Well, I was going to say nice things about linux.conf.au, as really there was only a few tiny problems that I had issue with in what was otherwise a great conference. However, it seems that one particular organiser (who I will not link to) who I had not made a personal attack at (I was referring to someone else) has decided to get a little petty.

In rebuttal
It seems that doctored IRC conversations (I can't find this conversation, verbatim, in the channel logs, if it did exist, someone mail it to me) are the order of the day. I mean, what the fuck? This is no way to prove that you're not a moron yourself now, is it? The doctor recommends a chill pill, a skin thickener and perhaps a nice lie down.

Sure, perhaps floating things off balloons got a bit out of control (however, floating a wineglass got pretty classy) but I think perhaps you're reading much too much into this. This particular organiser is not an Alex (Alex doesn't act like a tool) and in general only proves something I've long thought about a large part of the free software community.

For the record, I was on the lca '03 committee as a shit monkey, keeping the attendees, network and vendors happy. A job that I did so well, that Sun gave me one of their internal-issue linux.conf.au polo shirts (James Andrewartha got the other one). As a result, I was manning the desk in the network room and didn't manage to get into the group photo. As you might expect, someone has to be seated behind a desk, but your desk was a barrier in which all the organisers were located, all the time. It was rare to see an organiser out on the floor, with the community, except when running an errand.

It's disappointing to see this sort of reaction from an organiser, I can only hope that it doesn't reflect too badly on the event in retrospect or on your LUG.

What was good about linux.conf.au 2005
The venue was fantastic, this is by far the nicest facility that's been used. The addition of couches with power, wired and wireless access was a brilliant addition creating a vibrant atmosphere, although it did kill the terminal room.

The selection of speakers was quite good. Although some of the talks I went to did turn out to be brouchureware, or were ruined by the loud-obnoxious geeks having an argument and the talk having to be rushed through. There was a slight fuckup with the scheduling on the Friday, and I admit that would have been hard to resolve at the time, but I was disappointed to see two of the talks I wanted to go to scheduled against one another at the last moment. Hopefully the Theora streams turn out pretty good.

The giveaways were also a nice addition. USB keys (big ones) were given away at the end of each talk. This could have been slightly improved if the speakers had prepared a method for handing them out earlier (some speakers did this, some were very creative about it). The additional giveaway of an IBM X40 every day also made sure that people made it to the keynotes, something I know that Bernard didn't manage last year.

The professional networking session was a lot of fun. That was also an excellent choice of venue, the CSIRO Discovery Centre (kinda like Scitech, but with a Government name) did manage to accomodate enough people once they spread out, and there was more then enough to eat and drink.

I'm not sure if I mentioned it, but the network ran fairly smoothly, and was available through the entire venue (even the GNOME miniconf, once we figured it out). Significantly less crack, and associated breakage then we had in Perth, and no routing the college through an 11mbit 802.11b connection, like I suspect was the case in Adelaide.

I alluded to the Ogg Theora streams. Flumotion powered streaming allowed us to watch the Debian Miniconf from GNOME.conf.au. It proved significantly more exciting then my talk. I am told they are going to be combined with Annodex, and all sorts of things. This could be the most exciting LCA cd-rom yet.

Eben Moglen received a literal standing ovation. Everyone in the theatre was standing and applauding at the end of his keynote. I've never seen anything quite like it. He actually seems rather brilliant, but possibly might fanboy RMS just a little too much.

Things that were bad about linux.conf.au 2005
The registration desk created a barrier between the conveners and the delegates that I don't feel gave a suitable opinion. Especially as at any one time, there would be four of them in there, simply using their laptops. Much too high a number. In my opinion it is the duty of the organisers to interact with the community, to really get a feel for how the conference is going, not to palm this duty off onto a number of sherriffs.

I also fail to understand how the Penguin Dinner cost $60 (need to check the price). The lack of a bar tab, and the fact that I didn't eat very much food does not make me feel like I really got my money's worth. The venue (the ANU Union Refectory) was no comparison to last year, but then again that was organised by a gay man, and as such, pretty swanky.

I think the lack of free alcohol really showed in the lack of enthusiasm when bidding for the T-shirt. Sober people don't do as many stupid things unfortunately. While on the shirt, there seemed to be little interest in the charity, even though it is a great charity, and incredibly relevant and a very noble act on behalf of Steve. I think had some people known why he chose it, there would have been a lot more interest, the lady they got to talk up the charity (it was SidsForKids, incidently) did not do a fantastic job.

Free tip for giving exciting public speeches, don't lean down on the lecturn when you speak, and don't just stare at your laptop screen. You need to stand straight, look confident, and make eye contact with people around the room, find the ones who are nodding. It also helps if you don't put all your jokes on the slides where everyone has already read them by the time you get to them. (NB. I'm not the world's best public speaker, but this seemed like a strong contention around the con).

Oh, and I appear to have lost my favourite jumper (sweater), but this is hardly the fault of the conference organisers.

In summary
I don't want to appear to overly negative, because I think the organisation of this conference was actually incredibly good. Especially as those of us embittered enough were making sideline commentry about whether or not this conference would be a success or a failure. I do tip my hats to you and your organisational, regardless of what you think of me and my commentry. I look forward to 2006 in Dunedin, in the newly aquired Australian State of South Zealand.

and the rest...
Going home tomorrow, bright and early. 0615 flight to Melbourne, then Perth with Virgin Blue. I haven't flown Virgin before, so I don't know what to expect. Looking forward to something Flinstones-esque where we all have to push the plane along with our feet to get it into the air.

Ran into Russel Steike from Perth in the college staircase. He thanked me for a talk I presented to PLUG just over a month ago on PyGTK. He used what he learnt as inspiration to implement a UI for the Hackfest (a Spellcaster client) in GTK and Python. He then asked me how my youngest brother was doing on music tour. This freaked me out a little, as I had never mentioned this on my blog. I then realised he was in fact the father of Chris Steike, a boy who plays in a quartet with my brother. I also knew his parents played DnD, because once they were proud that he was DMing his first game, or something like that. Everyone is only 2-degrees of separation in Perth, but you don't expect to run into them on the opposite side of the freakin' island.

This post is unedited, because I'm tired, but at least I'm not drunk. I may come back and edit it for correctness and commas, but I suspect I'll forget. At least we get a public holiday to recover before the nose goes back to the grindstone.