happy delegates, and people talking about Tasmania as one of the fantastic conferences that they've been to. Additionally, I think if we can get an enhanced community feel from the conference  - like bringing in members of the arts community, content creators, to collaborate with coders, if we produce great things out of that, then I think that would definitely be a measure of the success of the conference."

After the feedback meeting in March, the next step will be to address any concerns which former organisers may have about the process which the TasLUG team has set in motion. "We're already in the business of trying to organise speakers for the keynotes. We're also in the process of putting together all the networking at the university and getting that all bedded down so that when we start with the call for papers and the tickets, basically everything's set and ready to go and that it runs like clockwork. That's the plan anyway," Powell said.

Until the Melbourne organisers formally hand over, the Tasmanian conference website will be located here .