[Announce] Committee News

[Pia Smith]

Hi all,

The Linux Australia Committee have had several teleconferences and met
in Melbourne last weekend for some strategic planning. Many thanks to
Daniel Stone and Trinity College for provided a venue. It was an
incredibly successful and active meeting with many decisions made about
Linux Australia this year. We also met with some of the locals for some
fun on the Friday and Saturday evenings.

The minutes from all meetings are up at http://linux.org.au/minutes/ and
I've summarised some stuff below for your reading pleasure :)

Computerbank have recently received about 4000 machines as donations and
needed some immediate help. We tried to help out with some initial
issues, and will be trying to ascertain the full requirements soon. If
anyone is interested in helping out with the prepping or distribution of
these systems they should contact Dan Treacy (dan at cbnsw.org.au).

The LA Press team has been further discussed, and a few people
approached. We decided the group needs to stay relatively small (for
quick action), and quite skilled. Thus far we have a mailing list called
press at linux.org.au which has myself as Press Officer, Michael Davies as
LA Liason Officer and some media savvy people. We have invited Marco
Ostini, Leon Brooks, Robi Karp and Arjen Lentz for their different
skills and enthusiasms and are trying to determine who else would be
appropriate. We will be arranging Media training and possible writing
training for some of the team, as well as some key figures in the
community who are often approached by the media including the LCA media
contact. The idea is to be better prepared for dealing with the media
this year as we are certainly in interesting times for OSS.

We have discussed our goals for the year, and agreed that the ultimate
visions of last years strategic planning are still appropriate. Please
find our updated charter at http://linux.org.au/org/charter.phtml with a
nice diagram.

We spoke about the FTA and its negative impact not only on FOSS, but on
the Australian ICT industry as a whole. Specifically the
anti-circumvention and patents issues. We are putting some papers
together and they are currently up at http://linux.org.au/papers/ still
in draft format. Once we have legal and other feedback we will be
running with them. The FTA is already signed and sealed, however we may
be able to influence how it gets translated into legislation, for the
better.

We are involved in the Open Source Experts Group. A small collection of
individuals who are putting together some policies and FAQs on open
source. The idea is a group that is independent of any organisation,
that can pull in experts of various fields to get factual information on
FOSS that can be used by anyone. Currently the group has some stuff
developed, and all information will soon be up at
oseg.opensource.org.au. A brief description as to how the group relates
to everyone else, and where opensource.org.au fits in can be found at
http://linux.org.au/~pia/opensource.png.

Opensource.org.au will hopefully become the portal to Open Source in
Australia. It will be a small and simple site that highlights issues and
news from the various groups, and points to the various groups giving
explanation as to who and what they are. It will also have case studies
and such. A true portal for those interested in OS. See
http://www.linux.org.au/~mrd/opensource.org.au.demo.html for a concept
design for the site.

The idea of a roadshow was floated again, and we will be looking at the
costs of hiring someone to run one properly. Still looking into it.

To see the proposed new web site structure see
http://linux.org.au/~pia/la-web-structure2.jpg and anyone with design
ideas for the new site, please contact me at pia at linux.org.au. Please be
warned, it is quite big.

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