Given the growth and success of LA it has become apparent that the the way the managing committee is run needs to be changed. We need to become effective in concentrating volunteer effort. Committee members have taken a lot and they have been getting burnt out. Reaching out and engaging others in the community is crucial to the future of LA. This includes improving communication with conference organisers, the community at large and inside the committee itself.

Several specific tactics I plan include: reducing the number of formal committee meetings (reducing administrative burden), implementing efficient ways to decrease the length of meetings while increasing the amount achieved, implementing a better way to track tasks that we want to achieve and the progress made on them, starting informal conference calls to help co-ordinate projects, committee thoughts (so that everyone is on the same page) and community participation. Last but not least, it is the main goal of LA to make sure that linux.conf.au runs and is a success.

For those who don’t know:
Stewart lives in Melbourne, breathes code, has been VP of LA for two years and works for MySQL AB.