Tech Wellington

Last week I attended Software Freedom Day in Wellington, directly after finding about the Games, Geeks and Gadgets event. Both were run by Unlimited Potential and pretty well too, at a very human level in terms of scale with a friendly bunch of people attending to boot. Both of those events were of interested to me just because, well, I’m a bit of a geek – not to put too fine a point on it. In the past couple of days though, I have been to two more presentations of a techy variety, to do with my job in emergency management. The first was a product pitch for data connections via the BGAN network linking through inmarsat satellites. Essentially, this is the kit that TV reporters use when wanted to use a a visual feed from far flung places. The stream is uploaded live via satellite and distributed once it reaches its destination. We’re interested in these in case of communication breakdown in New Zealand in case of emergency so we can get areas back on line and sending information and requests through an information sharing network. Great little units. And this morning, I went to a briefing on how to use Google Maps. Some very interesting developments for the public sector, and there were several agencies represented at a well-attended seminar jointly run by the only reseller agent for Google Maps in New Zealand – Project X (the crew behind zoomin.co.nz maps too).

This weekend, I’ll be spending most of my time at Kiwicon 2008. This is a full-on hacker conference – alternately billed for those in the corporate world as of interest to those interested in security issues. I prevaricated a little earlier this week as I’ve been feeling a little tired, but the line-up looks pretty good – though Saturday is of more interest to me than Sunday.

I have become way more interested in this technical side of things over the past few months. I’m not sure if this is a function of the times, or how easy it seems to be to get involved in this kind if thing in Wellington. I’m sure its a little of both. I’m sure though that my involvement wouldn’t be nearly as high if I was still based in London. It would just take too long to participate in all the things I am interested in doing.

I’m approaching tomorrow with a little trepidation. I’m in no way a hacker – more an informed tinkerer. Informed enough to install ZoneAlarm and have it switched on tomorrow.