linux.conf.au 2019 this year went over the Tasman to New Zealand for the fourth time, to the Cantabrian university city of
Christchurch. This was the first year that Christchurch had played host and I sincerely hope it’s not the last.
First, to the outstanding presentations.
NOTE: You can see all the presentations from linux.conf.au 2019 at this YouTube channel
Open Artificial Pancreas System (OpenAPS) by Dana Lewis
See the video of Dana’s presentation here
Dana Lewis lives with Type 1 diabetes, and her refusal to accept current standards of care with diabetes management led her to collaborate widely, developing
OpenAPS. OpenAPS is a system that leverages existing medical devices, and adds a layer of monitoring using open hardware and open software solutions.
This presentation was outstanding on a number of levels.
As a self-experimenter, Dana joins the ranks of scientists the world over putting their own health on the line in the strive for progress. Her ability to collaborate with others from disparate backgrounds and varied skillsets to make something greater than the sum of its parts is a textbook case in the open source ethos; moreover the results that the OpenAPS achieved were remarkable; significant stabilization in blood sugars and better predictive analytics – providing better quality of life to those living with Type 1 diabetes.
Dana also touched on the
Open Humans project, which is aiming to have people share their medical health data publicly so that collective analysis can occur – opening up this data from the vice-like grip of medical device manufacturers. Again, we’re seeing that data itself has incredible value – sometimes more so than the devices which monitor and capture the data itself.
Open Source Magnetic Resonance Imaging: From the community to the community by Ruben Pellicer Guridi
You can view the video of Ruben’s presentation here
Ruben Pellicer Guridi‘s talk centred on how the Open Source MRI community has founded to solve the problems of needing more MRI machines, particularly in low socio-economic areas and in developing countries. The project has attracted a community of health and allied health professionals, and has made available both open hardware and open software, with the first
image from their Desktop MR software being acquired in December.
Although the project is in its infancy, the implications are immediately evident; providing better public healthcare, particularly for the most vulnerable in the world.
Apathy and Arsenic: A Victorian era lesson on fighting the surveillance state by Lilly Ryan
You can view the video of Lilly’s presentation here
Lilly Ryan’s entertaining and thought-provoking talk drew parallels between our current obsession with privacy-leaking apps and data platforms and the awareness campaign around the detrimental effects of arsenic in the 1800s. Her presentation was a clarion call to resist ‘peak indifference’ and increase privacy awareness and digital literacy.
Deep Learning, not Deep Creepy by Jack Moffitt
You can view the video of Jack’s presentation here
Jack Moffitt is a Principal Research Engineer with Mozilla, and in this presentation he opened by providing an overview of Deep Learning. He then dug a little bit deeper into the dangers of deep learning, specifically the biases that are inherent in current deep learning approaches, and some of the solutions that have been trialled to address them, such as making gender and noun pairs – such as “doctor” and “man” – equidistant – so that “doctor” is equally predictive for “man” and “woman”.
He then covered the key ML projects from Mozilla such as
Deep Speech, Common Voice and Deep Proof.
This was a great corollary to the two talks I gave;
Computer Science Unplugged by Professor Tim Bell
You can view Tim’s presentation here
Part of the Open Education Miniconf,
Tim‘s presentation covered how to teach computer science in a way that was fun, entertaining and accessible. The key problem that
Computer Science Unplugged solves is that teachers are often afraid of CS concepts – and CS Unplugged makes teaching these concepts fun for both learners and teachers.
Go All In! By Bdale Garbee
You can view Bdale’s talk here
Bdale’s talk was a reinforcement of the power of open source collaboration, and the ideals that underpin it, with a call to “bet on” the power of the open source community.
Open source superhumans by Jon Oxer
You can view Jon’s talk here
Jon Oxer’s talk covered the power of open source hardware for assistive technologies, which are often inordinately expensive.
Other conversations
I had a great chat with Kate Stewart from the Linux Foundation and the work she’s doing in the programmatic audit of source code licensing space – her
talk on grep-ability of licenses is worth watching – and we covered metrics for communities with
CHAOSS, and the t
okenisation of Git commits to understand who has committed which code, specifically for unwinding dependencies and copyright.
Christchurch as a location
Christchurch was a wonderful location for linux.conf.au – the climate was perfect – we had a storm or two but it wasn’t 45 C burnination like Perth. The airport was also much bigger than I had expected and the whole area is set up for hospitality and tourism. It won’t be the last time I head to CHC!
