Computing Assistance Support & Education Inc – CASE Notes

Don’t forget that if you weren’t able to attend this year’s Linux conf, you’re still able to access some videos from the event. There are so many gems of wisdom thrown in here that we all need to hear. These are really interesting and friendly people well worth our time in listening to!

Online Keynote Presentations

Vinton Cerf (‘Widely known as one of the “Fathers of the Internet,” Cerf is the co-designer of the TCP/IP protocols and the architecture of the Internet.’)

Geoff Huston(‘A a pre-eminent researcher on IPv4 exhaustion and is undertaking research into Internet infrastructure, IP Technologies and address distribution policies.’)

Eric Allman – Sendmail (‘The original author of Sendmail, co-founder and Chief Scientist of Sendmail, Inc., and co-author of Sendmail, published by O’Reilly and Associates.’)

All Online LinuxConf2011 Presentations can be found on Blip TV as they become available.

As always for further information on the links and quotes above, see the official lca2011 site.

CASE president Darrell Burkey has travelled north to attend Linux Conf Australia 2011, a large and very popular IT event.

“linux.conf.au (lca) is a conference about Open Source Software, including Linux. It brings together the world’s community of Linux and open source enthusiasts who make considerable contributions to open source software.”

Flying to the recently flooded city of Brisbane for the full event we have no doubt we’ll come away with a treasure trove of information, new contacts and new ideas we can apply to ICT in community-service sector. We use a wide range of Open Source solutions in our day-to-day operations and strive to stay abreast with developments in this fast moving and very exciting industry. Friends of CASE have also been in attendance at the conference, Pia Waugh has been tweeting comprehensively as usual and Andrew Tridgell has given a presentation on coffee and Linux. Mark Pesce, who we heard from and were impressed by at Connecting Up 2009, also a keynote speaker at lca2011, has been keeping up quality coverage via his Twitter feed here.

For more information about the event please check out the official page. We’ll provide further coverage here as we put the material together!

If you work in the community-service sector in Australia you know that generally the months of December and January can be slow. Not so this year at least, at CASE. Over the past three weeks we’ve diverted some of our resources in order to help efforts to aid Queensland flood victims. Volunteers for Isolated Student’s Education (www.vise.org.au), a long time member and friend of CASE, have been responding to families in need. With VISE’s guidance, CASE has modified the “Online Volunteer Management Service” software we wrote to help manage VISE’s tutor/teacher placements to remote families. With the advent of the floods which VISE CEO Mike Stock AM describes as:

“…unbelievable. TV pictures cannot hope to tell the whole picture…“

members of VISE will now be able to indicate their wish to assist in the flood recovery efforts. This readily accessible list, available to the relevant authorities, will increase the overall capacity of the response especially in remote and inaccessible areas of Queensland and New South Wales.

We’re more than pleased to be able to play a role, however physically distant, in this effort. We wish the VISE team, some now working in danger, our best wishes. We’ll keep you updated as things develop!