Martin Pool's blog

Rejecting lca submissions

Rusty writes on rejecting lca submissions:

I know, in the 250 abstracts I'm judging for linux.conf.au, I'm throwing out some pearls among the sand. And I'm probably unfairly biassing against people, but dammit, the number of "I am a member of an open source project so let me tell you how to code/run a project/create a community" papers I've seen is astounding.

posted Sat 7 Oct 2006 in /conf/lca2007 | link

Questions your conference website should answer

It's that time again when we try to wade through linux.conf.au proposals trying to sort the excellent from the good.

Mary wrote a good document on Questions your conference website should answer, following on in spirit from my How to get a Linux conference abstract accepted. Go Mary.

posted Wed 4 Oct 2006 in /conf | link

lca2005 papers available

I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere yet, but the linux.conf.au 2005 papers and slides are now available on the web. If you heard about a good talk but couldn't make it, or want to refresh your memory, there they are.

Don't forget to remind your favourite free software hackers, users, and evangelists to submit a proposal for lca2006 in beautiful Dunedin.

posted Thu 18 Aug 2005 in /conf/lca2005 | link

20 days to go for LCA paper proposals

The Call for Papers for LCA2006 closes on the 5th of September. Now would be a good time to submit an abstract for a talk about a cool open source project. We welcome talks from either project developers or people using Linux.

A couple of people have asked what technical level is appropriate for talks. The range is pretty broad: we have some number of kernel hackers, and some people who are just starting to use Linux. The CFP form asks what level of experience the audience will need to understand and appreciate the talk.

We also have a tutorial stream, which is for interactive sessions lasting two hours or more. If you're considering this (which is great) you do need to consider that just talking for two hours is going to be tough on both the speaker and the audience. To work well they really need a fair degree of interactive lab work.

The single most important thing for the abstract is to give plenty of detail about both the content of the talk, and your credentials and experience as a speaker. Mention tantalizing content so that people will want to come to the talk. The majority of submissions are too short, rather than too long -- we can always trim them later, but if you don't tell us your strong points we (probably) won't know them.

If you have questions please feel free to mail me, mbp@sourcefrog.net

posted Tue 16 Aug 2005 in /conf/lca2006 | link

linux.conf.au, now with penguins

yelloweye.jpg

linux.conf.au 2006 will be in Dunedin, New Zealand. This is right near the southern tip of the South Island, at the University of Otago which I think is the southernmost university in the world.

Amongst other excellent attractions Dunedin is near colonies of yellow-eye and little blue penguins. On our visit for the planning meeting we also saw enormous sealions and seals.

Sadly the shutter button on my Canon 20D failed on the second day there, so most of my photos are from a rather old Ixus.

The Call for Papers should be opening any day now.

(Yes, it's a bit strange that linux.conf.au isn't physically in Australia next year, but Dunedin will be a good location, and it's easy for Australians to get there.q)

posted Thu 7 Jul 2005 in /conf/lca2006 | link

notes from Ubuntu Down Under

I'm at the Ubuntu Down Under conference at the Vibe Hotel in Rushcutter's Bay, Sydney. We're here through to Saturday 2005-04-30, feel free to drop by if you're around.

This idea of open company conferences is very 21st-century: here we are having a major company meeting, open to the open source community, our users, partners, etc.

The schedule is full of "BOF Sessions", where people talk about various issues, mostly setting the requirements and high-level designs for what we will build over the next year. (And I mean full: the programme, which is mandatory for employees, runs from 9am to after 8pm.) After each session, one or two people are required to write it up into a "spec" on the wiki, such as the one called GrumpyGroundhog. These specs get reviewed by various people, including professional technical editors.

This has several very interesting consequences.

Requiring people to write down notes after the session avoids having really interesting conversations and then forgetting about them, or forgetting some of the details.

Getting reasonably polished documentation out the end helps keep people who couldn't get to the conference in the loop.

Getting developers involved in developing the requirements for different parts of the business brings a remarkable advance in signup and understanding of the whole business context.

posted Thu 28 Apr 2005 in /conf/udu | link

LCA2005 early-bird registration open

Preparations for linux.conf.au are proceeding apace. (For one thing, we got the delegation of the linux.conf.au domain name sorted out again.) We have also selected a program from many excellent submissions, secured a venue and accomodation for delegates and speakers, and are close to settling dinner and social venues.

Steeply-discounted early-bird registrations are open and are selling well. Jeremy wrote (we hope :-) a friendly and secure registration system.

We are just starting to accept media registrations. Some of the bigger names in Linux news and analysis will be there — and why not, with a chance to talk to so many prominent Linux and open source developers in one place?

posted Fri 7 Jan 2005 in /conf/lca2005 | link

Scoring LCA2005 conference papers

We're scoring and evaluating the LCA2005 abstract submissions now. This is a lot of work.

The proposals look generally very good.

It is very disappointing and frustrating when people put in inadequate abstracts, sometimes just a couple of sentences. Sometimes they sound interesting but without enough information they're always going to lose out to somebody who can explain what they're going to say. Doubly so because the whole point of a seminar is cogent presentation of interesting material, and if you can't do that in a web form why should I trust you with an hour of my time?

One common failing is to give a definition of the topic but not say what you're going to talk about. There should be some kind of indication that you'll do more than just tell me the definition.

It doesn't have to be cute. You can be entertaining in your presentation; you can even redraft the abstract later so that it's funny or intruiging in the program but judges looking at 140+ abstracts in a row would rather just have the facts.

Similarly for the presenter biography: I really don't care where you were born or went to school or what you do on the weekend. I might find your hobbies fascinating if we meet at LCA but it's totally irrelevant to choosing the best possible material for our conference. What I want to see is evidence that you know the material, and are experienced at public speaking in English.

The whole point is an assessment of the likely quality and appropriateness of the paper/seminar. Everything should be directed towards helping the judges decide that.

I'm tired and aware this is a bit ranty but it's also dead true.

posted Thu 18 Nov 2004 in /conf/lca2005 | link

LCA2005 progress

I've been busy getting the linux.conf.au 2005 papers database ready so that we can work out our program. Our target it to make a first release of the program this week.

We have about 146 submissions in total, and about 50 slots.

posted Mon 15 Nov 2004 in /conf/lca2005 | link

Kernel hackers debate: Is Canberra boring?

LKML thread:

From: Alan Cox
Subject: Re: Loops in the Signed-off-by process

Linus Torvalds wrote:
> On Fri, 1 Oct 2004, alan wrote:
> > (Kind of like Mountain View without all the excitement
> Oohh-keey.. "Mountain View without all the excitement".

> ALL THE EXCITEMENT? MOUNTAIN VIEW?

> Brain overload.

Visit Canberra then you will understand.

From: Benjamin Herrenschmidt

> Visit Canberra then you will understand

I respectfully disagree :) Canberra at least has some good pubs :)

Ben.

posted Thu 7 Oct 2004 in /conf/lca2005 | link

Conference website tips

I need to check this list from hypatia of questions your conference website should answer against the linux.conf.au web site.

People planning to submit might want to read my advice on how to get a conference abstract accepted.

Most of the few dozen abstracts we've had so far have had all the right information, and they sound like good talks.

<blink>One and a bit weeks to go for abstracts/proposals!</blink>

(ps: Oh, hypatia is Mary. This is one demonstration of why we're going to (optionally) print usernames on conference badges.)

posted Fri 24 Sep 2004 in /conf/lca2005 | link

linux.conf.au DNS broken

The .conf.au domain nameservers have been broken for a while and are still not fixed. Apparently the venerable munnari.oz.au is still authoritative but is failing.

In the mean time, the linux.conf.au web site can be reached at lca2005.linux.org.au. Sorry for the inconvenience.

posted Mon 13 Sep 2004 in /conf/lca2005 | link

OLS Audio

Audio recordings from Ottawa Linux Symposium are now up.

Hopefully LCA2004 audio and video will be up someday.

For LCA2005 we're planning to do both audio and video. Ryan Verner is doing the video again this year. His production from the previous conference looks pretty good but the amount of organization required for good video scares me a bit. Personally I think I'd rather have moderate-quality audio promptly than anything else later.

posted Tue 31 Aug 2004 in /conf/ols2004 | link

LCA Ghosts

LCA2005 hosted the ghosts of conferences past this weekend; many friends from Linux Australia were in Canberra to give feedback on our arrangements. LCA Convenor Steve Hanley has more details on his diary. We should have a Planet aggregator of LCA news some time soon.

LCA is coming along well. The call for papers/tutorials/minconfs is now open — go ahead and submit something cool.

Steven's friend Niki Gudex was on the recent UA flight that was turned back to Sydney after attendents found a sickbag with the word BOB written on it. I wonder if MAXIM model Niki was the Babe On Board that may have been described by the letters?

posted Mon 30 Aug 2004 in /conf/lca2005 | link

LCA 2005 Call for Papers open!

The linux.conf.au 2005 Call for Papers is now open! Please propose something cool so that we can enjoy listening to you in April next year in beautiful Canberra.

Bribes are gratefully accepted... but must come in the form of cool open source software. (Or Islay whisky is also persuasive.)

posted Mon 9 Aug 2004 in /conf/lca2005 | link

OSCon, OLS and LCA

I just got home from Ottawa Linux Symposium and O'Reilly OSCon.

OLS was very good. It's more kernel-oriented than LCA, kind of sticking to the strict definition favored by rms that Linux is the kernel, not all the associated software. About two out of the three streams were kernel-oriented. There's also quite a focus on big machines, because I suppose that's where a lot of the money is. Ottawa was really beautiful.

OSCon was pretty good. It's about four times more expensive than OSCon, and probably not four times as good, at least for me. It's very inclusive of all open source work, not just Linux. Many people had Macintoshes, and most of them were even running Linux. They have a slightly ridiculous number of parallel sessions - about 12? Still, I guess it works: there was always something I wanted to see. Lots of stuff on scripting languages.

I have a vague sense that it's about the buzz of open source, not actually about open source.

Paul Graham's talk was good. The SCO moot court was good.

There was a panel debate about open sourcing Java, but I think I'm not the only person there who felt so what? If Sun feel a not-quite-free licence suits them best, let it be. My impression from OSCon is that the most interesting work may be in Perl/Python/Ruby on top of Parrot/Mono/Rotor/CLR.

There are people outside each room at OSCon checking ID, which gives it a slightly regimented feel. I guess since they're charging so much, and they need to make a profit, it's necessary.

Meg Hourihan shares some thoughts on conference design. It's hard.

posted Mon 9 Aug 2004 in /conf/lca2005 | link

Paul Graham on Hackers at OSCON

Paul Graham delivered an insightful keynote on hackers.

Great hackers also generally insist on using open source software. Not just because it's better, but because it gives them more control. Good hackers insist on control. This is part of what makes them good hackers: when something's broken, they need to fix it. You want them to feel this way about the software they're writing for you. You shouldn't be surprised when they feel the same way about the operating system.

posted Fri 30 Jul 2004 in /conf/oscon2004 | link

Stephen Kapp and Reapertech

I've been to a few interesting sessions in the last few days about infringements of copyright on free software. It reminds me of when Stephen Kapp and Reapertech ripped off my copyrighted code. Since I put that page up, several people have written to me saying he infringed copyright on other code too. I haven't checked it myself but it sounded plausible.

It's pretty sad. I guess as free software gets bigger there will be both more parasites more legal ruckus. I expect to see someone offer contingent-fee copyright suits in appropriate cases in the next few years.

posted Wed 28 Jul 2004 in /conf/oscon2004 | link

Warm weather in Ottawa

I'm in Ottawa at OLS. It was very warm here yesterday, about 30C and humid. Meanwhile, back in Canberra they had the coldest morning this century, at a brisk -12C. Funny to be going to Canada for sunshine.

It's a nice city; charming architecture around south O'Connor St where I'm staying.

I was reading the National Post at breakfast, which seems to be considered a fairly conservative paper. Nevertheless, I read a very positive editorial about the government's legislation to decriminalize possession and use of personal amounts of marijuana, and calling for outright legalization. (I don't personally like it very much, but I think current laws are pretty silly.)

posted Fri 23 Jul 2004 in /conf/ols2004 | link

perl6

I'm in Damien Conway's Perl6 tutorial. He's a lively and entertaining speaker. It's amazing but it's awful.

I guess it makes more progress towards making any possible sequence of characters be a program that does something....

posted Fri 23 Jul 2004 in /conf/ols2004 | link

LCA 2005 website underway

linux.conf.au 2005 is in my home town of Canberra, so I have got pulled into helping organize it.

I was feeling really tired on Monday after helping Stephane print and bind her thesis (go Steph!) so I spent some easy time adding some content to the linux.conf.au web site. PHP tells me only 41 weeks to go!

posted Wed 30 Jun 2004 in /conf/lca2005 | link

lca photos


GNOME hackers: Malcolm, Glynn, JamesH, Havoc, Keithp, jdub

More photos are linked from the lca wiki: Photos.

posted Tue 20 Jan 2004 in /conf/lca2004 | link

havoc

Havoc Pennington did a good talk on the GNOME desktop.

"Open Source creates more opportunities for more people — users, businesses, developers."

posted Sat 17 Jan 2004 in /conf/lca2004 | link

Bdale

Bdale did a good talk on the ideas of community.

“You haven't lived until you've seen four thousand passionate Brazillians jumping up and down on their chairs shouting ‘Software Libre!’.”

“You can't have a vision until you've established every one has a shared set of values.”

“You're all going to be using Debian eventually, so you might as well get it over with...”

posted Fri 16 Jan 2004 in /conf/lca2004 | link

linux.conf.au started

I'm in Adelaide for the start of linux.conf.au.

This morning we had a great talk from Keith Packard from HP about his cairo graphics work. Robert Collins soothed my fears about arch. So pretty! I think spending 80% of CPU on repainting an analog clock is a perfectly reasonable. :-)

Many cool people are here; apparently over 500 altogether.

posted Wed 14 Jan 2004 in /conf/lca2004 | link

linux.conf.au 2004 programme out

Linux.Conf.Au 2004 announces conference programme!

Our much anticipated conference programme is now officially released into the wild, sporting a new and improved format - with 4 simultaneous streams, just to make your job harder in choosing which paper presentation to attend! :-)

We've divided our tutorials and paper presentations into 4 categories - low-level programming, high-level programming, applications and advocacy/community/case-studies - so you can better match your interests to the papers.

So now there's no excuse not to hop onto your closest web browser and navigate to http://lca2004.linux.org.au/register/ where you can register and pay for your attendance at LCA 2004 in January 2004.

Be quick though - conference registrations have already passed 100, and are storming their way towards 150, so if you're planning on coming, sign up now for the fun!

And as another quick update - since we've last contacted you we've been pretty busy. On our website we've announced :

Whew! It's been a busy month! But wait, there's more cool things to come.... You'll just have to check our website lca2004.linux.org.au regularly to find out more (and while you're there, why not register? :-)

posted Thu 30 Oct 2003 in /conf/lca2004 | link

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