I’m on my way back to Sydney from Kuala Lumpur, following FOSS.my, Malaysia’s first major grassroots FOSS conference. Amazingly, Colin Charles and the team managed to organize the event from scratch in six weeks, attracting two full days worth of regional and local speakers.

If ever a whiteboard needed a “do not erase” sign, this would be it.

Based loosely on the formats of similar conferences in India and Australia, this first effort for SE Asia seems to be off to a great start, and I think we can expect an expanded event next year. The keynotes were all very interesting, and I especially appreciated being able to learn about all the various FOSS issues and efforts in Malaysia.

Several side-sessions ran in parallel with the main talks, where rooms were provided for projects including Ubuntu, Fedora and FOSSChix.my, the latter featuring sessions led by Pia Waugh and Pamela Fox. There were quite a lot of lightning talks, which I think were probably the most fun to attend, perhaps apart from the speakers dinner in the nightclub area of KL.

FOSSChix.my side session.Jaya Kumar closed out the conference with a thought-provoking keynote, covering some issues he’s faced in his local community, and reminding us to ensure that we need to be vigilant in confronting instances of prejudice in all of our online communities.

The hallway track, five stories up.I gave a talk on the Anatomy of Fedora Kiosk Mode, the slides of which can be downloaded here. There’s also more photos.

It was great meeting everyone, and I hope to be back again next year.