The Ghosts of Conference Past, 2009

This past weekend was The Ghosts of Conference Past meeting at the location of linux.conf.au 2009 in Hobart, Tasmania. For me it was a chance to meet with Ben Powell and Leah Duncan, the lead organisers of next year's conference, along with the rest of their team - Garry, Josh "A", Josh "B", Michael E, Kevin and John (I think I got that all right).

Boy! Was it a busy weekend! I flew in on Thursday night, and was met by Michael E at the airport, and took me off to the hotel - via Mt Wellington. If you ever get some free time in Hobart, it's worth having a look. I hear that there's running and cycing tracks leading up the mountain - something some of our regular LCAers might indeed be interested in doing come next January.

The rest of the crowd came in late that night, but I had already hit the sack. Next morning over breakfast the postmortem of Melbourne's conference began - with lots of reminiscing of all the fun we had only a few months ago.

We then met with Ben and Leah and the crew for a facilities tour around University of Tasmania, Sandy Bay where the conference proper will be held. The usual checking out of keynote venue, lecture theatres, tutorial rooms, "secret conference business" rooms, eateries, networking points etc etc etc was had, along with the unravelling of some of the wonderful secret plans lca2009 will hold for us.

After that it was onto accommodation of various grades and costs, walking between the various options to trial run what it will be like in January. We then had some lunch and time to get to know the Tassie team a little better and to start dumping conference knowledge to the team. We continued face to face discussions all afternoon that then continued into the night over food and a few drinks, making for a tired Michael at the end.

The alarm clock rang far too early on Saturday morning for my liking, although it was entirely necessary as we had an early start - lots to get through on the agenda. Breakfast with the other ghosts was highlighted by Steve's talk of deep frying baby ducks, and Donna's excessive coffee consumption.

Saturday was an all-day meeting as we went through the conference line item by line item, with plenty of hints, tricks and tips from previous conference organisers. We talked through things that worked well in the past, things that bombed, and encouraged the Hobart team as they shared some of their plans. By Saturday night we all were simply exhausted - we broke off into a couple of groups with some heading out for curry and Open Day discussions, while others stayed at the hotel and called it a night early on. Both the curry and the conversation was flavoursome, leaving our brains and bellys full.

Sunday was rinse, lather, repeat with more face to face meetings, followed by looking at more venue options. After that it was off to the airport for the trip home, via Melbourne. I slept on both flights, only waking up as the aircrew prepared for landing. An exhausting weekend with little sleep, but a very exciting time seeing what lca2009 will bring - hopefully the weekend helped the Hobart team in their preparation to bring us one fantastic conference in January 2009.

tech/linux-australia/lca2009 | 11 Mar 2008 | #