linux.conf.au 2008 item for the Gentoo Monthly News
Australia: Gentoo at linux.conf.au
Towards the end of January, a first happened for Gentoo in Australia. Roughly thirty users, developers and other Gentoo enthusiasts gathered into a lecture theatre at the University of Melbourne for a series of talks making up the first Gentoo Down Under Mini-Conf.
The morning began with Sura Mendis's introduction to the Mini-Conf and - for those who had entered the wrong room - an introduction to exactly what Gentoo is. Unfortunately the talk focusing on the Gentoo Hardened project was cancelled, but that didn't seem to faze Ivan Miljenovic who stepped up to the mark and discussed many of the tools that can assist in everyday Gentoo administration. After morning tea, Patrick Ohearn gave his introduction to Paludis, followed by Mark Kowarsky with pkgcore. Interestingly, no-one in the auditorium had used either of these, with only a handful having heard of them before. The Mini-Conf ended with Andrew Cowie delivering a talk first given at Gentoo UK 2007 entitled "Looking back up the river". Suffice to say it was very well done, and the discussions of the topic proceeded right through lunch.
Photo of speakers and other users Left to right: Mark Kowarsky (mark_alec), Andrew Cowie (AfC), Ivan Miljenovic (ivanm), Shyam Mani (fox2mike), Sura Mendis, Aaron Carroll (Flathead), Patrick Ohearn (patoh).
But that wasn't all the Gentoo-related fun during the week. The previous night paid host to the unofficial Gentoo dinner, with attendances from every Gentoo user that could be dragged along (along with a couple of others who lost their way to the Sysadmin dinner), for a night of light-hearted cameraderie that gave us a chance to bond as a community. Then to top the week off, we had our very own stall at the conference Open Day. Attendees got to see an array of machines running Gentoo, including two tablet PCs (although one of them spent most of its time compiling KDE4) and a projected presentation focusing on our favourite distribution. The few dozen Gentoo stickers we had soon disappeared.
We hope to hold similar Gentoo events in Australia in the future, with next year's linux.conf.au being held in Tasmania.
