#linux.conf.au

[...] The threat to freedom

This is the structure that we need to face our next big threat: the all-seeing surveillance society that was spotlighted by the Snowden disclosures. It appears that there is little hope that we can prevent powerful interests from turning the net into a tool for totalitarians. We are living in the world, he said, that people like Richard Stallman and Phillip Zimmermann were trying to prepare us for.

Eben recounted how he stumbled across the first PGP posting on a FIDO board in 1991; he sent Phillip a message congratulating him for his work and for having changed the world. He also pointed out that Phillip was "in a shitload of trouble" and that he, Eben, would be there to help.

This week I am at linux.conf.au in Canberra, the first two days of which are various thematic mini-conferences before the main program commences on Wednesday. Today I attended my favourite of the mini-conference streams: Open Government.

At previous conferences my interest, due to my job at the time, was focussed on community services groups and smoothing the process of integrating data transfer and access. Today however, my mind took a different tack due to my immersion in the world of the Anglican church in Adelaide.

I was struck by the similarity of the problem set faced by the public service, and the Diocesan Office where I work. There is a distributed and somewhat loosely coupled organisation surrounding it. There are silos, spheres of influence, pressure to extract more value from limited resources. More than that though, there is a commitment by the people there to do something more for society - to serve a public good. Thus the discussions were not only around efficiencies - the desire to create a better society was ever present.

Similarly there is a 'value commitment' (to use a tepid management term) in working for the Church, and a desire to strengthen and grow it not just through the prudent use of resources, but actually helping it achieve its purpose.

I want to do a quick list of takeaway insights and ideas of relevance before I forget them tomorrow and next week:

More than just opening data, Government can be considered an API. It is like a platform for building and growing society. Therefore the emphasis is on low cost, standardised, open transactions to encourage growth at the periphery.

The temptation is to tax and regulate, but those brute force methods have huge hidden costs. Where there is a problem, see if the existing system is causing the 'pinch' and try to resolve it there.

It is all very well to collect and store huge amounts of data and information, but its value is usually not increased at the center of the organisation. It is better to release, even if there is no obvious utility at the time.

If you are risk averse (as Governments often are) find a way to outsource the risk. Have a hack fest, or competition.

Today was the first day of Linux.conf.au proper, here at the University of Ballarat. It's a beautiful regional campus, comfortably sprawling and surrounded by bushland. It presents a mix of gum trees, scrub, landscaped lakes, and university buildings which is so delightfully Australian. Maybe because I also just described Canberra.

There are many others who are reflecting on individual sessions in more detail, so I was interested in themes which emerged for me today. I came up with three: Change, Inspiration, and Growth.

One of the things I have learnt in the last year is about change. Today at the conference, I saw repeated examples of a common error make when approaching change: applying technical solutions to adaptive problems. Ron Heifetz defined change in two categories: technical, where the problem is well defined and domain knowledge extensive; and adaptive, where the outcome is less clear and learning is required. Generally we prefer technical change, because there is less uncertainty. However if you approach an adaptive change as though it were technical, you get pain and suffering.

In several sessions today, often in the Q&A at the end, I heard examples of people treating adaptive change as though it were a technical problem: social issues, the habits of users, team or organisational direction, or the direction of entire open source projects. It's really important to ask the question "What is the nature of this change?" because the way you approach it will be very different. This is also related to adaptive capacity, important when building sustainable projects.

Today, I was also inspired. I had that thrill that one gets when the imagination is fully engaged. The session was about Project Horus, and the sheer awesomeness of seeing a group of friends able to achieve great things, and realising that technology now means that amateurs can send a payload to ~35km on a regular basis. Incredible. To top it off, they launched a balloon from the conference!

Finally, I was remembering my experiences at the first Linux.conf.au I attended in Dunedin in 2006 and how much I have grown since then. Dunedin was an incredible, stimulating event. I was starry eyed and awestruck at these gods among men who wrote this thing Linux I love so much. ("OMG is that Keith Packard? OMG is that ANDREW TRIDGELL!?")

Dancers by redserenade on Flickr.

I didn't get a chance to do any blogging at linux.conf.au this year - not even a wrap-up, but perhaps this is better. We did a codingbynumbers wrap-up episode where we summarized our time at the conf.