Day Two: LinuxWorld Australia

Written by Ric Shreves

Mar 29, 2006 at 12:22 PM

LinuxWorld Australia: Day 2

Part One: Awards Night

Flashback to yesterday - post Blog. Yesterday afternoon, we're working the booth, when along comes one of the event organizers, hands us a framed certificate and announces: "Congratulations, you've been selected as Finalists for the Best Open Source award." Cecilia, well the best word is: squealed. I tried to be the voice of reason "now this doesn't mean we've won,"etc., etc., but she was having none of it.

The show wrapped at 5:00 PM. By that time John "Maddog" Hall & I had squared off over cups of coffee and we're going round and round about Open Source community building (he's got some great things in the works...) and the security guys almost literally booted us out of the building "Go now or spend the night here," was, I believe, how it was finally expressed.

We move upstairs to the lounge overlooking the Harbour where the organizers had everyone gather for canapes and cocktails -- and the Product Excellence Awards.

The first award announcement was for the category in which we were nominated: Best Open Source Software Solution. We edge out Alfresco for the win! More squeaing - but this time more evenly distributed throughout the group. So it's official: Mambo is named Best Open Source Software Solution at LinuxWorld Australia.

Everyone is completely psyched. Of course as luck would have it we can't get online to tell the Team, so we contact Justina by phone and she sends emails to everyone.

Part Two: The Show Goes On...

I blow setting my alarm at the hotel and wind up waking up 20 minutes before I am supposed to be downstairs for the trip to the Center. I rush through everything and manage to get there late - just as the doors are opening. No worries as it turns out I meet Wee Keat at the door. We walk in together to find Cecilia holding down the fort solo. Everyone settles in and the crowds start milling about. The chocolate fountain continues to be a crowd pleaser.

fountain in action Today's more active than Day One - pretty typical at these shows. We meet some good people - including part of the PostgreSQL Team. He's excited to learn we're working on a port and volunteers to help out. Yeah... We also speak with some integrators, some potential partners who want to bundle the system and a whole lot of users. It's fun and time passes very quickly.

Wireless connections today are horrible - we can't get online at all except on the iMacs who seem to have no problems with the connections. Of course, the people are using the iMacs to demo the system so the net result for us = no net. Oh well. Guess I'll catch up on email at the hotel tonight. Have dinner planned with some IT Journos here; should be a good chance to tell our story to some people. Still waiting for someone to pick up on what a great story we've got going - a story about community depth and resilience and how Open Source is big enough to provide continuity despite disruption.