Linux.conf.au

linux.conf.au (often abbreviated as LCA) is Australia's national Linux and Open Source conference. It is a roaming conference, held in a different city every year, coordinated by Linux Australia and organised by local Australian Linux User Groups.

The conference is a non-profit event, with any surplus funds being used to seed the following year's conference and to support the Australian Linux and open source communities. The name is actually the conference's URL, using the uncommon second-level domain .conf.au, just as other conferences - such as FOSS.IN - now do. The Rusty Wrench award for service to the free software community is presented at the conference.

Growing at a rate of approximately 25% in size per year, the conference is one of three major, international, grass-roots open-source conferences world wide. The other two are the Linux Symposium (commonly known as OLS) and Linux Kongress.

Conference history

In 1999, CALU was conceived, bankrolled (via his personal credit card) and executed by Linux kernel hacker Rusty Russell. It laid the foundation for a successful, strongly technical, eclectic and fun conference series.

A major highlight of the 2004 conference was Linus Torvalds, originator of the Linux operating system kernel, being dunked in a dunk tank to raise money for charity.

The 2006 event broke new ground, being the first conference to be held outside Australia, recognising the importance of the New Zealand Linux community.

At Linux.conf.au 2007 in Sydney, a new feature was an Open Day for non-conference attendees, in which community groups, interest groups and Linux businesses held stands and demonstrations.

The 2008 event was the second time the conference had been held in Melbourne but the first time under the linux.conf.au name.

Miniconfs

Linux.conf.au 2003 was the first event to have mini-conferences which preceded the main event. The miniconfs are half - 2 days streamed gatherings which have their own programme but are open for any conference attendee to participate in. This grew in 2004, with the Open-Source in Government (ossig) miniconf, EducationaLinux, Debian Miniconf and GNOME.conf.au.

Recurring Miniconfs have included those devoted to Debian, education, security and multimedia.

References

ee also

*Open Source Developers' Conference

External links

* [http://linux.conf.au/ linux.conf.au]
* [http://wiki.linux.org.au/Ctte/LCA_HOWTO HOWTO run a linux.conf.au]
* [http://linux.org.au/LCA linux.conf.au Conference Archive]