[Linux-aus] LinuxWorld Expo meeting

[Jonathan Oxer]

Hi All,

I had an interesting meeting this afternoon with Minnie Constan from
Australian Exhibition Services, the group who will be running LinuxWorld
Expo next year in Sydney in March.

Minnie is currently doing the groundwork for LWE. She is not a part of
the Linux community and knows full well that she has a big learning
curve ahead of her WRT understanding how the community works and the
dynamics involved, but she seems quite open to suggestions and is very
interested in gathering as much input as possible from all interested
parties. I've suggested that she join the linux-aus mailing list and
make herself known, and I've given her some background on LCA and how it
is run each year. She enthusiastically suggested that LCA could become a
sub-component of LWE, so I very clearly explained that a suggestion like
that would hardly be received with open arms by the developer community
and explained the different audiences involved. I also explained other
concerns such as possible diversion of traditional LCA sponsors, and
gave her some perspective on how the various conferences such as LCA,
LinuxTag, OLS, LWE etc relate to each other. As a result she's likely to
travel to quite a few Linux conferences over the course of this year to
get a better idea how they're run.

In short, AES seem to be very serious about running a good
business-focused conference and Minnie is definitely interested in
getting our input and seems to really want to gain an understanding of
where the Linux community is at right now, so when/if she joins the list
and makes herself known please feel free to (nicely!) provide feedback
to her. She just finished another conference and so is now working full
time on LWE, and with the high profile that it will probably gain among
the business community she could be a great ally when it comes to
exposing more businesses to Linux.

It appears that LWE and LCA could become very complementary rather than
competing events, which I think would be great for all concerned. This
could be the answer to the big question about how to satisfy the demand
for a suit-oriented event without changing the nature of LCA.

Cheers   :-)

Jonathan Oxer