There are around 500 delegates at the South East Asian Regional Computer Confederation conference (SEARCC 2005) in Sydney. The conference seems a bit top heavy with a serious senior people in dark suits. Unlike your average conference where the speakers are kept away from the delegates, at this event I kept running into speakers in the exhibition hall who are very passionate about their subjects.

Not much in the way of fun computer applications at the conference or in the exhibition. This is all about big applications for business and government. Mike Kennedy and Pravesh Babhoota from the NSW Office of State Revenue livened things up a bit talking about how you could use open source and commodity hardware in the bureaucracy and still have a career.

For a more detailed coverage of the event I recommend Computerworld. They have so many journalists here that they have started competing with each other for stories. ;-)

Overall the first day has been good due to the quality of delegates, rather than the formal topics addressed at the conference. Tomorrow will be interesting with a panel of IT ministers and wearable computers.