Events

The Australian Internet Governance Forum (auIGF) is an annual gathering where people from government, industry, civil society, academia and the technical community discuss public policy questions about the internet in Australia. It is modelled on the global Internet Governance Forum and uses the same multi-stakeholder approach, meaning no single sector sets the agenda.

The programme is built from session proposals submitted by the community and forum is volunteer-run. Read more about the event, including a brief history, from the .au Domain Administration (auDA).

DrupalSouth is the trans-Tasman regional conference for Drupal, an open source content management system. It usually includes a contribution day where attendees work on Drupal. The event location alternates between Australia and New Zealand. DrupalSouth also runs DrupalGov events aimed at the public sector agencies that use Drupal to build and run their websites; as well as community events like DrupalSouth Community Day.

Sessions from past events are available to watch on the DrupalSouth YouTube channel.

The main conference for the people and infrastructure behind digital research: data specialists, research software engineers, librarians, technologists, policy makers and industry partners. Hosted by Australasian eResearch Organisations (AeRO), this is an institutional rather than community-run event for universities, national research infrastructure and funding bodies. The conference is broader than open source, but open source tools, open data and reproducible research methods feature throughout.

Content from previous events is available in their archive.

Australia’s main conference for open technologies. Across three days it covers open source software, open hardware, open data, open government, the GLAM sector, and open communities. This is an annual conference, and is volunteer-run.

Born out of linux.conf.au (LCA), the premier Linux and open source conference for Australia and New Zealand from 1999 to 2022, Everything Open started in 2023 to broaden those connections beyond Linux.

Sessions from past events are available to watch on the Everything Open YouTube channel.

Community-run conferences on Kubernetes and cloud native technology, organised under the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. Australian editions have been held in Sydney and Melbourne.

PyCon AU is the national conference for people using the Python Programming Language. Hosted annually since 2010, this event brings the national and international Python community together. PyCon AU deliberately mixes first-time and experienced presenters. The programme usually combines free workshops, several days of main-conference talks with specialist tracks, and development sprints where attendees contribute directly to open source projects.

Sessions from past events are available to watch on the PyCon AU YouTube channel.

Research Bazaar (ResBaz) is a three-day festival of digital research skills. It’s a highly participatory event where researchers from many disciplines learn practical tools and techniques like programming, data analysis, reproducible workflows, open science and research communication.

ResBaz started at the University of Melbourne in 2015. It now runs as separate state-based editions. Teaching materials from past events are published openly on GitHub.

An annual online conference for people who build and maintain software for research - research software engineers (RSE). It’s a joint event between the RSE Asia Association and the RSE Association of Australia and New Zealand

A recurring program of gatherings in Melbourne and online, spanning software freedom, open source, privacy, right to repair, cooperatives and internet governance. Formats include un-forum sessions, chainferences (satellite gatherings held in conjunction with a main conference) and fortnightly sprints.

Flounder (FLOSS Down Under) is an online meeting group for free software users across Australia and New Zealand. Meetings run as open discussions covering whatever members are working on, and the group has also held hack days. Because it is online only, it suits people outside the capital cities where most user groups meet.

Summaries of past meetings are published on the site, and the group uses Matrix rooms for community discussion and cooperative coding.

A Perth meetup group for people working with open geospatial software and data. Topics include QGIS, PostGIS, OpenStreetMap and geospatial Python. Events are open to anyone and include guest speakers, mapathons and technical workshops.

A Brisbane group for tech enthusiasts who explore the latest trends in technology using their own hardware, in their own time. They meet online every month and in person once a month at a library meeting room, moving the venue around the city. The group runs its own Jitsi server for the online meetings and its own Discourse forum for discussion between them.

Home Unix Machine Brisbane User Group (HUMBUG), is a Brisbane computer club for people interested in Unix and Unix-like operating systems and open source software. This group has actively been running since 1995.

A Perth meetup group for developers using Laravel, an open source web application framework written in PHP. Meetups cover tools and techniques in Laravel development, and the group is aimed at connecting PHP developers in Western Australia.

Linux user groups, or LUGs, are local groups for people interested in Linux and open source software. They hold meetings, provide education and community support, and sometimes run events like installfests. Most are free or very cheap to attend and welcome people with no experience.

Linux Australia maintains a current list of Australian LUGs, organised by state, with contact details for each.

A Sydney meetup for people working with Rust, an open source systems programming language. Meetups run as a series of short talks and cover everything from embedded work and compilers to games and audio. Meetups dates are announced on GitHub, on Meetup and in the RustAU Discord.

Sessions are streamed and recorded, and slides are published in the group’s GitHub repository.

Community conferences about WordPress, the software behind a large share of the world’s websites. Each one is organised locally, so the host city changes, and they cater to everyone from complete beginners through to professional developers.

An annual open government data competition held across Australia and New Zealand, open to everyone. Over a single weekend, teams build something using openly published government data. Government agencies set many of the challenges and sponsor prizes.