[plug] CommIT 2004

[Leon Brooks]

Day one of this two-day conference was a bit slow, but I'm expecting 
this afternoon to be fairly torturous since Perth City has Friday night 
shopping and people will tend to visit the expo and then toddle off to 
the city.

We did hand out about sixty fliers kindly printed by LinuxIT and funded 
by SLPWA, plus another 30 to the ACS rep who wants to hand them out to 
all of their members. The flyer is available for inspection here, and 
mentions OSIA and LA as well as the two local organisations (the PDF is 
small-footprint but pretty horrible):

    http://linux.org.au/~leonb/SLPWA-flyer-CommIT2004.pdf [430kB]
    http://linux.org.au/~leonb/SLPWA-flyer-CommIT2004.ps.gz [2.7MB]
    http://linux.org.au/~leonb/SLPWA-flyer-CommIT2004.sxw [3.4MB]

The font (Toga) has an open licence. Some of the images are copyrighted 
by their organisations but the screenshots are fair game. OSWA and LA 
get a mention and a "hyperlink" as well as the locals. The clue fairy 
lives here:

    http://penguinisto.serverpro2.com/cg_gallery/humor/heres_yer_friggin_clue!.htm

For your convenience, I've included my 3fold-on-A4 OpenOffice 
"template"; start typing the front cover in the third frame and keep 
right on typing to flow around the cover, across the middle, onto the 
flyleaf and then the back cover.

   http://linux.org.au/~leonb/BlankA43fold.sxw [6.5kB]

Skribe did a stirling job of manning the stand ploitely and 
informatively yesterday, and I did bump into a number of ancient 
acquaintances, including Justin von Perger (http://www.v-biz.net/) and 
Andrew Warenczak (http://www.motium.com.au/) for those who remember.

LA's illustrious Treasurer, Mark Tearle, made a cameo appearance along 
with the well-known and wideley respected Nick Bannon. We have one 
additional SLPWA member out of it so far, possibly two, and at least 
three new PLUG members inbound.

One conspicuous absence among the stands is Microsoft, and Cisco is 
represented only by a banner on a collective stand mostly occupied by 
WAIA. Many exhibitors are Open Source aware, and as of yesterday 
afternoon many more are.

The show's being held in the shiny new Conference Centre next to the 
freeway, and appears to be the second-ever show there. Minister Clive 
Brown opened the festivities, and Little Johnnie (PM) also rolled up, 
for which some peace protesters made an appearance.

Might post some pix of the show later, didn't get any of the pollies 
(which for Clive is a bit of a pity, he seems to be more clueful, 
straightforward and less camera-addict than most pollies).

Cheers; Leon