My first LCA

Saturday, January 21st, 2012 at 01:18pm

A few years ago there was an LCA held in Melbourne, that I regret not going to. What is LCA? It is the abbreviation for linux.conf.au, a large open source conference that is held every year at various locations around Australia and New Zealand. Those familiar with me should know that I am a regular attendee at Open Source Developers’ Conference, my undetrstanding was that LCA is like that but bigger, although more technical and obviously more based around Linux.

When I found out late last year that the next one would be held in Ballarat I decided that I had to go. It was close enough that I could just drive out there, but also far enough away that I could immerse myself in it for the entire week.

That week is now over and I have a lot to think about – will need to make a follow up post about the talks once I have digested it all. Though two that immediately come to mind are one from Andrew Tridgell about the design and build of an open source UAV to rescue “Outback Joe” and other about launching balloons into space which included a live demonstration:

A big difference to previous conferences was a sense of community which was due to it being held on a university campus AND a lot of people (including myself) stayed on campus in the student dorms. This gave a great sense of community, eg on the Monday night a sizable group of us gathered, ordered a lot of pizza and talked about all sorts of things, there was a big BBQ on another night and on yet another night we had a big shared collective dinner:

Next year it will be in Canberra and I have already decided to go, probably driving up. Though this does mean that I will now have two regular conferences in my calendar that are similar but different: OSDC and LCA…

Tagged with: conference, linux.conf.au, photos