AussieChix conferences

Event report by Aimee Forsstrom

Recently LinuxChix Australia held a mini conference sponsored by Google between the cities of Melbourne and Sydney. Google provided the venue which hallowed for the video conference facilities.

There were minor technical glitches experienced at first it looked like we may not be able to get the video conferencing working between the two offices however with some friendly help from the Google tech team we were back up and running. Once the video conferencing was up and running we were in business.

The main aim of the day was to allow people to speak in a small friendly environment to allow people to gain experience. An aim which was definitely achieved : )

The variety of people at the conference was amazing I am used to being at tech conferences however they are normally directed in one main area be it coding, web or enterprise. The LinuxChix conference covered areas from good programming techniques, open education, giving presentations, hacking the OLPC, computational linguistics, application of free software in the classroom, etc.

The talks were very diverse and ranged from not only introduction to new technologies but also how people are using these technologies. For example there was an interesting talk given by a teacher on how she is using technologies with the children in her class to increase there learning experience. As always Google were fantastic hosts, and apart from an amazing view the food was fantastic.

Highlights from the day

Presentation on computational linguistics what it is, where it's going and how it applies to everyday tools we us like Google.
The presentation on how to present, wow I have actually started applying this in my business meetings and it works. Key tips such as inserting emotion into presentations and using visual cues.
Show and tell with the OLPC, before this presentation I was unaware that this program was active in Australia, it was so great to learn that open source developers can get involved in the project by developing new software for the platform.

Big thanks go out to the LinuxChix for organising this, it was a great day and I believe everyone who attended got something out of it. The other thing to mention is the calibre of women at the conference, as a young woman in IT I am not sure I have ever been in a room before with that many talented women. It was a true inspiration, especially how each woman had managed to make there niche in the industry.