[lca-announce] LCA2014 Official Announcement

[linux.conf.au Announcements]

LCA2014 Official Announcement

Announcing linux.conf.au 2014

Overview
In January 2014, Perth, Western Australia will be playing host to the
continents premier open source conference – linux.conf.au.

linux.conf.au draws attendees and speakers worldwide from all spheres
of open source, geeks, hackers, professionals, hobbyists and business
partners.
Conference Format
The linux.conf.au conference runs over 5 days from Monday 6th January
to Friday 10th January.

Conference tickets are available at Professional, Hobbyist and Student
levels with associated pricing and perks.

Over the first two days we host a series of miniconfs, small single
day conferences covering particular topics. Intended as an incubator
for related technologies and interests that could eventually hold
their own conferences. The miniconfs are managed and run as
independent conferences with their own call for papers and management
committees.

The remaining three days feature a packed conference schedule, in 2014
we will be running presentations over 5 simultaneous tracks. Each
track will feature four 45 minute presentations per day. The full
programme is available on our website at
http://linux.conf.au/programme/schedule.

On most days before the main sessions, the conference will open with a
keynote presentation. The keynotes tend to follow a less technical
approach and provide commentary and insight on broad global trends and
open source challenges.
Birds of a Feather Sessions
Run outside the scope of the formal presentation agenda, linux.conf.au
encourages delegates to arrange “Birds of a Feather” - BOF - sessions.
These draw together people with a specific area of interest and are
run after hours. Typical BOF sessions range from Astronomy, Video
capture, Running, Cycling, Hacking and many others. The BOF sessions
are a great opportunity to meet and socialise with like minded people
during the conference.
Video and Streaming
All presentations made at linux.conf.au will be recorded and the
completed videos made available for download and online viewing. This
year we will be attempting to provide a live stream of the proceedings
too.
Social Programme
The linux.conf.au tries to be as accessible to participants as
possible, we generally run a partners programme to provide some
interest and entertainment to partners of attendees who are not
interested in participating. We also arrange a creche facility to care
for children while delegates are attending presentations.

We also run several semi-formal networking sessions including a
speakers dinner on Tuesday, a professional delegates networking
function on the Thursday  and a penguin dinner open to all delegates
on the Wednesday.

In addition to the above, various organisations will be hosting social
gatherings during the conference and on free evenings.

Keynotes
At present, we've announced two keynote presenters, with a third still
being determined. The confirmed keynote presenters so far are:
Jonathon Oxer
Jon will be presenting an overview of the latest developments to the
ArduSat project as part of his keynote presentation during
linux.conf.au 2014 in Perth, Western Australia.

Jon has been hacking on both hardware and software since he was a
little tacker. Most recently he's been focusing more on the Open
Hardware side, co-founding Freetronics as a direct result of
organising the first Arduino Miniconf at LCA2010. His books include
"Ubuntu Hacks" and "Practical Arduino".

Jon has been variously referred to as Australia's geekiest man and as
a cyborg-in-progress. As part of his “SuperHouse” home automation
series, Jon has taken keyless entry to an all new level by embedding
an RFID tag into his arm using a vet's chipping tool.

Recently he has been working on ArduSat, a satellite that aims to give
hobbyists, students and space enthusiasts an opportunity to design and
run their own experiments in space. By choosing a standardised
platform based on the hugely popular Arduino hardware design, ArduSat
allows anyone to develop and prototype experiments at home using
readily accessible parts and all based on a simple open source
software environment.

Kate Chapman
Kate Chapman is the Executive Director of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team.

The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) is an initiative of
OpenStreetMap to apply the principles of open source and open data
sharing towards humanitarian response and economic development.

The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team believes that freely available,
up-to-date geographic data can be vital in responding to a disaster.
They help communities and responders to utilize the OpenStreetMap
data, and encourage them to contribute and update the data.

Over the past two years Kate has been primarily based in Indonesia
where she has lead the AusAID funded HOT program. The program Scenario
Development for Contingency Planning (SD4CP) is a joint initiative of
the Indonesian and Australian governments through BNPB (Indonesian
Disaster Management Agency) and AusAID that aims to teach disaster
mangers how to develop realistic impact scenario for contingency
planning. HOT teaches disaster mangers to spatially analysis the
combination of scientific hazard model outputs with community
knowledge through the open-source software InaSAFE (Indonesia Scenario
Assessment For Emergencies). OpenStreetMap is one of the keys elements
of this procedure, as it allows the disaster mangers to draw on
community knowledge to identify important buildings such as schools
and hospitals that potentially be impacted during a disaster.

We're really pleased to have Kate coming to talk with us as her
personal efforts and her teams work represents an organization that we
can really hold up as a shining example of how the open source model
truly does work.

Miniconfs
Each year we try to select a range of topics for our focused mini
conferences. This year's miniconf sessions are listed below.

Monday:
Systems Administration
Developer, Testing, Release and Continuous integration Automation
Open Government
Open Radio
OpenProgramming

Tuesday:
OpenStack
Linux Kernel
Haecksen
Astronomy
Multimedia and Music
Arduino

Conference
The main conference runs over the remaining three days, and is a full
programme of five streams of deep technical presentations and
tutorials covering a wide range of topics. To view the full schedule
please visit our website at http://linux.conf.au/programme/schedule.
Conference Location
linux.conf.au will be held in Perth, Western Australia this year.
Perth is Australia's most remote capital city, but is also where most
of the action is happening. Perth is experiencing an huge amount of
growth, driven by the mining boom, but encompassing all aspects of
city life. Perth now has a vibrant cultural scene, and our outdoor
lifestyle and coastal location is the envy of the world.

The last linux.conf.au held in Perth was ten years ago in 2003, so we
are really looking forward to hosting the conference again.

The linux.conf.au conference is traditionally held on a university
campus, utilising the lecture rooms and accommodation facilities they
have to offer – 2014 is no exception, and we will be hosting the
conference at the University of Western Australia (UWA). The UWA
Crawley Campus is situated a short distance from the Perth CBD and
adjacent to the magnificent Swan river and Kings Park public space.
Accomodation
Accommodation will be at the university colleges  of St George's
http://www.stgeorgescollege.com.au/ and Trinity
http://www.trinity.uwa.edu.au/ for full details of the accomodation
please refer to our wiki article
https://lca2014.linux.org.au/wiki/Campus_accommodation. The
accomodation is ideally situated just across the road from the
conference and registration areas.

Volunteering
The conference is run as a voluntary effort. We rely on people to
volunteer their time to organise and run the conference. During the
conference we are always keen to welcome volunteers to come on board
and help with the running of the conference. Interested people can
sign up to volunteer at https://lca2014.linux.org.au/volunteer/new. We
offer free registration for people who are willing to volunteer a
significant portion of their time to the conference.
Proposed Focus
To provide a degree of consistency linux.conf.au normally selects a
general focus to help guide the presenters in topic selection. For
2014 our focus is on “linux on the frontier and deep technical
content”. With the scope of Linux broadening at such a rapid pace this
provides a broad scope for speakers topics and allows topics to be
drawn from just about any sphere of computing, be it cybernetics,
mobile operating systems, astronomy, big data, gaming etc.

Contacts
Please send all correspondence to the LCA2014 Organising Team
team at lists.lca2014.linux.org.au
Our website is accessible from http://lca2014.linux.org.au
#lca2014