[Announce] Linux Australia President's Report for 2012

[John Ferlito]

Howdy,

This will be my third and last President's report. As I have already
announced I am not running for President in 2013. I would like to take
this opportunity to thank all of those that have supported me during
my time as President and Treasurer before that. It has been an
interesting journey and I have learnt a lot along the way. I hope that
I can continue to help Linux Australia from the sidelines and you
never know, I may be back some day.

# Council

The Linux Australia council aims to meet once per fortnight. Since the last
AGM, the council held 17 telephone conferences as well as a face to face
meeting in Sydney.

Early in 2012 we held an OCM by-election to fill the vacant position
not filled at the AGM. Clinton Roy was elected as an Ordinary
Committee member.

# Conferences

This year we have had the opportunity to support even more open source
conferences. The conferences for 2012 were:

* LCA 2012
* Drupal Downunder 2012
* Barcamp Melbourne 2012
* PyConAU 2012
* Wordcamp Melbourne
* Wordcamp Sydney

In 2013 we will be adding Joomla Day Melbourne into the mix and we
will also say goodbye to Drupal Down Under with the emergence of
Drupal Con coming to Australia for the first time.

I think that supporting Open Source conferences is one of the things
that Linux Australia does quite well. If you are thinking of running
and Open Source conference or already do, then it is well worth while
getting in touch with the LA Council to see if we can help you out as
well.

I would like to extend my thanks to all the subcommittees organising
the conferences. It is these individuals that put in the hard yards to
make all our conferences a success and without them none of it would
even be remotely possible.

# linux.conf.au 2013

linux.conf.au 2013 is being held in Canberra, during Canberra's
centenary. Most of the Canberra team is made up of old hands who
have been involved in at least one LCA before. This has made working
with the 2013 team an enjoyable experience and I'm sure that they will
put on an excellent conference that will be talked about for years to
come.

# linux.conf.au 2014 Bid Process


The bid process this year was a difficult one. In the original call
for bids, while we received some expressions of interest, the council
ended up not receiving a bid from any teams.

After a second round of bidding two bids were received from the
community, one from Perth and one from Sydney. The bids were examined
by the council and site visits were made in November. The successful
bidder will be announced at the closing ceremony of linux.conf.au 2013
in Canberra.

# Sub-Committees

The current non-conference based sub-committees are:

* Admin Team
* Mirror Team
* Web Team
* Sydney Linux Users Group
* LOGIN (NewcastleLUG)

Reports from the various sub-committees and their activities can be
found at http://linux.org.au/sub-committees

# Grants and Donations

This year Linux Australia split the grants budget into a $10,000
grants portion and $10,000 for sponsorships and donations. These
schemes aim to support and encourage the community in fostering open
source, whether this be helping to organise a conference or manning a
stand at an expo.

This year the following projects were supported by these schemes.

* AdaCamp
* Goldcoast Techspace
* Drupal Code Sprint
* Open Standards Report Submission to UK Cabinet Office Open Standards
  Consultation by Brendan Scott

This year LA also kicked off a Regional delegates programme around
LCA, this has enabled individuals who would not normally have been
able to afford to attend the conference to participate. Approximately
$10,000 was allocated which enabled us to sponsor seven individuals
from around Australia.

# Name change

Early this year the council proposed that Linux Australia should
change it's name to something that was more encompassing of it's
broader goals and the more general relevance of Open Source vs Linux
to the broader community. A choice of potential names, including no
change was put to a vote. The outcome was for no change.

# Other News

The Rusty Wrench award was awarded to Mary Gardiner in 2012 for her
long running contributions to supporting women in open technology and
culture.

The new server hardware purchased in 2011 has begun to be deployed.

At the council face to face this year, media training was organised
for the council as well as members of the LCA2013 team.

# Finally

I would like to thank the 2012 council as well as all the previous
councils who I have worked with over the last three years. Their
support has been invaluable to me. The list of accomplishments which
we have achieved over the last three years is something that I think
we can all be proud of.


Cheers,
John Ferlito
President, Linux Australia

-- 
John
Blog                             http://www.inodes.org
LCA2013                          http://linux.conf.au