[Linux-aus] Announcing Everything Open - Conference 2023

[Matt Cengia]

Hey folks,

Firstly, thanks to Russell for your contributions to this thread; I appreciate and generally agree with your perspective.

To everyone who is frustrated at the way this conference and its announcement came about, I'd like to remind you all that every year the Linux Australia committee is elected *by us*, the LA community, in the lead-up to the AGM traditionally held at LCA. We, the member of LA, elect this committee to lead the organisation and make important decisions. Necessarily, they can't bring *every* decision to the rest of the LA members, because we'd talk about and debate it on this mailing list and get nothing done. As such, it makes sense for them to wield the power *we gave them* as voting members of LA, to make hard and important decisions like this one.

And if nobody else put their hand up to run a conference, what is a committee to do? Either they cancel it, run it as it was run before, in the full knowledge that it was a huge struggle, or try something different, putting in a bunch of their own effort to just, to put it bluntly, Get Shit Done. I applaud their audacity in making this risky decision, and wish them all the energy to bring it to fruition.

For many years I've considered putting in a bid to run LCA myself (and indeed, many current and prior LA committee members and LCA organisers have suggested that I should), but alas I run too many other events to have the energy to make such a big commitment. It's *ok* to not have the energy to run an event of this size, but it's *not* OK to then go and criticise the people who make the sacrifices necessary to do so when nobody else will.

Be the change you want to see in the world, and in this community.

On Fri, Oct 14, 2022, at 12:25, Russell Stuart via linux-aus wrote:
> On 14/10/22 10:40, Anthony Towns wrote:
> > Isn't the point of the LA council to make sure that these things get
> > done despite the conference team being busy doing real work? Isn't that
> > a reason why the council running a conference is a bad idea?
> 
> Of course it's a bad idea.  But it seems the majority of the exec 
> thought not having a conference was an even worse idea.
...
> But for the life of me, I can't think of a better way forward.  If you 
> have one, it would be really helpful is you shared it.
-- 
Matt Cengia (pronouns: they/them/theirs <https://pronoun.is/they>)
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