linux.conf.au 2014, or My Annual Journey To Awesome

Earlier this month, I got on a flight to Perth, WA to make my annual trek to linux.conf.au, the largest open-source conference in the Southern Hemisphere and one of my favorite conferences on the circuit. LCA is an excellent, volunteer-run, hugely insightful conference and well worth the 26-hour trip.

I arrived in Perth in time to catch part of the Systems Administration mini-conference on day 1. In particular, I caught a systemd talk by Rodger Donaldson which was both informative and entertaining, so I encourage you to watch that when you get the chance.

Day 2 had the OpenStack miniconf, which was good but a bit too focused on OpenStack governance and organizational issues in its first half. In the afternoon, talks got more technical, which was a clear improvement.

Wednesday talks included a highly entertaining look at MySQL’s history from Stewart Smith, Dave Chinner‘s musings on where Linux filesystems came from, and an insightful RADOS deep dive from Sage Weil. There was also a DRBD talk that I was not so fond of, but I’ve already shared my thoughts about that one on Google+, and you’re certainly welcome to take a look over there.

My own Rapid OpenStack Deployment for Novices and Experts Alike tutorial was on Thursday, had a nice turnout, and my hands-on stuff all worked! What more could I possibly ask for?

Besides my own talk, you should also totally watch Matthew Garrett‘s Thursday keynote and Lana Brindley‘s agile documentation tutorial with Lego goodness. And of course, my clear favorite among all LCA talks this year, Bdale Garbee’s reflections on losing his house in a wildfire last year.

As for Friday, again a stellar keynote from Jonathan Oxer (Arduino satellites in space, geek overload), Lennart’s kdbus talk which you’ve probably already read on LWN about, and a brilliant lightning talk from Tim Serong about building a DIY bookscanner.

All in all, linux.conf.au in Perth was terrific, as usual, and I am absolutely planning to be there again next year. The trip will be even more atrociuous as next year’s venue is Auckland, but it will be totally worth it. No doubt in my mind at all.

I’d like to extend a huge thank-you to all LCA attendees, fellow speakers, organizers and volunteers who make this conference a fantastic event year after year. See you in 2015!

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This article originally appeared on my blog on the hastexo.com website (now defunct).