linux.conf.au 2022

When I wrote about linux.conf.au this time last year, we weren’t sure whether 2022 would be a physical event in Canberra, or a second online event. It turns out that putting together an in-person conference a year in advance during the uncertainties of a global pandemic is just as difficult as it was last time, so the organisers wisely chose go online again for linux.conf.au 2022. It did not disappoint, and I’m proud that SUSE was once again able to sponsor one of the longest running Free and Open Source Software conferences in the world.

As expected, the conference was exceptionally well run, consisting of about 80 high quality talks over three days. Friday 14 January was devoted to miniconfs – four concurrent tracks focusing on specific areas (Open Hardware, Go GLAM meets Community, Linux Kernel, and System Administration). The main conference on Saturday 15 and Sunday 16 had four streams of 45 minute talks on a wide range of topics related to open technology. The videos are all online now. They can be viewed on YouTube or downloaded from the Linux Australia mirror. Check out the schedule for all the talk details.

The live experience was just as good as last year: high quality AV, multiple chat channels to interact with other attendees, and of course a channel per stream for when you were watching presentations. Some talks were prerecorded out of necessity, but in a couple of cases (notably Jono Bacon’s keynote), the presenter was there in the chat while the talk was on, so it was possible to ask them questions while their talk was running and interact with them in real time. For each of the live talks, there was a curated Q&A session at the end.

Do try to catch as many of the talks as you can, but at the very least I highly recommend:

• The conference opening, which includes a Welcome to Country by Wally Bell of the Buru Ngunawal Aboriginal Corporation
• Brian Kernighan’s Friday morning keynote “The early days of Unix at Bell Labs“
• Kathy Reid’s Friday afternoon locknote “Communities are systems: What can systems thinking teach us when it comes to communities?“
• Jono Bacon’s Saturday morning keynote “The Conflict and Burnout Survival Guide: Handling When Things Go Wrong“
• Liz Fong-Jones’ Sunday morning keynote “Cultivating Production Excellence“

I also want to highlight one other talk, given online events have been “the thing” for a while now. If you’re in any way involved in running online events, you will find Ryan Verner’s “Virtual Events: Behind the scenes of an engaging community conference” well worthwhile. It explains all the tech, and importantly, all the effort that made linux.conf.au 2021 and 2022 run so well.

Thank you to everyone who made this wonderful event possible. I look forward to seeing what 2023 has in store.