Episode: 2229
Title: HPR2229: linux.conf.au 2017: Kathy Reid
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2229/hpr2229.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 16:13:30

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Good afternoon everyone, it's Clinton again, it's day 2 of Lynx Comfort U.
I can still count the number of days in the conference so it's early on.
We had the Lynx Australia elections last night and I am here with Cathy Reid, the new president
of Lynx Australia.
So this is a pretty free wheeling discussion, we'll just go over things, I'm not a journalist
so I'm not here for any gotcha moments or anything like that.
So yeah, so this is being recorded for Hacker Public Radio, Hacker Public Radio is a community
broadcast channel, it's kind of like a community radio station, anyone can upload any shows
and the remit is just to be interesting to Hacker's.
So I think anything that we discuss about Lynx Comfort is probably we'll cover that.
So I have had the pleasure of working with you on the Lynx Australia Council previously.
I think you're a secretary when I was on the council and now you're president.
That's right, it's scary, it's excited at the same time.
I think Lynx Australia has a really popular history in Australia and I think one of the
things that we've sorely needed for a long time is a bit of direction, a bit of strategic
direction.
We've sort of gone on as easter a number of years and I think that's great as well, but
I think at the same time a lot of our systems and all of our processes probably need a bit
of a rethink, they need a bit of a tweak and I'm just really glad that the membership
said yeah let's do that and give me a bit of a mandate to do that.
I think I'm sort of half with you and half against you there.
From my point of view the job of the council is to make the nuts and bolts run as smoothly
as possible so that people who want to run awesome conferences and events and not just
conferences and events but they want to come up and do different things like I've already
forgotten the name of it, what are the charities for this year, but the outreach and stuff
like I would love to see Lynx Australia with all of the, it almost shouldn't matter who's
on the council, it should be a smoothly running machine that's all well documented and
then people who need some money or need some support can just sort of rock up and it's
I need some money to do blah and the council like ideally should just be able to look at
the proposal and see it's a little bit of money, there should be some outcome and give
it a go sort of thing. So my take on it is that the processes of the council should be streamlined
and documented and repeatable as much as possible but I also think that the council shouldn't
be doing much, it should just be the infrastructure or the back bang, it shouldn't be out there
in striving to be everything in everyone. I guess I partially agree with you, I think
I agree with you that we should get the nuts and bolts done really well, the challenge
from a council perspective, the challenge we have with doing the nuts and bolts really
well is that some of the systems and some of the processes that we have in place at the
moment make the nuts and bolts really laborious and really difficult. For instance, last year
we did over 1500 financial transactions, so every transaction is to have an invoice or
a receipt raised against it in the financial system and it needs to be reconciled. So
it's about 10 to 15 minutes worth for every financial transaction and you multiply that
by 1500 and suddenly there's hundreds of volunteer hours that go into getting the nuts and bolts
right and we have to do that because we get all the data from an incorporated association.
So what can we do to streamline that, what can we do to make that easier and then if you
look at our membership system, membership system was written and was very, very fit for purpose
10 to 12 years ago when it was written. Just for the listeners' appreciation, I cringed
this and as the member software was mentioned, it is old. Yes, I think we both cringed
out. So that membership system doesn't have some really basic functionality, it doesn't
let us do things like membership renewal, it has some really big functionality gaps. But more
importantly, what we don't have in terms of systems at the moment is ways to engage in connecting
with our membership. So for instance, let's say there's a really great open source program
running in say Queensland. At the moment I don't have or we don't have a really easy way of reaching
those members and saying hey, there's this really great open source program in Queensland
or in that region according to our records, you might be interested in this without causing
noise for everyone who's not in that area. So part of the reason or part of the platform that I was
running on this year was some renewal of those systems and I suspect there's a bit of a key
message that's got lost along the way in terms of the way that we've approached the election this
year. I'm not out to change the world in terms of Linux Australia. I want to create a really strong
foundation where if the organisation wants to go in that direction in the future, they're going to
have the systems and the processors and the foundation to be able to do that without overstretching
the organisation. But we need to get that foundation right first otherwise we're going to be on
shaky ground. Yep, absolutely. And I mean like there are some parallels with the Linux
Australia conferences that have been involved in like for the longest time, PyCon and LA and some
of the OSDCs that I've helped run. We've all been using the Zookeeper suite and that is old
and it's showing its problems and thankfully this year Chris is the main organiser of
Linux off our year this year has taken upon himself. He got a grant from somewhere to help write
that. I believe it was the PyCon Foundation. Yeah, PSF, yep. To write a system that could be used
around the conferences and anything to remove those sort of headaches and warts on the everyday
systems that you're using I think is a great thing. And for a bit of clarity like if you're
running an open source event in Australia you can go to Linux Australia and if they feel that
an event that would help the Australian open source community they will cover you for the
basic things that you need to run the event. So if you need to book a venue and you need to put
up a reserve amount for that, Linux Australia will cover that. You never have to go into private
debt to do those sort of things. There's all the public liability insurance that Linux Australia
will cover you for. There's credit cards handling stuff that's set up so when you get people
who want to register and pay for your conference you don't have to do all those things that
if you are setting up a conference with the very first time in a brand new country all those
very tedious things that have all been taken care of. So that's the main sort of thing that Linux
Australia is involved in. There is a grants process as well for individuals and small groups.
Exactly. I don't think I've ever helped. No, I have sort of vaguely helped get a couple of
grants like there's been things like like the Ruby on Rails, Women's events and Brisbane and
stuff like that and I've done some of the paperwork to get like a lunch grant for things like that
but we just want to talk about the grants. So every year we set aside a nominal budget for grants
but that doesn't stop us for instance if you get a very robust grant or a grant that's very
worthy of us you know we can dip into coffers and support that. But essentially our grants process
tries to align the money that we spend with the values of Linux Australia so that
that open community that respect for you know the diversity within our community and really
that those ideals are free and open source software hardware communities really that open source
culture. So one of the things that we do with our grant process it's not just the council that
has input into grants we think it's really important that our community has input into those grants
as well. So as part of our grants process we actually get the grant applicant to email that to
the entire community and often there'll be no brain at the community also yes this is a good idea
go ahead. Recently we had a brain application for some hardware forward cap Sydney and out of that
discussion out of that community discussion there was actually more optimal solution that was
proposed and that community got more assistance and more help for the problem now trying to
solve through that grants process going through the community so I think that's a really strong
thing. Instead of throwing some money at them I think I think the idea was that they they'd
get some went to equipment but also some training on that Linux equipment. Exactly and so it's
adding more value to the problem they're trying to solve. For me personally and this isn't necessarily
something that the entire council is decided upon but for me personally what I'd like to see
from our grants program is perhaps a larger grant that have more reach or more value on a longer
term basis so for instance instead of needing $600 or $1,000 for some hardware what if there was
a 20 or a $30,000 grant to run a program that had a long lasting impact for instance for an
underrepresented group perhaps Indigenous people or people from a certain background to have
exposure and involvement in open source. We've seen some really really strong benefits from having
stronger diversity programs for women and other underrepresented groups but there are still some
cohorts which are drastically underrepresented in open source and I personally would like to see
some large grade applications where there's some rigor and you know some robust thinking behind
how do we how do we use some of the resources we have for longer term benefit for the community.
And you need to be able to show that sort of long-term planning to if you're in binding if you're
in binding someone into your community and you're trying to show them the benefits of that you
need to be able to show them like that that that 12 months 18 month program where they're going to
get a little bit of help along the way so yeah and that's necessarily going to be a larger
larger chunk of money like. And I think there's also an opportunity for us to pull resources
with other organisations so for instance with government funding that funding sometimes needs to
be matched by a corporate partner or private equity. I think there's an opportunity for Linux
Australia to partner with other organisations like Internet Australia or Outer and partner
with those organisations on projects that have overlapping values or overlapping benefit for
those organisations. I think what Linux Australia needs to do in terms of your partnering
approach is really understand at stake on our environment which other organisations should we
prioritise engaging with you know and spend our effort engaging with where are those overlaps
where could we work together collaboratively where are we competing you should other things
that we should stop doing because there are already people doing those things or where are the
gaps in the market as well so I think we need to take a strong look at our stakeholder relationships.
Yep yep for sure yeah and I think it's like it's it's sort of interesting in the last couple of years
like another sort of aspect to it is the the overall structure of Linux Australia is that if you
want to do something you get assigned a subcommittee to do that thing so all of the conference
is run as a subcommittee of Linux Australia all of the user groups across Australia that want
to be part of Linux Australia they're running subcommittees and I think I think like we've got
like one or two new user groups subcommittees. We have one coming on board so Linux is a
Victoria recently voted to disincorporate as an incorporated association in the state of Victoria
and have voted to become a subcommittee of Linux Australia and Linux Australia is in initial
discussions with Linux users Victoria to to figure out the nuts and bolts of how to make that happen
so I think for me that is indicative of a broader trend so for instance we're seeing lots of
independent Linux user groups who started independently come under the fold of Linux Australia
and I think part of the reason of that is that there's a lot of paperwork and a lot of administrative
that goes with being a smaller independent incorporated association for instance last year open
source developers conference open source developers club decided to disincorporate and they become
a subcommittee of Linux Australia and I think that that is really part of what Linux Australia's
you know raison d'être was for is to help umbrella these groups help provide that skeleton and
that infrastructure and take away some of that administrative you know people don't get into
into Linux and into open hardware and into open software because they love administrative
here they like coding and they like hacking and they like making so let's try and take some of
that stuff that is inhibitor away from people yeah instead of 15 groups all doing the same paperwork
overhead just have one big body that's doing that that overhead yeah it's that foundation
it's that solid foundation yeah and like one of the interesting subcommittees in the last
couple of years is the I don't I can't remember what exactly what they call but the video recording
subcommittee yep so one of one of the things that has become pretty standard for at least LCA
and picon over the past picon are you over the past four or five years is that the vast majority
of the talks are recorded to a very high standards and and published later under an open source
list under under an open source list and it's it's so I see a lot of other video recordings of a
lot of other conferences and hours are quite good one of the things that we do is actually capture
the slides that are shown in line so it's not just a camera pointing at the slides we're actually
getting a screenshot of the slides and that is spliced in with shots of the presenter so you can
actually read the slides and one of the the difficulties that we've got is that because recording
technology is sort of moving ahead the the different sorts of cable connectors is is changing so
some of the some of the hardware that we could use five or six years ago that we could buy off
the shelf to do all of this fancy recording stuff some of those connectors are just not a thing
anymore you just can't buy that equipment off the shelf so one of one of their lynx Australian
members is taking it on himself to produce an open recording board so a printed circuit board that
takes HDMI in takes two or three HDMI sources in and feeds that out to a camera recording system
so yeah it's not just clubs and an events but you know there are some real solid
technical ones there I sort of hope that's the work that Chris has done now on
I've forgotten the name of it it's it's symposium it's symposium but it's so I think that's
what it's based on but I think Chris is calling his thing something else like it's yeah it's it's
um yeah it's a real world it's a real word and then like the S is what with a Z or something
so they're like that I've forgotten exactly what it is but I hope that the council can find a way
to sort of keep that up today so I think you've touched on a bit of a problem that we have and
you know I'd say thank you very open for suggestions on how we can solve this at the moment you
if you were the CIO or the CTO of a large organisation one of your jobs would be to maintain road maps
for the various streams of work that your organisation's doing for instance what's your road map
in your finance software what's your road map in your HR software at the moment we don't have
a road map for where we want to take LCA your conference infrastructure and I think that's one
of the gaps we have as an organisation I think sometimes in in the past what we've done is had a
piecemeal or piece by piece approach to some of that technology and while we've had individual
successes with point solutions we haven't necessarily considered it as a whole so what are the
deficits that we have with our conference infrastructure how do we build a technical road map and
then make a strong investment into into that technology as a whole so for instance if we have a
gap with our conference software is that more important than a gap with our recording hardware
or do they need to be do they need to be matured in parallel what are the interdependencies between
them so if somebody came to me or you know came to the council and said look Kathy we'd like to
have an LA hackfest for two or three days and one of the outcomes of that is a technical road map
for where we want to take the organisation this is how we're going to replace member DB and
this is how we're going to replace the website and this is how it's going to integrate with
our finance system and that sort of thing I that's something that I would strongly support
and I can't speak for the whole house and that's something that I would strongly support
because it's about planning where the organisation's going you know you take the you do the
work in planning and sometimes the execution work then becomes a lot more streamlined you reduce
the wasted effort what one of my researchers is just give them in the name of that product it's
registration but it's with like the final TK taking out so it's registration or something like that
I am well Chris with his surname would he would have to pick a name that's difficult to pronounce
and I think sort of I think maybe one of the sort of unannounced goals of Linux Australia
would better have like a conference in a box solution and certainly a bit of software that can
take that you run your conference with that users can add accounts to they can book their tickets
they can book you know dinner tickets or whatever conference specific things are and be able to
take the credit card information I I suspect that I suspect that Linux Australia would like that
sort of thing like that that a nice ultimate goal would be to I'd like one of them I wouldn't like
three of them yeah exactly and so like in the past zookeeper has been that but you've had to
you'd have to have someone with a deep knowledge of zookeeper and pylons and some other
like the python stuff yeah and and the drama has always been that in the in the two or three months
leading up to the conference there would be a furious amount of work done on zookeeper to fix all
the bugs yep and then the conference would be run and then everyone would need a break yeah which
very reasonable and it would mean that every conference would have their own branch in their own
bug fixes and it would never get merged back into trunk and do you know what they wouldn't have
a road ban yeah but it's also it's also that that that natural thing of like that whole conference
things of of just having natural burnout yep and you know everyone has the best intentions of
rolling all of these bug fixes back in yeah and never having to see it again but over the years
where I have contributed to zookeeper I have kept on fixing the same bugs over and over and over
and over again and your time is better spent on other things yeah you know if you're a senior
person within our community you have 20 years of experience I don't want you fixing the same
bugs same time over again I want your expertise on a road map you know tell me how we should be
doing our integrations tell me about enterprise architecture patterns Linux Australia now has
equity in excess of seven figures when not a small organization anymore and we need to tighten up
some of our governance and some of our some of the way in which we approach our strategic planning
so that we're effective you know for the next 15 years yeah yeah yeah and it's it's that sort of thing
where you actually want to make it easy for people to organize conferences like um
there's there's probably a fairly small pool of people around Australia who are confident enough
to take on running a conference I suppose um and I think I think a lot of it is that if you've
if you've run an LA conference or you have been like a second or third in charge and you've
sort of seen how it's done and you know the ropes yeah you're probably okay but um like if if
you were vaguely thinking of running a conference and you just went to LA's website yeah
there's it's it's not at all obvious that that LA provides you with 80 or 90 percent of what you need
um so I think you can get on two problems see Clinton and I'd like to tackle them separately
the first problem that you've hit on is about succession planning and membership
life cycle so if I take a look at the average age of Linux Australian members and
involved in our communities that the bell curve has shifted very much towards middle age we don't
have a lot of students we don't have a lot of younger members within our community um who we
gather passionate and energetic uh who bring that fire in the belly to us why is that happened
I think there's a number of reasons for instance we've got some you know very proprietary technology
being used in colleges and universities you know you've got universities teaching things like
CCNA they're not necessarily teaching open source and so you have students who are not as
exposed to open source and don't go on to do open source when they graduate from college and
university I think Linux Australia has a role to play there in exposing younger people to open
source I think our student ticketing and student prices are one of the ways in which we do that
but I think that could be complemented by a formal program for instance a formal program
about reach to your high school college university what if we fund it you know an open source
scholarship if you're doing a PhD or a master's in an open source program or you're developing
open source software let's encourage that and let's you know let's get involved in that space
to bring people on board at that point in the life cycle so I think there's that piece I think
the second piece that you touch on is actually a symptom of a deeper problem so at the moment our
website which was really really well designed and it runs on Drupal and that website hasn't had
a lot of love and attention over the last few years and so the design in the UX and the the
content strategy behind that website hasn't kept pace with the activities and functions of the
organisation we've deliberately made a decision not to tackle the website until we tackle the
membership platform most of the most of the modern membership platforms go hand in hand they're
tightly coupled with the web presence the public web presence and it's my intention sorry I don't
need to send you tutorial but it's my intention that we tackle those two problems together because
they go hand in hand what we have at the moment are completely separate experiences if your
public users are a website and you're an authenticated member they're two very separate user
experiences that's a pro experience we want an integrated experience so that's a problem that
I'd like to tackle in conjunction with the membership platform yeah visual yeah so I think that's
probably enough on Linux Australia how have you been enjoying the conference so far I am loving it
absolutely loving it I think Hobart is an incredible venue I love Tasmania I think the weather has
just been absolutely gorgeous back in my hometown in Jalong at the 37 degrees today my poor dog
goes down I've got a message my sister to say you know your soggy wet dog is indoors with the air
conditioning thank you very much but it's just beautifully temperate easy to get to and I'm
really looking forward to sampling some of the good food and dining that I he is on offering
excellent excellent all right is there anything else that you'd like to to cover at all well I
just like to encourage your listeners to check out Linux.org.au if you have ideas if you know if
your listeners have faced this sort of problem in their communities and you have ideas
reach out let us know what your thoughts are okay cheers thank you very much Kathy thank you
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