Report on LCA 2006. I have in the past been unsure as to the value of MiniConfs attached to Linux Confs given that I've seen it as a “preaching to the converted” exercise, given that most Linux distros come with OOo in any case. However, now that I have attended my first major Linux conf, I am now of a different opinion, the reasons for which I will cover later. Suffice to say that from a marketing POV I believe we should definitely attend but with a slightly different focus.
In terms of the greater conference OOo got some good press, with Mark Shuttleworth holding up OOo as one of the best examples of Language development and localisation. So, much Kudos to the Native language projects, the value of your work is noticed by the wider FLOSS world as an example to other projects. While there was some criticism, largely centered around the tired old java issue, most of the FLOSS professionals understood the sheer size of the project creates mountains of issues that can't be solved in an instant. Those others that criticised did so on thin philosphical grounds that I doubt will ever go away unless OOo becomes a GNU project... Yea right. ;) Several speakers fiercely promoted “Cross Platform” rather than purely Linux as the way of the future and held up OOo and the Mozilla products as the shining examples. With KOffice and Gnumeric and other *nix products in the process of crossing that divide if they haven't already, there are obviously many who feel the same. Mark Shuttleworth's final Keynote promoted the idea of collaboration between FLOSS projects. Obviously OOo are making such possible, ODF being the removal of one significant barrier to collaboration. The OOo Mini conf was held over two days prior to LCA'06 Programme: Presentation by Ian Laurenson on programming OOo Macros Q&A session on OOo with attendees Building OOo with Jim Watson, Maintainer of the Linux for Sparc port Jonathon Coombes did sessions on the HSQL Database and XFoms Jacqueline McNally did a session OOo:the Community And I bashed up a quick "Using Impress" Session. I was extremely disappointed at lack of organisation of the Miniconf. No programme was published on the LCA wiki before the Conference or in fact during the Conference. In fact, last years programme was displayed right up until three days before the miniconf. No OOo materials were available either in the form of CDs, documentation, banners or in fact anything. I supplied some machines with M150 and M151 installed but this was almost done as an afterthought and wasn't confirmed till two weeks before the conf. and that not by the organisers. The Programme was created on the spot with presentations done that were either ones used from previous conferences or created on the night before with no notice. Without a published programme conference attendees didn't know whether they would find attending useful and consequently attendances were very low even though 70 had registered interest. By contrast the Education Mini conf had 68 registered as interested and the turnout was excellent. There were about 30 people at my presentation and discussion was lively. The programme had been published many weeks before the MiniConf and the organiser actively recruited presentations when the call for papers had not generated a full programme. By contrast at the OOo MiniConf, it appeared that little organisation had been done before the conference and it was mostly made up on the spot. Certainly little was discussed on the Events list beforehand. I posted to the [EMAIL PROTECTED] list asking what if anything was needed in terms of resources and received a blank from the organisers. This Miniconf was attached to Linux Conference Australia, considered by Linus Torvalds himself as one of the two premier Linux events in the world and was himself in attendance. Given that this was a marketing Project exercise we should have had a Professionally organised event. It was certainly not up to any standard that I would consider professional. As I noted earlier I have had a turnaround of my opinion as to whether we should attend events such as this. The reasons: It is without doubt, as I think Louis has pointed in the past, a prime opportunity for the recruitment of developers. Certainly Google and MySQL were very active. (Thanks for the Beer guys! :) ) While obviously we can't match the budgets of the corporate giants, bug crunching with prizes, getting OOo bugs in as part of the Hackfest and various other strategies are achievable on a limited budget. One thing I noticed was that a significant number of developers and Linux professionals are also endusers that need enduser training. I could have quite easily run two half day sessions on creating presentations in Impress that, going by feedback I had during the conference, would have been well attended. During the week leading up to the conference I was giving Impress support both on and off list to speakers at the Main conf. and Jonathon and I continued that during the MiniConf.. as well as finding some bugs I might add. In conclusion many positives in terms of the greater conference. Many more educators are aware of OOo. We have a positive high profile as a project, especially in terms of the NLC. However we did ourselves no favours with the MiniConf organisation. We need to substantially lift our game in that area. Cheers -- Graham Lauder OpenOffice.org Marcon New Zealand [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://marketing.openoffice.org/contacts.html INGOTs Gold Assessor Trainer www.theingots.org Member Open Document fellowship http://www.opendocumentfellowship.org --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
