Events

Formerly known as NetThing, 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. It’s co-hosted by Internet Australia, the Australian chapter of the Internet Society. 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.

Future of Software Technologies (FOST) is a commercial conference held in Melbourne, covering APIs, AI and platform engineering. It runs three co-located events under one ticket: apidays Australia, Cloud Native Summit and GraphQL Day.

This is a vendor-sponsored industry event rather than a community one, but open standards and open source tooling run through the program, and the GraphQL Day track is run with the GraphQL Foundation.

JoomlaDay is a community event for users of Joomla, an open source content management system.

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.

The Australian edition of Laracon, the conference for people building with Laravel, an open source PHP web framework.

Laracon AU is an official event held with permission of Laravel Holdings. Recordings and details from earlier years are on the past events page.

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

The weekend conference for people who contribute to Wikipedia, Wikidata and the other Wikimedia projects in Australia. It’s run by Wikimedia Australia and moves to a different city each time.

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.

An annual community celebration of open hardware: designs for physical things that anyone can study, build on and modify. It’s one of three freedom days coordinated worldwide by the Digital Freedom Foundation.

The first Australian Hardware Freedom Day was held in Melbourne in April 2026. Linux Victoria published a recap with photos.

A yearly celebration of free and open source software, held on a Saturday in September in cities around the world. Events are free and aimed at people with no experience. Anyone can host one in their own town, and the site has a guide for doing it. Worldwide coordination is by the Digital Freedom Foundation.