I’m currently regarding LCA 2013 as my last LCA for a while. Never say never: LCA 2014 bids came in from Sydney (so, local to me) and Perth (where I’ve never been and would like to go). But I first went to LCA in 2001 and then later went to 2004 and since 2007 I’ve been to LCA every year, except for 2010 and that only because I had a baby in the middle of the conference.
LCA used to be my main way of reconnecting with open source while I was working on my PhD. But now I work for the Ada Initiative and open source (and open stuff) events are a big part of my job. While I have more time and energy for conferences I am attending them for very different reasons now and the lure of the new is getting strong.
Because my volunteer time is diminishing, LCA 2013 is definitely the last LCA in which I will have had significant input into the program (Michael Davies and I are co-chairs of the conference program this year, as we were for 2010). So, it’s something of a farewell tour for me and I’m looking forward to the program we worked so hard putting together.
… actually my non-LCA-ing family is still in town Monday, so I’ll probably go to Bdale Garbee’s keynote and then hang out with them. Off to a great start here, I know.
Radia Perlman’s keynote is the keynote I am most looking forward to this year. Following that several of my peeps are giving Haecksen talks before lunch:
- Feminism, anarchism and FOSS – Skye Croeser
- Overcoming imposter syndrome – Denise Paolucci
- Security – Joh Pirie-Clarke
People may be especially interested in the Imposter Syndrome talk, Imposter Syndrome being the feeling that you’ve achieved your current position or status totally fraudulently and are going to be discovered any second and publicly humiliated. It’s very common among people who are in quite critical fields (like academia). Denise was among our Imposter Syndrome facilitators for AdaCamp DC.
I am not sure after lunch, but Web Animations: unifying CSS Transitions, CSS Animations, and SVG (Shane Stephens) is a definite contender. In the afternoon The Horrible History of Web Development (Daniel Nadasi) sounds interesting (although it’s the kind of talk where an abstract would be really useful in determining whether I want to go) but so do What we can learn from Erlang (Tim McNamara) and Concurrent Programming is not so difficult (Daniel Bryan)
Wednesday
Trinity: A Linux kernel fuzz tester (and then some) (Dave Jones) is very tempting in the first slot, but I think I will go to Think, Create & Critique Design (Andy Fitzsimon) because I want to “speak” design semiotics a little bit better and have for a long time. Talking to graphic designers is actually part of my job.
In the second slot I am not entirely sure, but probably Open Source and Open Data for Humanitarian Response with OpenStreetMap (Kate Chapman) since I periodically dabble in OpenStreetMap.
After lunch my pick is definitely Free and open source software and activism (Sky Croeser). I’ve been following Sky’s activism and research since the EFA lamb roast fun and met her at AdaCamp Melbourne. I want to hear what she has to say about (h)ac(k)tavism.
Not as sure about the following slot (in a moment of mischief, we put the DSD’s talk right after Sky’s, but I’m not especially interested) but the biggest contender is The future of non-volatile memory (Matthew Wilcox) because he usually is one of the highlights of the LCA lower-level technical talks.
The first slot after afternoon tea I am not committing, but it does contain Pia’s grand scheme Geeks rule over kings – the Distributed Democracy. After that I think Copyright’s Dark Clouds: Optus v NRL (Ben Powell) is required: it isn’t LCA without emerging feeling distinctly gloomy about the current state of the intellectual property framework.