[Announce] Committee News - 200406

[Pia Smith]

Hi all,

I know I've said this the last few months, but... what a month! 

FTA
---
We have been contacted and are in contact with several different
industry representatives about the FTA issue, including PBS, and Media.
We are looking at a collaborative effort to demonstrate our concerns in
a public forum. This will be huge, as it will attract attention across
much of the board, and show that there are common areas of concerns, and
serious issues. Thus far we've been involved in meetings, and a few of
us will be travelling down to Canberra this week for more meetings on
this topic. There will be more news in the _very_ near future, we just
need to confirm a few things first. As people may be aware, we are
bringing Lawrence Lessig out to Australia to help educate our government
and people about the issues surrounding the FTA. This will cost LA
money, however will certainly be worth it for the attention, messages
and education it will produce. Well done to Craig Warner who has done a
great job contacting several politicians. We still are able to have an
affect on the opinion on the FTA, so please ensure you contact your
local member if you are concerned.

Grants
------
The line of credit for Computerbank NSW has been passed. A contract has
been written up and handed to Computerbank NSW to ensure due diligence
on both sides. We look forward to seeing and helping out where we can in
the projects.
Both travel grants from Jeff Waugh and Daniel Stone were respectfully
declined, although both are encouraged to continue to submit for grants
they feel will benefit the community :)

FISL
----
See http://pipka.org/blog for my WSIS Vs FISL report. I will be adding
to this entry over the next few weeks with more talks, videos and slides
from the conferences. Needless to say the Brazilians rock, and I hope we
can learn some lessons from them, especially in our politics ;)

ACS and archive issues
----
ACS contacted us about an issue with one of our posts concerning the ACS
policy work we did for them on Open Source. I mistakenly had "ACS Policy
on Open Source" in the Subject, and although the message body and
attachment name had draft in them, the subject line could be seen to be
misleading. Unless there is any serious issues raised, we believe where
erroneous data is archived, we should fix the mistake. After ctte
discussion, we thought this would be ok to do under two conditions, 1)
if the membership is notified and 2) if the mistake is rectified with
verbosity (ie - subject will be changed to "Subject was 'ACS policy on
open source', changed to 'ACS draft policy on open source' at the
request of ACS"). Please notify if this is unreasonable.

Website
----
Unfortunately this got a little delayed with other stuff happening,
however http://www.linux.org.au/devel/ is up. Please let us know what
you think :) we have some css files happening, and some data migrated.
We are 80% of the way! :) (Please don't take the news seriously, Michael
Davies is very silly ;)

Ghosts
-----
We are having the Ghosts meeting in Canberra in August. This is where we
transport a few people from previous LCA committees to the current
committee to have a brain dump, and transfer ideas/knowledge. It should
be a good weekend, and the Canberra guys are certainly on top of things
:) Rock on!

Misc
----
Mark Tearle, our treasurer is doing an awesome job. We have business
cards on the way, our finances are getting super organised, and he is
rocking out! Jason King, the Education Officer reported to LA that he
has progressed the LPI program in Australia, bringing on some affiliate
training organisations, and aiming to get the TAFE LPI curriculum
currently used and developed by several people around Australia, and
getting it certified as a Linux course. This would make it more
accessible and standardised, and certainly easier to get into TAFEs and
otehr educational institutes. Go Jason!

Thanks all! More to come in the next couple of weeks.
Pia

-- 
Pia Smith <pia at linux.org.au>
Linux Australia