[Announce] Linux Australia Update - How is it April?! oh also LCA2022 & LCA2023 news

Thu Apr 1 20:05:06 AEDT 2021

Dear All,

Can you believe it’s the start of April already? I realised it was 
exactly a year ago when I last travelled interstate. Since then we in 
Melbourne have been in lockdown several times and Brisbane have just 
been in their snap lockdown. These last 12 months have shown us that 
things are not predictable.

LCA2021 was, I think, a successful conference (although I’m biased). We 
got to see each other virtually and I think we were able to recreate the 
homely environment that LCA always delivers for us. We would like to 
thank our Speakers, Volunteers and most of all you our community for 
joining Joel, myself and the rest of the core team in this wonderful 
experiment. All of our attendees will soon be receiving a link to our 
post-event survey. Now that you’ve probably been to several online 
events you can reflect on LCA2021 and see how well we did in comparison. 
Of course we are always looking for ways to improve and value your feedback.

You probably want to skip past all this and find out about LCA2022. The 
Linux Australia Council along with the Canberra team have had several 
lengthy discussions over the past couple of months to determine the 
course of action. Things are still up in the air domestically and 
international visitors are likely at least 12 months away. With this in 
mind, the Council has decided to run LCA2022 in an online format once 
more. Council and the team will look at ways to provide an avenue for 
watch parties to allow delegates to meet up physically in their local 
regions. While it may be disappointing that we are not all coming 
together to a single location, we believe this is ultimately for the 
best given there is still so much uncertainty. Interestingly, when 
looking back at our announcement about LCA2021, the factors that were 
listed are still valid:

 1.

    In Australia vaccines have been in short supply and the rollout has
    been delayed. Most of our contingent would not be receiving their
    first dose until late 2021, with the second dose timing and
    availability still unknown.

 2.

    Opening Call for Sessions for an in person event is hard to do as
    speakers can’t guarantee that they can travel today, tomorrow or
    January.

 3.

    Being realistic about the safety of our international delegates: if
    there is still no vaccine for COVID-19 we can’t reasonably expect
    our delegates to go into 2 weeks quarantine on either side of our
    conference.

 4.

    The safety of our volunteers is paramount.

We will have further announcements about LCA2022 in the coming weeks. 
Please keep an eye out for our Call for Miniconfs soon, followed by our 
Call for Sessions shortly afterwards. I encourage you to subscribe to 
the LCA Announce mailing list if you have not already done so at 
https://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/lca-announce 
<https://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/lca-announce>

So where does this leave LCA2023 you may ask?

We would like to put out a Call for Bids for a hybrid conference to be 
run in 2023. Calling for bids for a hybrid model now will allow 
prospective teams to come up with solid ideas to bring both the Online 
and In Person experiences together and have a longer lead time for 
delivering a hybrid conference.

What should I do if I would like to bid?

  *

    Pull together a team of those who might be interested in running a
    Hybrid Conference. Who will be the Conference Chair, Treasurer, 2IC etc.

  *

    Schedule a time to chat with Myself and Joel Addison (Linux
    Australia Vice-President and Co-Chair of LCA2021). We will then
    discuss with you the areas you will need to cover in regards to
    running a hybrid conference including budgets, tickets prices,
    volunteers, attendees, sponsorship etc.

  *

    Once we have had that chat, work with your team to develop your bid,
    then submit it by 11:59PM (AoE) July 31 2021 to council at linux.org.au
    <mailto:council at linux.org.au>

  *

    During Quarter 3 and 4 2021, Council will conduct virtual site
    inspections with shortlisted bid teams.

  *

    Between Quarter 4 2021 and January 2022, Council decides on the
    winning bid and informs the teams.

  *

    January 2022 - Winning bid is announced at linux.conf.au Online.

If you have ever sat in an LCA talk, or had an informal chat to someone 
about running an LCA, now is the time to put that idea into action. This 
will be the first hybrid model conference and we want creative and 
innovative ideas on how we can make this work. We want this experience 
to be inclusive, exciting and accessible for both our online and face to 
face attendees.

If you are thinking of bidding, please let Joel or myself know sooner 
rather than later so that we can support you in every way possible to 
prepare a high quality bid. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you 
have any questions or need help in preparing your bid.

Please forward this onto anyone you think may be interested.

Looking forward to seeing your bids!

Sae Ra

-- 
Sae Ra Germaine
President
Linux Australia

president at linux.org.au
http://linux.org.au

Linux Australia Inc
GPO Box 4788
Sydney NSW 2001
Australia

ABN 56 987 117 479

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