Linux Australia Updates

Stewart Smith

Vice President

stewart@linux.org.au

New Committee!

Media Team

Getting Increasing interest from media

Linux, Linux Australia, User Groups

Needed to co-ordinate timely press releases.

February 2004

Decided to create a media team

Single point of contact

press@linux.org.au

Media Training

May 2004

Brought people from the community to Sydney for Media Training

Pia Smith, Stewart Smith, Michael Davies, Jeff Waugh, Arjen Lentz, Marco Ostini, Leon Brooks, Steven Hanley, Jason King

The Editor Group, http://www.editor.com

Media Coverage

On our press page:

http://www.linux.org.au/press

This year: 14 Press articles related to Linux Australia

So pretty successful!

ACS

Helped the Australian Computer Society form a policy on Open Source

Was a collective effort – not just Linux Australia

Free Trade Agreement

February

Rusty Russell and Dan Shearer met with Kate Lundy and others. (over time, met with other representatives)

Raised two main points

Why Anti-Circumvention legislation is bad.

Why Patent legislation is bad.

We felt this was a pretty safe bet.

Thoughts? Comments?

FTA Website

http://www.linux.org.au/fta/

Analysis of Laws

http://linux.org.au/papers/fta_comparison_table_040322.pdf

http://linux.org.au/papers/fta_advice_040322.pdf

Published whitepapers

http://www.linux.org.au/papers/no-dmca.html

http://www.linux.org.au/papers/no-patents.html

FTA cont.

Position Paper

http://www.linux.org.au/papers/fta-paper.html

Testimony to Senate committee

http://www.linux.org.au/fta/testimony/

All of these issues were discussed on linux-aus

http://lists.linux.org.au/listinfo/linux-aus

We feel the community agrees with our position.

linux.conf.au 2004

Great Success!

The CDs and DVDs are finally out!

http://www.linux.org.au/conf/2004/eventrecord/

linux.conf.au 2005

http://conf.linux.org.au/

Canberra

Monday April 18 to Saturday April 23, 2005.

There are only 31 weeks until linux.conf.au 2005 and 4 weeks until paper abstracts are due!

To hear about LCA news, subscribe to the lca-announce mailing list.

linux.conf.au 2006

Location undecided yet.

A bit of competition....

So.... Ideas, volunteers and action!

New Website

On the agenda since early 2003

Finally “any day now”

http://www.linux.org.au/~stewart/website/

Comments (and bug reports) welcome!

AGM

First mass online LA AGM

Scheduled end of January

Online voting!

This is now possible due to the constitution changes made at this years AGM (LCA04)

Code yet to be written

Likely a preferential system

Other items to note

LCA “Ghosts” meeting went well

“Boozy lunch” for LA committee meeting went well.

Continued relationship with LPI

A few extra grant proposals

Join Us!

Membership is free

http://www.linux.org.au/membership/

Membership system is also Open Source

http://www.flamingspork.com/projects/memberdb/

Comments?

Stewart Smith

stewart@linux.org.au

At Linux.conf.au – discussion among community

In Feb, we discussed it at committe:

- Rusty points out that any organization worth it's salt has a top level, very prominent link on its website for media/press interest.

- semi-private “Press team” helping committee with press releases.

2004-09-06T17:54:03