[clug] Technical Topics in Computing, Canberra December 2016

[Michael Still]

Hi,

Recently I’ve been feeling like I've been missing the chance to hear about
cool technical projects people are working on in a depth not possible at a
CLUG meeting because of time constraints.

Many years ago, AUUG used to run a weekend "summer conference" that was
almost free and addressed some of this issue. That conference died a
natural death when linux.conf.au got big, but I think maybe it's time to
bring that back.

So, I'd like to propose a simple weekend meetup in Canberra. I would make
it free, but I feel like the no-show rate is lower for events which charge
a token amount. I'm thinking something like $20 is small enough not to be
painful, but enough that people will value their tickets. Any profit would
be donated to some form of community group at the end, but I haven’t picked
one yet.

The Saturday of the event would be organized talks, with the goal of the
talks being to inspire attendees to have a hack on a new project on the
second day of the weekend. The second day would be an unstructured hackfest
to explore whatever is interesting after the talks of the previous day. I
think reserving the Saturday evening for board games and general “hanging
out” sounds like fun too.

Venue wise, I was thinking of doing something a bit out of left field like
hosting the event at Macarthur Scout Hall, mostly because I have easy
access to it, but also because it is in a good location with easy parking,
cafes and pizza nearby. It would also mean that people could sleep over in
the hall overnight instead of paying for accommodation if they wanted to.
The venue is not yet confirmed though.

Looking at my calendar, I'd like to suggest the first weekend of December
as the dates for the event, which is 3-4 December.

If you'd be interested in talking on the Saturday, there is a Google form
you can fill in to express interest at
https://goo.gl/forms/EHIvGvDfoceweMnk2

For the super keen, you can buy at ticket for this super speculative event
at eventbrite now --
https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/technical-topics-in-computing-tickets-27377136753
. If the event doesn’t run, I will refund your ticket purchase.

Finally, I wrote up a simple web page with my proposal at
http://www.madebymikal.com/category/events/technical-topics/tt-december-2016/
if that helps.

For those with an accepted linux.conf.au 2017 talk it might be a good way
to get a practice run in before the big event?

Cheers,
Michael

-- 
Rackspace Australia