I just want to say thank you to everyone who was involved in Open Day. To the volunteers who spent yet another day making the conference work, to all of those who turned up and asked how they could help just because they're nice people, to everyone who brought someone along to see stuff and/or told others about it. Thankyou! Without your help, Open Day would have been much less fun.
Especial thanks go to:
Grant Diffey who took on the horrible task of making sure that every stand had power. He was roped in because he happened to be standing there at that very moment the issue was being discussed, and thus deserves especial thanks for doing it so well and swiftly.
Steve Walsh for getting the networking going. Steve's job started during the afternoon on Friday - getting the patch panel ready - and continued through to last night - tidying it up again. Steve ran cables (including to the stands who decided they needed them at the last minute), set up wireless access points, and generally did an awesome job.
Doug Chapman and Pia Waugh for presenting their conference talks a second time (and without much notice).
Paul Fenwick who took much of the organisational load off my shoulders leaving me free to do the meta organisation and registration desk handling! He also gave me a great foot massage at the end of the day, which was well appreciated.
The table organisers: Tim Ansell, Tamara Olliver, Bill Farrow, Kylie Davies, Brianna Laugher, Mark Kowarsky, Robyn, Pia Waugh, John Stern, Michael Dale, Simon Pascal Klein, Wen Lin, Mark Phillips, Jon Oxer, Aaron Seigo, Vik Olliver, Con Zymaris, Leif Eriksen, Anthony David, Martin Servior, Melissa, Annette Meldrum, Murray Bishop, Ben Balbo, Donna Benjamin, John Newbigin, Daniel Stefyn, Scott Barnett, Leslie Hawthorn and Cat Allman, Jennifer Kreutzer, Adaora Onyia, Pauline Waite, Kanchana Wickremasinghe, Rusty, Arjen Lentz for hosting tables so that we had all of these excellent stands to demonstrate Open Source to our visitors. Thankyou also to those who helped out on these stands!
Steven Thorne for his hugs and encouragement throughout the day.
All the lightning talk speakers, who keep the visitors so well entertained and to Adam Harvey for organising these so that I didn't have to! Also to Jeff Waugh for his MCing.
Thank you to Robyn M and all the others whose names I missed who gave up time from the lightning talks and closing ceremony to help me haul tables around on Friday afternoon.
Thank you to Edward Borland from "Byte into IT" on RRR, who interviewed me on radio and thus helped with the Open Day advertising greatly.
Thank you also to Donna Benjamin who not only ran the conference organisation but handled a fair amount of my publicity for me. To Peter Lieverdink for creating awesome artwork and signs for me. To Rob B for creating out-door signs. And also to Sarah Stokely for her advertising amongst the general press.
My apologies if I've missed mentioning you! Please add your name to the comments, or email me, so I can update this.
To those who gave me gifts:
I'd also like to thank everyone who gave me gifts throughout the day. I'm afraid that much of yesterday was spent in a whirl of people, so although I should know all the names; I don't! I feel terrible about this, so if this was you, please let me know.
Thank you Leslie Hawthorn for the funky Google pen.
Thank you Janet(?) for the small Ritzenhoff glass with penguins on it, which I understand to be a smaller version of the ones given to the Exec team.
Thank you unknown speaker who gave me a cute little USB mouse with this year's penguin on it.
Thank you to Darrell Burkey who gave me the caffeinated peppermints (and a rubber ball to pass onto Paul).
Thank you to Melissa Dapper for the Ubuntu t-shirt.
Once again, thank you everyone for coming to Open Day and for making it such a great success. According to my estimations we had at least 1000 people walk in, which is just brilliant!
