Miniconf Info - linux.conf.au 2015

Miniconfs are a unique aspect of the linux.conf.au experience. First introduced at linux.conf.au 2002, they are now a traditional element of the conference.

Miniconfs are smaller one day events which are run on the Monday and Tuesday of the conference. They are intended as an incubator -- both of future conferences and speakers. The miniconfs are selected as part of the Call for Papers process which was run from June to July 2014.

Each mini conf includes the following;
1 Speaker Ticket for the Key Organiser
3 One Day Miniconf Tickets for allocation to Speakers(These doesn't include a speakers or professionals ticket)

Day One Miniconf Programme - Monday 12th January 2015

Miniconf Organiser About
Clouds, Containers, and Orchestration Joe Brockmeier "Software defined everything," DevOps, and cloud are driving open source further and faster than we might have imagined possible just a decade ago. Most recently, Docker containers and orchestration have opened up all kinds of new opportunities to develop, deploy, and manage software from the developer's desktop well into production.

The miniconf will focus on the open source tools and best practices for working with cloud tools, containers, and orchestration software (e.g., Kubernetes, Apache Mesos, geard, and others). We'll have the leading developers working on those tools, as well as users who are deploying them in real production environments to share their knowledge and show where tools will be going in 2015.

Debian Andrew Ruthven Debian was the earliest Linux distributions to be open for every developer and user to contribute their work. It continues to be the most significant distributor of Linux that is not a commercial entity (and even then, a number of commercial entities base their distributions on Debian).

As Debian remains a key part of the Linux ecosystem, this miniconf will collect together people from across the distros as there are a number of common interests.

Multimedia and Music Jonathan Woithe and Silvia Pfeiffer Multimedia and music are a significant part of how information is produced and consumed in our increasingly connected world. The Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) ecosystem provides a rich collection of software tools allowing the consumption and creation of multimedia. The Multimedia and Music Miniconf at LCA 2015 will bring users and developers together to present, discuss and experience what FOSS multimedia and music software has to offer for content consumers and producers alike. The miniconf will close with an informal demo/jam session to allow FOSS community members to showcase their creations and inspire others.

This miniconf will appeal to a broad range of community members who have an interest in multimedia and music on open source platforms - users and developers alike.

Kernel Miniconf Tony Breeds The linux kernel is the world's largest open source project and is at the heart of every linux distribution. The miniconf will be about all things kernel and is targeted mainly at experienced developers. Any interested parties will be welcome as always.

Key areas of discussion will be:

  • New developments and APIs
  • Pain points for users
  • Process/Community issues
  • Testing!!!
Open Source for Humanitarian Tech Kate Chapman Technology is increasingly important in humanitarian response. Now responders are better connected to digital volunteers, more advanced tools such as unmanned-aerial vehicles give a better review of post disaster situations and great quantities of data can be collected and analyzed. Often these solutions are not expendable and are based on expensive proprietary solutions.

The Humanitarian Tech Miniconf will focus on two main audiences:

  1. Existing technologists who are interested in ways they can assist with technology in humanitarian response.
  2. Allowing existing projects and participants to share what they are working on and look for ways to integrate.

Technologists who work on UAVs, mesh networks, data collection platforms and content management will be invited to speak, and humanitarians to give a background in humanitarian response to those not familiar.

Writing Openly; Open Source Documentation Tim Hildred

People often complain about the quality of open source project documentation. At the same time, documentation is a great place to get started contributing to an open source community.

This miniconf will explore practical aspects of Open Source documentation, with an eye to applying them right away.

We will look at:

  • popular markup languages (Docbook, DITA, markdown, etc)
  • version control systems for writers (SVN, git, etc)
  • getting started as a contributor (how to pick a project, getting an account, meeting the community, your first commit, etc)
  • documentation skills and methodologies (topic-based authoring, single sourcing, minimalism, etc)

We'll then be able to start contributing documentation. The pacing of this session will be largely driven by participant interest. It might be that we fly through the concepts straight to a frenetic docs hack fest. It might be that we get a lively argument about the best markup language, or whether minimalism is all hype.

Open Radio Kim Hawtin

Participants of the Miniconf will learn about Software Defined Radio, a little about RF and licensing, data encoding and open source radio software. then build, test and debug their very own Software Defined Radio using a low cost kit. The kit will cover reception of HF spectrum and allow transmission over short range.

Day Two Miniconf Programme - Tuesday 13th January 2015

Miniconf Organiser About
Sysadmin Ewen McNeill

The Systems Administration Miniconf focuses on professional management of real-world Linux and open source environments, both large and small. The miniconf aims to include a diverse range of tools and techniques that will help keep your entire environment functioning smoothly, and accomplish more with less effort. An important goal will be to provide talks directly useful to professional Linux administrators.

Ewen McNeill is the 2015 Sysadmin Miniconf organiser. Both Ewen McNeill and Simon Lyall have worked together to organise the eight previous miniconfs, and alternated running the miniconf. Both have attended linux.conf.au each year since 2004.

Ewen works as a consulting sysadmin, network admin and developer -- and increasingly finds these are all merging into different specialities of programming, with the increase in configuration management automation and Software Defined Networks. He has been involved directly and indirectly with production operations since the early 1990s, mostly in Internet-related networks and organisations.

A call for presentations at the Sysadmin Miniconf will be issued later in September 2014. Anyone interested in presenting is encouraged to visit the Sysadmin Miniconf website later this month for more details.

Deploying OpenStack Michael Still

OpenStack is Open Source software for building public and private clouds through a series of Infrastructure as a Service building blocks. OpenStack offers virtualized infrastructure -- compute, networking and storage -- as well as orchestration and management tools. Built with the support of a large number of organizations, many of whom sponsor linux.conf.au, there are now thousands of installations around the world. You quite possibly know someone running OpenStack right now.

This year's linux.conf.au miniconf is going to try taking a new approach -- we're going to cover the issues that are important to a System Admin in deploying OpenStack into their environment, while attempting to tell the story of a hypothetical OpenStack deployment from end to end. How does OpenStack integrate with your existing LDAP or Active Directory? What choices need to be made about how to configure storage on your compute nodes? How does scaling your object storage work? What are the networking options you might like to consider? What hypervisor is the right choice for your needs?

We'll also cover the existing configuration management options, including puppet, chef and HP's deployment system tripleo.

The focus of this year's miniconf is explicitly on the deployers of OpenStack, rather than the developers of it. We won't cover developer-centric issues like the latest tweaks to our CI system, or what the state of development is with the Kilo release. We pinky swear there will be no talks on the governance of the OpenStack Foundation.

Community Leadership Summit Donna Benjamin

Inspired by the Community Leadership Summit run each year before OSCON, Donna Benjamin will be running an event to bring together community leaders, organizers and managers and the projects and organizations that are interested in growing and empowering a strong community.

The event pulls together the leading minds in community management, relations and online collaboration to discuss, debate and continue to refine the art of building an effective and capable community.

The event will be run in a similar manner to the parent event:

www.communityleadershipsummit.com

as an open unconference-style event in which everyone who attends is welcome to lead and contribute sessions on any topic that is relevant. These sessions are very much discussion sessions: the participants can interact directly, offer thoughts and experience, and share ideas and questions. These unconference sessions are also augmented with a series of presentations from leaders in the field, panel debates and networking opportunities.

Developer, Testing, Release and Continuous Integration Automation Miniconf Stewart Smith

This miniconf is all about improving the way we produce, collaborate, test and release software.

We want to cover tools and techniques to improve the way we work together to produce higher quality software:

  • code review tools and techniques (e.g. gerrit)
  • continuous integration tools (e.g. jenkins)
  • CI techniques (e.g. gated trunk, zuul)
  • testing tools and techniques (e.g. subunit, fuzz testing tools)
  • release tools and techniques: daily builds, interacting with distributions, ensuring you test the software that you ship.
  • applying CI in your workplace/project
Astronomy Miniconf Jessica Smith

The Linux.conf.au team are please to announce the Astronomy Miniconf will be part of the Linux.conf.au 2015 conference to be held in Auckland, New Zealand this coming January.

Linux and open source technologies are used extensively in large-scale astronomy projects within Australia/New Zealand and throughout the world, and to a lesser extent in amateur astronomy. The Astronomy Miniconf will be a one-day stream at LCA2015, focused on the use of Linux and open source technologies in astronomy. It will primarily focus on the technical aspects of large-scale professional astronomy projects, but will include sessions on topics of interest to amateur astronomers.

The Astronomy Miniconf programme will include presentations from New Zealand professional astronomers on Linux/open source aspects of their work, as well as from LCA2015 delegates who will present on their own open source astronomy projects. Most of the more technical sessions will be of interest to the full range of LCA2015 delegates, not just those with a particular interest in astronomy.

Last year's inaugural Astronomy Miniconf was well attended and widely considered successful by attendees and LCA2014 organisers. You can sample videos of presentations from last year's miniconf on youtube.

Open Hardware Jon Oxer

The concept of Free / Open Source Software, already well understood by LCA attendees, is complemented by a rapidly growing community focused around Open Hardware and "maker culture". One of the drivers of the popularity of the Open Hardware community is easy access to cheap devices such as Arduino, which is a microcontroller development board originally intended for classroom use but now a popular building block in all sorts of weird and wonderful hobbyist and professional projects.

Interest in Open Hardware is high among FOSS enthusiasts but there is also a barrier to entry with the perceived difficulty and dangers of dealing with hot soldering irons, unknown components and unfamiliar naming schemes. The Miniconf will use the Arduino microcontroller board as a stepping stone to help ease software developers into dealing with Open Hardware. Topics will cover both software and hardware issues, starting with simpler sessions suitable for Open Hardware beginners and progressing through to more advanced topics.

The day will run in two distinct halves. The first part of the day will be a hands-on assembly session where participants will have the chance to solder together a special hardware project developed for the miniconf. Instructors will be on hand to assist with soldering and the other mysteries of hardware assembly. The second part of the day will be presentations about Open Hardware topics, including information on software to run on the hardware project built earlier in the day.

Please see www.openhardwareconf.org for more info.