Brisbane to host LCA 2011

Sam Varghese
Friday, 22 January 2010 10:23

Opinion and Analysis

Nine years after it first played host, Brisbane has been awarded the rights to host the Australian national Linux conference again.


The winner of the bid for the 2011 conference was announced at the formal closing ceremony of the 11th Australian national Linux conference, held at the Conference Centre in Wellington this evening.

Brisbane lost out to Hobart in the bidding for the 2009 conference.

A photography contest held  by the LCA 2010 for pictures taken of the four Wellington central business district areas - Lambton, Cuba, Courtenay and Waterfront - was won by Mike Beattie. The runner-up was Gopal Vijayaraghavan. Both winning pictures were from the Waterfront category.

Earlier in the day, Andrew McMillan, the media liaison for the conference, said that 650 delegates had attended. The organisers had sold a few mini-conference-only tickets and a few day visitors had been accommodated.

As the planning for the Wellington conference began in July 2008 itself with preparation of the bid, the plan was for around 400 delegates in order to break even; after the global financial crisis began to take hold, the numbers and budgets had to be refined a bit.

But, McMillan said, they had passed the break-even point and would be in surplus by the time everything was done and dusted.

Linux Australia derives its yearly budget from the conference and thus things have to be on the plus side for the organisation to be able to plan any activities, apart from the purely ceremonial.

"We were lucky with the weather," McMillan said. "It cleared up just in time for the conference." The first morning was rather grey but thereafter it became pleasantly warm.

Asked whether he would do it all over again, McMillan laughed and said that he would certainly like to be among the organisers when it happened again. However, he said, when the conference next returned to New Zealand it was likely to be at one of Hamilton, Christchurch or Auckland.

He said he based his assumption on the fact there are sizeable numbers in the LUGs in these three cities.