Linux.conf.au (LCA2012) a First Timers perspective

I was gong to blog on the sessions I attended by I will catch up on that a bit later, I am sure there may well be many other doing that so I have decided to go for a more personal perspective first up.

Well this is my first LCA - I am a newbie :-) . It would seem that before the past week I knew either personally or virtually about all of one other delegate… this was therefore a leap out of my comfort zone - at least over the years I have improved my skills at meeting new people significantly compared to where I was at a couple of decades ago. Of course, I knew of many fellow attendees - some I even happened to be following on Twitter or blog aggregators,

Having previously read the First Timers Guide by Simon Lyall, and registered with the friendly helpful and well prepared volunteers, first up was the opening session. One thing I am appreciating is that this is a very laid back conference. The motto is ‘Be Excellent to Each Other’ which bodes well to meeting new people it a friendly atmosphere. Actually I managed to start on that task in the cafeteria in the line up for coffee - so thats a tip for anyone new attending - order coffee, and introduce yourself to the other delegates who are waiting. Most will be wearing a neck badge with name and other information. Speaking of this, the Swag Bag was full of more than just the usual T-shirt - the retractable USB thingy I have already used, and at some stage I may have time to investigate the USB ‘leo’ an Arduino gadget that was included.

The name badges are very useful for me because I always struggle to remember names, and my brain is definitely going to explode long before the end of this week.

By the end of morning tea I had managed to have a conversation with four people already, and after briefly catching up with my very busy friend Jonathan (co-organiser of the Music and Multimedia miniconf) by the end of afternoon tea I had managed to meet around a dozen fellow attendees, and most interestingly with a wide geographical spread from nearby Melbourne through to New Zealand and Europe.

Having return to lodgings to dine with family, tonight a tour of the Ballarat observatory beckons.

PS Along the way I managed to put a very quick bio on the wiki.