[cumbria_lug] LUG Radio Live report

[Russ Phillips]

Jen & I went to LUG Radio Live [1] a few weeks ago. I wrote a report for 
the web site, but when I tried to upload it, the database got corrupted. 
(Schwuk: any idea when it's likely to be fixed?)

Since I don't know when the web site will be back up, I thought I'd 
attach it to an e-mail to the mailing list.

Enjoy.

Russ

[1] http://www.lugradio.org/live/2005/
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h2. Friday

We set off on Friday afternoon, later than we'd intended, since the car had to be fixed. The late start meant that we hit the Thelwall Viaduct at rush hour. However, we got to the Barrons Court Hotel in plenty of time to meet other people staying at the Hotel before we set off for the pub.

We rang for a taxi to take us to the Hogs Head. Over time, more people joined us, and eventually Jono, Ade and Aq arrived, with Susan (Jono's girlfriend). Much drinking had already occurred, and the drinking continued. More people arrived, and we moved inside. We left when Big Ron offered us a lift back to our hotel.

h2. Saturday

The next morning, breakfast was notable for several things:

* The dining room contained several geeks and one normal person, who looked (and, judging by her body language, felt) distinctly out of place.
* Mr Ben didn't eat any of his breakfast. I think he had to go and talk to his uncle Huey on the big white telephone.
* Aquarian and Neuro had an argument about phpBB's security and whether or not it had any.

We arrived at the venue early, since we'd brought two desktops, several extensions, and patch cables for the LAN gaming. Having got our hands stamped with a stamp carved from a potato, we started setting up the gaming LAN. Once that was done, the event was just starting, so we watched the intro and hung around to hear Rufus Pollock talk about software patents (Sarah Ewen hadn't been able to make it, because she was in the UK, her passport was in Japan, and she had to be in another country on Monday)

Rufus was both articulate and passionate about his subject. Despite having little or no notice, he gave a good talk. Next, I moved to the lightning talks room, just in time to see the end of the GreaseMonkey talk, which was followed by Daniel Barron talking about "DansGuardian":http://dansguardian.org/. In contrast to Rufus, Daniel appeared to be reading a prepared script. The content of the talk was interesting, however, particularly when he discussed the way that his Free software, released under a licence intended to protect freedom (the GPL), had been used to reduce people's freedom in Myanmar.

After Daniel's talk, a lot of people left to see Mark Shuttleworth talk, but I stayed to listen to Robert Postill talk about disaster recovery. Robert's talk was interesting, and afterwards, he handed out packs which included checklists of things to do _before_ disaster strikes, and a backup script.

Staying with the lightning talks, James Wallbank gave a talk about "Open Access":http://access.lowtech.org/, a free media lab in Sheffield. Open Access uses Linux & open source software on hardware that was destined for the skip. His talk was intended to persuade people to start similar projects in their own locality, and Jen & I started to seriously consider the possibilty.

We then moved on to the Mass Debate. I can't remember any of the questions that were asked. I can remember that it felt like a real debate, that the panel members disagreed on various issues, but also that it was much more civilised than political debate programs on TV. Each of the panellists allowed the others to make their point.

After the Mass Debate, we walked over to the Asda that someone had kindly left across the car park, and bought some lunch from their cafe. Over lunch, we discussed the idea of an Open Access lab in Carlisle, and when we got back, we managed to find James Wallbank and discussed it with him.

After wandering around the trade stands, we decided to take in a little Enemy Territory, and so took two places on the LAN gaming. Being a crap ET player, I died several times, but had fun doing it.

After ET, we found seats in the front row for "LUG Radio - Live and Unrestrained", the first recording of a LUG Radio episode in front of an audience. This was an interesting experience, although it felt a little odd to be able to _see_ the presenters as well as hear them. Several prizes were given away, including one to Bruno, who seemed rather embarressed (probably not helped by the enthusiastic chant of "BRU-NO. BRU-NO" from the audience)

h2. Saturday Evening

After packing up the gaming LAN, we headed back to the hotel, where we joined several other geeks in hooking laptops up to the wi-fi and checking e-mail, browsing the web, etc. A few people played ET, and one or two even _talked_ to each other. Later, we went to the Standard Indian Restaurant, along with many other people. My table was lucky in that it had reasonable service, but some others weren't so lucky. The food was reasonable and cheap, made all the cheaper by the fact that Red Hat paid for some of it, and the LUG Radio presenters put the event's profit behind the bar to pay for beer. We left when Big Ron offered us a lift to the hotel, thus missing the argument with the restaurant about how much the bill was.

h2. Sunday

Back in the hotel, we talked to various people until the early hours of the morning, then got up scant hours later to go to paintball. Neither Jen or I enjoyed the paintball very much, so we wussed out early, and went to the pub with Matt, Jono, Aq and Aquarian. After talking much crap at the pub, we finally set off back for Carlisle.

The whole weekend was absolutely fantastic. The strangest, and possibly best part was meeting people for the first time and feeling like I'd known them for years.