Sam Varghese
Friday, 05 December 2008 04:01
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 3
What do you do when you are 20, passionate about open source and want nothing better during the long summer holidays than to be involved in activities surrounding FOSS?
Why, you get involved in helping to organise a national Linux conference - which is what Tasmanian web developer Joshua Hesketh has done. He's not sure about it, but he may well be the youngest of the volunteers on the core organising team.
At LCA 2009, Australia's national Linux conference, which is scheduled to be held at Hobart's University of Tasmania Sandy Bay campus from January 19 to 24, Hesketh will be part of the web team and helping with the conference management software. He also wears the hat of
miniconf organiser.
As a student and one who is self-employed, Hesketh says he has no problem finding the time to shoulder these responsibilities.
"One of the benefits of being self-employed and a student is that I have a very flexible schedule," he told iTWire in an interview. "As the conference is drawing closer (less than two months now!) I am slowly getting busier. However, I'm having a great time doing it and I'm even helping out in other areas (volunteers and chasing local sponsors, for example)."
Hesketh isn't quite sure about how he got involved. "I wasn't involved in the bid process for the conference, but I heard about it through some TasLUG members in Launceston," he says.
"I put my hand up to help and the next thing I knew we were having dinner with a Linux Australia representative pushing our bid through. Before long we had won the bid and we started assigning roles."
