Be the signal

The Ghosts of Conferences Past is the nickname given to previous linux.conf.au organisers who volunteer to mentor and help future teams. Every year the new team, the immediate past organisers and some of the veteran Ghosts meet to pass the torch, provide advice and share their experiences.

What a weekend!

We began on Saturday morning with the Dunedin Debrief, going through the organisation and on-the-ground experience of the 2006 team. My favourite bit of Ghosts is hearing the behind-the-curtain horror stories. Not too many of those from Dunedin though. In the afternoon, we broke up into groups to discuss particular elements of the organisation process and the roles involved, such as the CFP and review committee, speaker relations, the partner programme, etc. Mike missed all of the Saturday afternoon shenanigans because he had to pop the question at the top of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Suffer in your jocks, Mikey!

On Sunday we gave the Sydney Synopsis (yes, the agenda was beautifully alliterative on both days) which brought the Ghosts up to date with our plans, where we’re at, and what we’re doing next. Diagnosis: We’re not on crack. In fact, we’ve been quite conservative about our approach to cool-new-stuff, preferring to focus on polish, keeping the conference intimate while scaling it up a bit, and implementing a few select ideas we hope will live on in future years (such as the Open Day). We revealed a few of our surprises to the Ghosts, but they won’t be telling you much… The appropriate level of physical threats have been made to ward off any risk of surprises being burst before the conference.

I think the most valuable philosophical advice I took away from the weekend was from Michael Davies, who encouaged us to put our own spin on things, and not be afraid to inject our own interests and personality into the conference. In retrospect, that’s probably why 2004, in Adelaide, is still my favourite linux.conf.au. Thus far, I’ve been cautious about inflicting too much love for user experience issues on our plans. Turns out the consensus opinion among the Ghosts is that we should sink our teeth into it. Rock on! Of course, it’s all up to the paper submissions we receive, so get your skates on when we announce the CFP.

Thanks very much to our Ghosts! Some of them have even written reports about the weekend…

• Mike Beattie
• Kristy Bennett [One, Two]
• Michael Davies (who wrote a report, but his website got vultured)
• Alex King
• Jon Oxer
• Nick Phillips
• Rusty Russell
• Kelvin Sim