This article is the first in a series that will examine the Groovy/Grails/Griffon community around the world - it first appeared in the November issue of GroovyMag.
We all love the technology, and this series will focus on the people that help to make technology great – colleagues from the farthest flung corners of the globe. This first article focuses on one of the the most remote regions: Australia & New Zealand.
A far-flung land
Tucked away in a oft-forgotten corner of the Southern Pacific are the sparsely-populated countries of Australia and New Zealand. Despite the relative isolation from the rest of the development community (and each other), there's been a long history of innovation and contribution to Open Source projects from the Aussie and Kiwi developers over the years.
Australia in particular is a very urban society: 82% of the citizens live primarily in the eight state and territorial capitals. However, the population of 22 million is spread over an area the size of Europe, which makes face-to-face meetings of the tech community a pretty rare thing. Despite the long and dusty distances separating the capitals, a great sense of community and collaboration prevails. New Zealand has an even smaller population (about two million) and the development community is even more thinly dispersed; however, there is also a surprising amount of activity coming from this remote land.
Conferences
Despite the geographic challenges, in the Open Source area there are two successful annual conferences in the region: Open Source Developers Conference (OSDC), and Linux Conference Australia (LCA).
