LCA Sessions: Day 1 - Morning

The first session on my list was Pia Waugh on Open Source in Australian Education, I wasn’t that interested in the topic (Aus is a long way from home) but I was looking forward to seeing her present, I’ve been told she’s a great speaker (nothing like raising the audiences expectations ;)) but I’ve never been able to pin people down on any details on her style; so I thought I’d have a look-see. Only the session didn’t happen. I arrived a little late (this was pre the signs going up) and she wasn’t presenting so I slid off to the other session I wanted to see, Jonathan Oxer on XEN image management.

I seem to be stalking Jon, I went through and marked the sessions I want to see and I seem to be going to three or so of his. If nothing else the man knows how to name his talks. I enjoyed the talk (the virtulisation room was packed and I ended up sitting on the stairs) and it gave me some things to think about even if I don’t think we’ll be using his approach. The audience also gave a lot to this session, their questions pulled a lot of the speakers knowledge out and some of the suggestions have gone in to my “have a look at” list. His cunning plan, which is very google file system in its approach, seems to work best for machines without a lot of local state, which isn’t that close to the use case we have at work.

On my way to the second session I bumped into a couple of Kiwis that used to be based in London so I did some catching up with them, and then sat out half a session in the open air, which made a pleasant break.

I then went to Coogee beach for lunch with Richard Cohen, a guy I know from GLLUG in London who’s been living in Hong-Kong for a while, and I’ve not seen for too long (he’ll be looking for a contract soon - hire him while you can!) Eating near the water was great, the views certainly helped and I had a lamb kebab (called a yeeros by the heathens over here) that you could actually tell was lamb. Weird.