“ Against all odds, Linux.conf.au is here! ”

This week more than 500 people from around the world are arriving in Brisbane for Linux.conf.au 2011. As last month Brisbane and indeed much of Queensland was devastated by severe flooding, it’s an incredible effort by the conference organisers that the conference is able to continue at all.

In December of 2010, a prolonged period of torrential rain contributed to massive flooding in Queensland. With 31 people reported dead and an estimated 1 billion AUD in damages, this is a natural disaster on a large scale that was spread across the state. To put the scale of the disaster in perspective, Queensland is 1.7m square km, or larger then the state of Texas. Arriving in Brisbane on Sunday the 23rd, there were still some traces showing where the water line was, but the cleanup work has been impressive.

Monday morning started with the traditional Welcome to linux.conf.au session, detailing essential conference information and giving us an opportunity to give the organisers a pat on the back for their amazing efforts managing to bring a conference together under these circumstances. John Ferlito from Linux Australia continued along this theme, and also encouraged conference goers to attend the Linux Australia AGM on Wednesday.

Carol Smith from Google’s Summer of Code program finished up the introductory talk with a brief introduction to the Summer of Code program and some statistics from previous years. After a catered morning tea, the miniconfs schedule for Monday started.

Miniconfs Schedule:

Open Programming
Freedom in the Cloud
Southern Plumbers
The Business of Open Source
Multimedia & Music
Haecksen
Arduino

Monday I spent in the Southern Plumbers miniconf (http://lca2011.linux.org.au/programme/miniconfs), which was opened by Jonathan Corbet’s Kernel Report. Jonathan covered the highlights of the previous year in kernel development, as well as some fascinating statistics. Other talks included Matthew Garrett discussing power management on Enterprise Hardware, Linaro Arm Toolchain development by Michael Hope and Linux/X/Wayland input directions by Daniel Stone.

The first day ended with a mass exodus to various pubs and bars around the Brisbane area for socialising, and ensuring that all the delegates turn up to Tuesday’s keynote with the traditional linux.conf.au hangover.