Safety first!

As part of getting the catering for LCA sorted, Susanne has been keeping track of everybody's allergies and dietary requirements. Some of the responses were truly helpful:

> Dietary Requirements
> ====================
>
> In registering, you have noted a dietary requirement of:
>
> Vegetarian
>
> For health and safety reasons, please let me know how you react when you eat
> the above foods, how severe the reaction is, and what medical attention you
> need, if any, should a reaction occur. If you have already told us this
> information, then please ignore this message.

When I eat vegetarian food I develop a warm glow of satisfaction,
severity depending on the deliciousness of said food. The best medical
treatment is to take in fluids; either water or malt-based drinks are
fine.

Philip R.

Thanks Phil, we'll keep that in mind! In case of emergency, you may collect said beverage at the rego desk.

LCA delegates are a helpful bunch

Organising linux.conf.au is a lot of fun, partly because we have such a great community. For example, someone took the time to point out how wrong we were in saying that New Zealand power is 240V:

> Technical
> =========
> Please note, the power in New Zealand is 240 volts. If you plan on
> bringing a power board with you, please do not bring one that is
> lower than this (ie: From the USA).

Actually, it is 230 volts +/-6% (ie anything within 216..244 is within
spec). 230V is also the standard in Australia and Europe. The change
from 240V was made in 1997.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mains_power_around_the_world

Russell S.

So there you have it, 230V +/- 6% since 1997, thanks Russell!

New Miniconf: Bridging the gap

A few people have noticed that a new Miniconf has made it to the LCA2010 programme: Bridging the gap.

Run by Tim Penhey, one of the Launchpad team leads, it's all about reducing friction between upstream projects and distributions by using the recently Open Sourced Launchpad platform.

If you are interested in proposing a talk, email Tim. And be sure to ask him when Launchpad will natively support git ;)

Note that this Miniconf replaces the "Free the Cloud" Miniconf which, for reasons outside of our control, will not happen this year. I'm really hoping that it makes it to LCA 2011 though!