Ohio Linux Fest: you don't have to be from Ohio!
What surprised me when I attended Ohio Linux Fest was that it is a national conference; it draws people from all over.
One of the little-known gems at OLF is their training sessions called "OLF University." It is excellent training that is at a very nice price. Considering the high-caliber trainers that they've recruited, I think (and I've told OLFU coordinators) that training like this should be priced 2x or 3x higher. The productivity boost from just one class will pay for itself in a month or two. I recommend people sign up before the organizers start listening to me.
Beth Lynn Eicher wrote a great article about OLF and the training. Check it out.
If you aren't going to OLF University, but are going to OLF, be sure to stop by the LOPSA table!
Exciting news about LISA 2010... soon
I'm going to have a completely new tutorial at LISA 2010. I'm developing the material right now and the more I see, the more I like it.
I'll announce the topic soon :-)
Ohio LinuxFest 2010 - September 10-12, 2010
Registration for OLF opened today. This conference draws people from all over the country, not just Ohio.
The Ohio LinuxFest is proud to announce that registration is now open for Ohio LinuxFest. The schedule has also been announced, and this year will feature a fantastic line-up of talks for new and experienced Linux users. The 2010 Ohio LinuxFest takes place in Columbus, Ohio at the Greater Columbus Convention Center from September 10 through September 12, 2010.
The keynote is Christopher “Monty” Montgomery of Xiph.org will be talking about next generation open source media formats.
Admission is free but space is limited. Supporters can opt for the $65 package that includes lunch and an OLF t-shirt, or the $350 package that includes admission to the “OLF University” training program (which is so good I really think they should charge twice as much. Sign up before they start listening to crazy people like me!)
Sign up today at http://ohiolinux.org/register.html
More info at http://ohiolinux.org
Usenix starts YouTube channel
Usenix now has a YouTube channel!
Whether you want to watch a short, funny talk about Electronic Voting, the "Best Paper" presentation about a new security model for safe web browsing, or a technical and thought-provoking talk about how concurrency is changing everything we do by a computer science legend, this channel has everything a geek could want. (well, it's 8 videos so far, so maybe not everything.)
[If you don't have time for those videos, maybe the videos on www.TomOnTime.com will help you find more free time.]
Certification? Not yet.
At PICC I may have sounded like I thought there was an urgent need to create a sysadmin certification program. While I did talk about what I thought it would/could/should look like, I don't think this is a good time to create such a thing. A long-winded version of this paragraph is below.
An open letter:
I wish to clarify a statement I made at the PICC conference and point those of us that think about the future of system administration in a particular direction.
It has become apparent to me that a certification program cannot exist until the educational standards that it measures are generally accepted. That is, a certification should measure conformance to an pre-existing educational standard.
At the PICC conference, part of my keynote made the case for another attempt at creating a certification for system administrators. In the last few months I've thought a lot about the issue of certification. I've also had the chance to talk with with people that are familiar with how the AMA created its certifications for doctors. While I was not advocating for the immediate creation of a certification program, I may have given that impression. Let me be clear that I do not think that the industry has reached sufficient maturity to warrant a certification program as I described. The AMA's now pervasive certification program came after they worked with universities to develop curricula and other educational programs.
It would be prudent to focus on creating educational standards for the profession of system administration. We, the wider professional system administration community, need to work with academic institutions to create curriculum standards for system administration programs. While there have been attempts in the past, I do not feel this has gotten traction because the profession is not taken seriously in academia. This is changing. A number of factors are leading academia to take notice of the importance of operational excellence in IT. I would be glad to discuss strategy and opportunities with interested parties.
Every movement needs to be, at its heart, an attempt to save the world. It is trite to say that society is more and more dependent on computers. Yet our dependence is staggering even to me. From the logistics of getting food from farms to tables, to providing services related to healthcare, governance, media, security and defense; all of these things are reliant on IT such that they can no longer exists without it. And yet I feel that the digitization of society is still in its earliest of stages.
What could be more a more important way to save the world than making sure that society's underlying IT infrastructures are professionally designed, maintained, secured, and operated? We can not leave these things to amateurs and hobbyists, nor bureaucrats and lobbyists.
Sincerely, Thomas Limoncelli
Australia sysadmins! I'm coming to you!
I'll be keynoting SAGE-AU's conference in Hobart, Taz, AU the August 9-13, 2010. I'll also be teaching 3 half-day classes. Be there or be square!I'll be speaking at MacTech conference, Nov 3-5, 2010
I don't have a lot of time to post today, so this will be short.Configuration Management Summit, Boston, June 24, 2010
(Reposting this announcement from Dan)
Fellow SysAds etc.-
First, I'd like to make sure you are all aware of the Configuration Management Summit next week in Boston on June 24 (details are at http://www.usenix.org/events/config10/). The first Configuration Management Summit aims to bring together developers, power users, and new adopters of open source configuration management tools for automating system administration. Configuration management is a growth area in the IT industry, and open source solutions, with cost savings and an active user community, are presenting a serious challenge to today's "big vendor" products. Representatives from Bcfg2, Cfengine, Chef, and Puppet will all be participating in the summit - this will be a valuable opportunity if you have been contemplating a configuration management solution for your systems.
There is also a special one-day training on Cfengine being taught by Mark Burgess on June 25 (details are at http://www.usenix.org/events/config10/#tut_cfengine). This class might be a review session for anyone on this mailing list, but it will also offer useful insights for people who are not new to Cfengine. Additionally, If you have colleagues who need to come up to speed on Cfengine quickly, this class will be an excellent opportunity for them to learn Cfengine directly from the author.
If you are interested in either event, you can register at http://www.usenix.org/events/confweek10/registration/ (and if you have questions, you can email me directly). I hope to see you in Boston!
Daniel Klein
Education Director
USENIX
DebConf coming soon!
Debian Conference is the annual Debian developers meeting, an event filled with coding parties, discussions and workshops - all of them highly technical in nature. It will be held in New York City, USA, August 1-7, 2010.
It is right in my neighborhood too! (so to speak, I live across the river).
More info here: http://debconf10.debconf.org/
CHIMIT '10 paper deadline soon!
If you study system administrators and are interested in presenting a paper about it, don't forget that the deadline for CHIMIT '10 is July 3, 2010. (The conference is Nov 12-13, 2010)
Thanks for a great conference!
LOPSA PICC 2010 was a big success. Thanks to everyone that attended.LOPSA PICC is this weekend!
I'm spending a lot of time refining my keynote, updating slides for my Time Management and other tutorials. It isn't too late to register.PICC is for system administrators of all stripes, May 7-8, 2010 in New Brunswick, NJ. It is easy to get there by train or car. More info at http://picconf.org
LOPSA PICC: Final days before "last minute" price
It costs more to attend PICC if you register after May 1st or "at the door". Due to higher administrative costs, registration price goes up shortly before the conference.More thoughts about submitting papers to Usenix LISA
I've been a sysadmin for 2 decades. When I think back about my career I realize that the first time I presented a paper to LISA was a major turning point for me.
It wasn't my idea to submit a paper. My boss at the time put a lot of effort into career development and he suggested that a good bridge from being a junior sysadmin to a senior sysadmin would be to start submitting papers to conferences. I wrote about some projects we had been doing and submitted. I couldn't believe it when I got the acceptance letter!
Being published lead to many important things for me. It got my name around; other people wanted to collaborate with me. It helped me in job hunting; having a paper published gave me a new level of credibility. Most importantly it got me noticed by Addison-Wesley and that lead to co-authoring writing my first book (the second most important turning point in my career; which wouldn't have happened without those early papers). That lead to some other milestones, such as being honored with the SAGE Award.
Maybe you haven't considered writing a paper for LISA. Maybe you think your projects aren't that amazing. My first paper was about how we renumbered the IP address of 1,000 machines (this was before DHCP was popular). Doesn't seem to exciting, does it? We had interesting problems that needed to be worked through: http://bit.ly/9C8ykH
The last few years some papers (not by me) have included topics like: Migrating thousands of users to a new email server and why it became a disaster; the method someone uses for stress-testing their web server to find performance bottlenecks; data mining Cisco network configs stored in a source-code repository for many years; virtualizing networks; using a dependency graph to determine security risk. All of these are interesting because they solve real problems.
So...
The deadline for submitting papers is May 17th. If you want a mentor, ask the chair and a helpful committee member will be assigned to you.
Unlike past years, submitting papers is a bit easier this year:
- This year you don't have to write the entire paper! Submit a 1500-word abstract. If it gets accepted, then you'll have to write the paper (of course!).
- We are now accepting "experience" papers. Do an massive email migration? Deploy a new thingamabob? Survive an interesting attack, management change, or technology ? Tell us all about it!
If you have never submitted a paper to LISA, this is a good time to give it a shot.
It could be a turning point for you too.
Sincerely,
Tom Limoncelli
Submission guidelines:
http://www.usenix.org/events/lisa10/cfp/
Writing advice here:
http://engineerwriting.jottit.com/
...and...
http://everythingsysadmin.com/2010/03/writing-papers-for-usenix-lisa.html
Another reason to come to PICC
For more info about the conference visit picconf.org. Register today!
Writing papers for Usenix LISA (and other) conferences
Update: Someone else said it very well here
When I last mentioned LISA, I forgot to mention the big news! This year submitting papers is a lot easier! Less work for the authors!
Rather than having to submit the entire, nearly finished, draft in advance, you can submit a briefer summary. If it gets accepted, then you have to write the entire thing. This saves a lot of time in case your submission is not accepted (how would that happen?). It also lowers the bar to submitting, which is important. I think more submissions is better. If this is your first time submitting a paper, this is a good opportunity to go for it.
There are three things you might consider proposing:
- Refereed papers: Did you invent something? Prove a new theory? Create a new tool or software system? Submit a paper. Submissions are simply extended abstracts, 500-1500 words plus an outline of what the final paper will look like. (Details here.)
- Practice and Experiences Reports: NEW! This is a new category. It's a bit different. This is a story telling category. Have you completed a major project and would like to share what experience they gained? I think of it as "Here's what we wish we had known before we started." Very useful. (Details here.)
- Invited Talks: A lot of people don't realize this, but some (not all) invited talks are proposed by the people that give them. Hey, the Invited Talk chairs don't have ESP nor are the omnipotent. So if you have a hot topic that you are an expert at, or would like to put together a panel of debating debutants, propose it as an I.T. or a "Guru Session". (Details here.)
- (Other things you can submit)
The deadline is May 17, 2010. Less than 2 months away!
This year I'm on the committee that will be judging the papers. I thought it would be useful to tell people my personal process for evaluating papers.
I've been on the Usenix LISA program committee a few times. People ask me for advice about submitting papers a lot. Usually I tell them to read the CfP, pay attention to the deadlines, etc. But the real important advice is what I'm about reveal below.
Don't give me a "surprise ending". Please don't force me to read 4 pages before you tell me what your point is. I want to know right away. It saves me time.
A "surprise ending" paper is where the abstract says, "We've developed a new way to do X", the next 10 pages explains the history of X, then their experience with X and what problems they've seen with other systems that do X, and then at the end they finally present their surprise ending: they do X differently.
Or worse, the last paragraph says that they do it with a secret that they'll reveal in the final version of the paper, only to be revealed if the paper is accepted to the conference. I kid you not. People have done that.
The problem with the "surprise ending" is that now I have to go back and re-read the paper because now I finally know what I needed to know to understand the paper.
A surprise ending is great if you are writing a film, not if you are writing a paper.
When submitting papers to conferences, give away the surprise ending in the first sentence:
We present a backup system that is more appropriate for backing up thousands of laptops because it uses file hashes to avoid backing up files that are common to multiple laptops. Our architecture scales to 1,000 laptops.
If this is truly a "first", then I know right away you will have gotten me exceited about reading the rest of the paper. Otherwise, at least I know what I'm in for and can judge it on other merits.
As I read the opening of a paper I construct a mental rubrick that I will use to judge the paper: There better be a section of the paper that validates each of these claims: statistics that demonstrate that there is a problem (how often the same file exists on laptops), proof that demonstrate that this solves the problem (metrics about the reduction in backup time, bandwidth used), proof that shows this doesn't cause new problems (performance impacts), other problems that come to mind (laptops in "sleep mode"), and validation of their claim that it scales.
I will create this list of checkpoints and produce a grade for each one of them. If they wrote the paper well, I can do this in one reading.
By telling the audience the conclusion in the first sentence you save the audience time. This is true for the judges deciding whether or not to accept the paper, or after publication when people are deciding whether or not to read the paper.
Don't think that by holding back the good bit until the very end it will entice people to read the paper. If they are reading the entire book of proceedings they're more likely to skip a paper entirely if the relevence isn't made clear at the start. Sysadmins tend to specialize on storage, networking, operating systems, or so on. People usually read the papers that have to do with their specialization. If they can't tell your paper is about their specialization in the first paragraph, they're going to skip it.
The essence of good writing is brevity. Tell me what you are trying to say, then stop. Just be complete.
Why are you coming to the conference?
We asked the first people that registered for PICC why they are coming and got some surprises! Read them here.LOPSA PICC: Complete program announced
LOPSA Conference schedule published!
If you were waiting to register until the complete schedule was revealed, get that credit card out!
LOPSA PICC last night published the final slate of papers and speakers (if you didn't get your accept/sorry email, please let us know). http://picconf.org now contains the complete schedule.
You can attend for as little as $249, or $99 for students. The training program is extra.
If you aren't sure how to ask your boss for permission, we have some advice.
Tom
Submit your talk proposals to PICC today!
(PICC is a regional sysadmin conference to be held in central NJ on May
7-8, 2010. I'm on the planning committee. http://picconf.org)
Today is the deadline for proposals for papers, talks, and such.
We're a little low on submissions so I'd like to make one more "beg". We'd love to have a talk about PHP for sysadmins, something fun you've done with Arduino, your favorite JS
library, a walk-through on setting up Google Apps. Demo your favorite open source project, or propose a panel of people to talk about something you find interesting (I can help find others for your panel). It is an excellent way to spread the word about a project you are involved with.
We've tried to make the proposal process really easy. Just send your
contact info and topic plus a 1-2 paragraph description to
submissions@lopsanj.org
For more info IM me and/or view:
http://lopsanj.org/events/picc10/cfp
Tom
P.S. Today is the deadline but we can grant extensions to anyone that writes and asks.
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LOPSA Regional Sysadmin conference announced!
Registration is open! Keynotes announced! Register today!NJ/NY/PA/DE/CT/RI/MA Regional Sysadmin Conference
I've mentioned the Professional IT Community Conference (PICC) before, but now the fun has really started.
Registration is open and the speakers have been announced!
The cost is low, and the benefits are huge. I know from Google Analytics that this site receives hits from over 500 unique users in the region of this conference, every month. We don't have that kind of space at the conference. It's going to sell out at some point, so make sure that you talk to your boss now about attending. We've even drafted a letter to help convince them that it's worth your time and their money.
It isn't often that you get a local conference with internationally known speakers like David Blank-Edelman (O'Reilly's "Automating System Administration with Perl") as well as Eben M Haber from the IBM research lab in Almaden, CA! This conference is going to get you the biggest bang for your buck out there.
(Oh, and I'll be speaking too. I've reworked 2 of my half-day tutorials ("Time Management" and "Help! Everyone hates our IT department!") plus, I've been asked to give the Saturday morning keynote, which I'll be using to premiere material from my yet-unannounced new book! But the book is a secret still, so hush!)
What I'd like you to do is to help me get the word out. Please. Not everyone reading this is in the NJ/NY/PA/CT/DE/RI/MA area. For those of you who aren't, please tell other people. Follow us on twitter at @picconf, email the site (http://www.picconf.org) to anyone you know in the area who might be interested, tell user groups about it, heck, we've even got a facebook page that you can become a fan of.
This is absolutely a grass-roots kind of effort. We have a very small advertising budget, so I want to use that as intelligently as possible. That means getting your help for the initial waves, and to spread it by word of mouth, by email, link, tweet, IM, and whatever else you've got.
A very big thank you to every one of you out there who reads this blog and supports me. I appreciate all of you.
LOPSA New Jersey conference registration is open!
Come one! Come all! Training schedule and speakers are now listed on the web site. Oh, and most importantly... registration!
I have a lot more to write about this but that will come soon. For now, check out the site!
What should I talk about at a conference?
I'm in the middle of writing proposals for Invited Talks and Tutorials at Usenix LISA 2010 and I thought I'd throw this question out to the readers of this blog:
What would you like to hear me talk about?
I speak at LISA a lot. I talk about Time Management, tips for running an IT department, and a few other things. But what would you LIKE to hear me teach or talk about?
To all my New Jersey friends:
Do you work in New Jersey? Let your "IT guy/gal" know how much you appreciate them this Valentines day!
Send this to them, or better yet, open a ticket at your helpdesk with this text!
(And if you really like them, CC: their boss!)
8< ---------- cut here ---------- >8
Happy Valentines Day to my favorite computer system administrator:
You only hear from me
when my computer is blue.
So this Valentine's Day
I'm saying "Thank you!"
I admit my computer problems,
like it's a reality-show confessional.
But you hide your frown,
and act very professional.
I think that you're great!
I know I'm a pest!
But I bring my troubles to you,
because you're the best!
Some roses are red,
some roses are pink.
No candy this year,
but my card's at this link:
http://picconf.org/vday
Thank you for everything you do! Happy Valentine's Day!
Sincerely
(your name here)
8< ---------- cut here ---------- >8
(Please pass this on to all your friends in New Jersey!)
This campaign is brought to you by EverythingSysadmin.com and LOPSA-NJ (picconf.org).
New Jersey Sysadmin conference announced!
New Jersey (and nearby) sysadmins, network engineers, DBAs, and anyone that considers themselves part of the "IT industry" should check out the LOPSA New Jersey Professional IT Community Conference.
The conference will be Fri/Sat, May 7-8, 2010 in sunny New Brunswick, NJ. I'll be speaking both days.
LOPSA-NJ is excited to announce a conference for the IT and system administration community in New Jersey and surrounding area!
Two days of speakers, panels, training, and "unconference". For technical people, by technical people.
LOPSA-New Jersey Professional IT Community Conference (PICC) Fri/Sat May 7-8, 2010, Hyatt Regency, in sunny New Brunswick, NJ.http://www.picconf.org
The long version:
PICC10 is a gathering of professionals from the diverse IT (computer and network administration) community in New Jersey to learn, share ideas, and network. The conference includes invited speakers and keynotes, training by top-notch experts that is relevant, useful, and recession-friendly; plus an "unconference" track where attendees propose and host their own topics during the event. We expect attendance of 100 to 150 IT professionals from mid- to large-sized companies and academia from New Jersey/New York/Pennsylvania. We go by many titles but everyone is invited: system administrators, network administrators, network engineers, Windows, Linux, Unix, DBAs, and so on. YOU are invited!Awesome! Keep me informed!
- Twitters: http://www.twitter.com/picconf
- Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/fb-picc
- Emails: http://lopsanj.org/mailman/listinfo/picc2010-announce
Read the full "Call for Participation":
http://lopsanj.org/events/picc10/cfp (Yes, we need you to propose conference topics)Sponsors needed! Reach a motivated, highly-targeted demographic:
http://lopsanj.org/events/picc10/sponsorsLOPSA is vendor-independant and non-profit. This conference is too.
What should you write your LISA paper about?
Status: draft
The Usenix LISA 2010 "Call for Participation" is out. I encourage everyone to think about what they're doing to improve system administration, what innovation they've brought to their network, and write a paper about it.
People often ask me for a definition of "system administrator". TPOSANA/2ed has a great definition in the preface (read it and see).
But lately I've been thinking that one way to define it is in terms of lifecycle. I think of sysadmins as being the people that are responsible for technology from cradle-to-grave. Developers might create it. Executives might pay for it. Customers might request it. But we facilitate the cradle-to-grave process:
- acquisition
- deployment
- maintenance
- repair
- scaling
- decommission
Each of these phases can be a big deal and can be done well or badly.
Most sysadmins are mired in the operational aspects (keeping it running) and don't even realize the other phases exist. Consider the (usually Windows) desktop support person at most companies: the OS comes loaded from the vendor, is never changed, just maintained until the machine is thrown away. We (they) get a reputation for being janitors, not engineers.
The biggest innovations come from focusing on the other parts: getting customer requirements as part of acquisition; deploying things very well (especially desktops or things that have opportunity for mass-production cloning, etc.), scaling (growing from 100 machines , 10,000 machines, 1 million machines; or from hundreds to thousands to millions of users), decommissioning: securely destroying information, and so on.
You can optimize these phases individually or look for cross-phase improvements. If you have optimized all of these phases the only thing left is release engineering and scaling.
Surrounding these issues is all the soft skills that relate to "professionalism": how you deal with people, manage your time, etc.
So what are you going to write your LISA paper about? Which one of these phases have you improved? Did you write a new tool? Develop a new technique? Start an open-source project? Or maybe you have perfected a cross-phase methodology?
Alternatively, maybe you've noticed that there is a thing that sysadmins do, and you can study many groups of sysadmins doing that thing, and can draw comparisons and conclusions about what worked best.
Or maybe you're facing a problem that nobody else has faced, and it is worthwhile to publish your results. Maybe you've scaled Apache to more users than anyone else has, and learned something useful. Maybe you've broken from tradition "on a hunch" and your new disk backup software works better for a particularly common edge-case (Just kidding... I'm sick of papers about backup systems.) Heck, maybe you're just the first sysadmin to deploy a new technology (10G ethernet to the desktop?) and learned something about managing it that the engineers that invented it would have never expected.
What is your sysadmin team most proud of? What thing are you doing that others think is "futuristic" or "cutting edge"?
William Gibson famously wrote, "The future is here. It's just not evenly distributed yet." I suspect that most people reading this blog live in the future and by writing or speaking about what we're doing, we can spread it to others.
That's the goal of LISA, isn't it?
Usenix LISA 2010 Call For Participation
Just moments ago Usenix has published their "Call for Participation" for the Usenix LISA 2010 conference. This is a conference that I attend every year because the value I get out of it is undeniable. The speakers are excellent and the topics make me feel like I have access to a crystal ball that lets me see into the future.
The CfP gives a more detailed explanation of the conference and the kinds of talks, papers, and presentations that they are looking for. This is a community conference; talks come from people in the community, not "top down" vendor presentations.
This year adds a new "Practice and Experience" section where people can give a 20 minute talk where people can explain "substantial system administration project that has been completed." Sounds like a great way to learn from other people's mistakes [After I typed that I thought people might think I was kidding or being cynical. Actually, hearing what speedbumps to watch out is pretty darn important!.]
Usenix LISA is unique in that they have a track of refereed papers. These high-quality papers are where some of the biggest system administration innovations have first been published. This year the committee is not requiring full papers, but instead requests 500-1500 word summary. If your paper is accepted you will be expected to produce the entire paper in time for publication. This lowers the barrier to entry and I hope to see a big increase in paper submissions this year (I'm on the panel that votes on papers). If you have done something fantastic, invented a new technique, or written new software that improves the state of the art for system administration, please submit! (Private email to me is fine if you want to ask for advice). Details about submitting papers is here.
Whether you are planning on submitting a proposal or not, reading the full CfP is a great way to understand how a conference like LISA works. When you are presenting or not, I hope to see you there!
Read the entire call for participation here: http://www.usenix.org/events/lisa10/cfp/
Thanks to everyone that attended my talks at LISA 2009!
Thanks to everyone that attended my tutorials. They were the #1 and #3 more attended tutorials, topping out at nearly 80 people each. The BOFs I held had packed rooms too. Thanks for your attention, I hope you walked away smarter and feeling better about your time management and sysadmin skills.Laptop safety: Disable sshd on your laptop before conferences
I know you don't have sshd enabled on your laptop. Heck, I bet you have everything disabled just as the corporate security policy (or just your general security paranoia) dictates.PermitRootLogin yesto
PermitRootLogin without-password
My roadmap for LISA
I've used Google Calendar to make a list of what I plan on attending at LISA. In past years I would spend the breaks trying to decide what to do next. This year I've precompiled my decisions so I can spend the break socializing. You can view my decisions here.
My general plan:
- Attend the sessions I'm involved with
- Attend papers more than Invited Talks
- Go to the LOPSA hospitality party at night when I'm not busy
- Go to CHIMIT 2009 in Baltimore when LISA is over
What's your plan?
Google Vendor BoF Thursday night
I am MC of the "Google Vendor BoF" at LISA09.
Here's how the planning meeting went:
"Ice cream?"
"Check."
"Raffle prizes?"
"Check."
"Beer?"
"Check."
"Ok, we're ready!"
See you there! Thursday, November 5, 9:00 p.m.-11:00 p.m., Essex A, B, & C.
NJ and VA: Remember to vote!
A message to the US readers of this blog.
This year's Usenix LISA conference conflicts with election day. I want to encourage everyone attending to vote absentee, unless of course, you can be home to vote on Tuesday.
There are no federal contests this year. Thus, the conflict does not affect most people. Of course, there are many local contests, and voting in those is very important. However, two states elect governors "out of cycle" with the rest of the nation. Both New Jersey and Virginia's governor races are neck-and-neck. Your vote is very important.
Both states permit registered votes to vote "absentee" (i.e. by mail) if you will be out of state that day. Actually, they permit you to vote absentee for just about any reason. Here are the forms you need:
Applications must be sent by postal mail. Deadlines are soon. Act today!
Interview: Design Patterns for System Administrators Training at LISA 2009
Matt Simmons interviews me about "Design Patterns for System Adminsitrators".
This is a tutorial that I've never taught before. You can see it first at LISA 2009 in November.
In case you missed it, Matthew Sacks interviewed me about my other LISA tutorial. That tutorial also has a lot of new material.
Interview: Time Management for System Administrators Training at LISA 2009
Usenix interviewed me about my Time Management tutorial at the upcoming LISA 2009 conference. It isn't too late to sign up for this class!
I can't wait for LISA!
Hanging out with geeks talking about sysadmin stuff at last night's LOPSA-NJ Chapter meeting last night made me impatient for the LISA 2009 conference to start. Why do I have to wait a month???Ohio LinuxFest Registration extended!
Due to overwhelming demand, the committee has extended the Ohio LinuxFest registration until midnight Tuesday, September 22. Please register today if you have not done so already and are planning on coming to Ohio LinuxFest 2009. Walk-in registrations at the day of the show may be possible for the enthusiast and professional packages (OLFU), subject to space availability.
OLF is a Free and Open Source Software Conference and Expo in Columbus, Ohio, September 25-27, 2009
Conference Planning Tips
[ This is a draft, but it's good enough to publish. Please post feedback. ]
Someone recently asked me for my advice about planning a conference.
First, I want to say that conferences are really important to the open source community. Conferences build community. Conferences build community. Repeat that over and over. It is so true it can't be underestimated. From the early Usenix conferences which bolstered Unix, to MacWorld which gave the Mac developer community "a home", to modern Linux and other conferences: If you want to build a community, have an annual conference. A well-run conference has the side effect of building your local community. First, the conference is great PR for your organization. Every planning meeting is an excuse to tell the world that you exist. Second, a conference is "special" and that brings out people that might normally ignore a monthly meeting. Third, if you do the planning right and spread the work around, you will find volunteers come out of the woodwork. The person that was intimidated to run an entire conference is certainly willing to do a small task like reaching out to a potential speaker or coordinating the catering vendor that provides lunch. That grooms people for bigger jobs. By the end of your conference you will have found the next generation of leadership that your organization needs.
So here's my advice.
A successful conference is created by having a logical plan that will carry you from the start all the way to the end.
1. Work from a timeline. I have run or been involved in about a dozen conferences. The most important thing that I learned was to build a timeline. Do this in person. Get everyone in a room for a kick-off meeting. Put huge sheets of paper on the walls marked with the months or weeks leading up to the conference. Mark 'today' and 'conference' as end-points. Now discuss the various aspects of the conference and mark them on the timeline.
Suppose you start with the program: Mark the day you'll announce the "call for papers", mark when the deadline will be for submissions, mark when the program committee will have their selections done, confirmations will go out, when replies are accepted, and so on. Next let's hear from the registration committee. Mark the last day people can pre-register, mark the last day you offer a discount for early registration (which is a lie. Mark 1 week early, but use that day to announce "the discount is extended 1 week!" and have the real deadline 1 week later). PR is important. How often will you send out press releases? Monthly? Mark the first of each month. Magazines have a 4-month lead time, and people make travel plans 6 months in advance: Mark 10 months early that you will have contacted magazines. Keep doing this with every committee... even if you don't have your committees set up. Most of it will be guesses. That's ok. A lot of it will need to be coordinated: The moment you have the keynote speaker, send a press release. People don't register for a conference until they know the entire (draft) program, so be fore that your have a (draft) program early, and that registration deadlines are coordinated around that. etc. etc. Mark the days of the planning conference calls (once per month, then once per week when you are closer to the event).
If you can get all this into a timeline in a single day-long meeting the rest of the story "just writes itself". Each week/month have a conference call where you figure out who is going to do the tasks in the next week/month of the timeline. It lets volunteers feel like no task is too intimidating (they only look a week/month ahead), and leaders don't micromange because they are setting goals. It keeps everyone "on the same page" and removes a lot of the chaos. (Note: If you want to encourage new volunteers, have the meetings in person and announce them publicly. Newbies are intimidated by phone calls.)
2. End the "timeline meeting" with a commitment. The next thing I recommend also takes place at the "timeline" meeting. At the end of the meeting, gather everyone in a circle and ask them all to commit to making sure the "timeline" happens. Go around the circle and have each person saying that they are agreeing to this commitment. I know it sounds really hippy-dippy, but the conferences that I've done this have been the ones where all the volunteers stayed on to the end. The ones were I chickened out and didn't do this were the ones that everyone was fighting, volunteers dropped out, and by the conference date 1-2 people were doing all the work (and hated it). I call this my "good luck ritual". There is magic in this ritual.
3. Get a signed contract for the location as soon as you can. Most volunteers won't volunteer until the date/place are certain. They don't want to put effort into something that they can't attend.
The few volunteers that you do get before you've booked a place... use them to find and book a place.
Once you've booked a place, have the timeline meeting.
4. One more thing... Here are some things to add to the timeline because they are often forgotten.
- Before the conference starts, write "thank you" notes to all the speakers. (Send them 1 day after the event).
- Send rejection letters AND confirmation letters. Many times conferences forget to send rejection letters. Don't leave people hanging.
- Have the "post-conference" party immediately after the conference is done. Don't wait a day... people won't be around for it. Use the party to thank everyone, give them space to relax and celebrate, and make notes for next year. Rather than a formal "what will we improve next year" meeting, just put a big sheet of paper on the wall and let people write. Have another sheet for people to list "Great things about this year's conference!"
Setting up a timeline early on gives the entire process structure. Structure is comforting to volunteers that may be otherwise unsure and, quite possibly, scared. Scared, confused, people are more likely to be stressed, get into arguments, and drop out. Giving people some structure, but not so much as to be micro-managing them, helps build their confidence, makes sure that everyone understands their job and the jobs of everyone else, and that all helps people work better together.
Have a great conference!
Tom @ LISA '09, Nov 1-6, 2009, Baltimore, MD
Tom will be very busy at LISA 2009 both teaching and hosting various events:- Half-day Tutorial: "Time Management for System Administrators: A New Approach"
- Half-day Tutorial: "Design Patterns for System Administrators"
- Guru Session: Job Hunting (with Andy Lester from http://theworkinggeek.com, author of the new book Land The Tech Job You Love
- BoFs: I'll be hosting 3 BoFs. A 2-hour BoF on "Time Management", a BoF for the open-source project called Ganeti. And I'll be MC of this year's LGBT and Allies BoF.
- I'll be at the Google Vendor BoF on Thursday night to answer questions about what it is like to work at Google.
- Book signing: I hope to arrange a Book Signing during the vendor show.
My tutorials at LISA 2009
As I mentioned previously, I'll be presenting two tutorials at LISA 2009. Both are new.
The one on Time Management is a total re-write. That's why it is subtitled "a new approach". I've been teaching time management to system administrators for long enough that I've discovered that what people really need is a new way to think about their entire day. By thinking about their day ahead of schedule we can make adjustments to how we operate that day. The result is more satisfaction at the end of the day. People that have taken my class before should find it interesting and new; plus a good refresher on things they may have forgotten, or wasn't relevant until the more basic stuff had "sunk in".
The other class is totally new: Design Patterns for System Administrators . A design pattern is "a general reusable solution to a commonly occurring problem." That is, this class is going to be all the rules of thumb and tips that I find I get asked about, plus a lot of tips I wish people would ask me about! (Yes, there will be rants!)
I'm taking a break from working on my slides to post this. I should get back to work!
'Gorillas in the Mist' or 'Sysadmins at the Keyboard'?
Dear fellow sysadmins,The surest sign that sysadmins are mis-understood is how difficult it is to install, debug, or maintain various products. Any sysadmin can tell if the installation process was designed as an afterthought. Any sysadmin can point to a variety of... I'll be polite and say... "design decisions" that make a product completely and utterly impossible to debug.
I've talked with product managers about why their product is the speedbump that slows me down when debugging a problem that is buried in a network of 150 devices from 15 different companies. In the old days I was told, "that's why you should buy everything from one vendor... us!" and in today's multi-platform arena I'm told, "but our goal is to make our product so easy to use it you don't need to debug it."
I'm sure that last sentence made you cringe. You get it.
I've explained how GUIs are bad when they prevent the basic principles of system administration: change management, automated auditing, backups, and unfettered debugging. We have practices and methodologies we need to implement! Don't get in our way!
The more enlightened product managers understand that the easier it is to automate the installation of their product, the easier it is for me to buy a lot of their product. The more enlightened product managers understand that an ASCII configuration file can be checked in to SubVersion, audited by a Perl script, or even generated automagically from a Makefile. Sadly, those product managers are rare.
One would think that companies would be investing millions of dollars in research to make sure their products are beloved by sysadmins.
I like to think that somewhere out there is a group of researchers studying this kind of thing. I imagine that they find sysadmins that volunteer to be videotaped as they do their job. I imagine the researchers (or their graduate students) pouring over those tapes as they try to understand our strange ways. I imagine Dian Fossey studying not Gorillas in the Mist but Sysadmins at the Keyboard.
These researchers do exist.
I've seen them.
For the last two years they've met and exchanged ideas at a conference called CHMIT.
Some of them actually video tape sysadmins and examine what is it about products that make our lives good and !good.
My favorite moment was watching a researcher describing their observation of a sysadmin the heat of a real outage. The sysadmin closed the firewall's GUI and connected to the command line interface in two different windows. In one they kept repeating a command to output some debugging information. In the other they typed commands to fix the problems. This was something the GUI would never had let him do without risking carpel tunnel syndrome. The researcher beamed as he explained the paradigm we were witnessing. He sounded like he had been lucky enough to catch the Loch Ness Monster on film but what he had captured was something more valuable: photographic evidence of why sysadmins love command lines!
The person sitting next to me sighed and said, "Oh my god. Is that why nobody uses the GUI we spend millions to develop?"
I love this conference.
These researchers study people like me and it makes the world a better place.
More than researchers attend. Sysadmins make up a large part of the audience.
This year CHMIT 2009 will be in Baltimore, MD the days following LISA 2009 which by amazing coincidence is also in Baltimore, MD.
Will you be there? I know I will.
Mark November 7-9, 2009 on your calendar. Registration opens soon. Papers can be submitted now. www.chimit09.org
Tom Limoncelli
Off to linux.conf.au 2009 soon
I'm spending this weekend packing for linux.conf.au 2009. I'll be the opening speaker. Hope to see you there!LOPSA classes at SCALE 7x
The Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE) will include classes by LOPSA instructors. For more information, check out the LOPSA press release, or the SCALE page.SCALE 7x is the 7th SCALE conference.
Ready for LISA 2008 in San Diego!
I've registered, I've booked my hotel. Are you going to LISA 2008?
On Thursday I will be doing a 90-minute open Q&A session about Time Management. Feel free to stop by and ask me anything.
On Friday I will be presenting my newest talk titled, "System Administration and The Economics of Plenty". When we start to see how plentiful the world is, we think about our roles as system administrators differently. It affects everything from how we set policy to how we do our jobs.
Register online today!
I hope to see you there!
Tom @ Ohio LinuxFest 2008, Columbus, Ohio, October 10-11, 2008
Tom will be teaching two half-day tutorials: "Time Management for System Administrators" and "Interviewing and Hiring System Administrators". This is a rare opportunity to see these talks presented in the Ohio area. Register soon!With the economy in a down-turn, Time Management is key to being efficient at what you do. With people's hiring budgets being slashed, it is important that the people you do hire are top notch. Both of these tutorials are intended for both the new and experienced system administrator or IT manager.
The sixth annual Ohio LinuxFest will be held on October 10-11, 2008 at the Greater Columbus Convention Center in downtown Columbus, Ohio. Hosting authoritative speakers and a large expo, the Ohio LinuxFest welcomes Free and Open Source Software professionals, enthusiasts, and anyone who wants to take part in the event. The Ohio LinuxFest is a free, grassroots conference for the Linux/Open Source Software/Free Software community
Looking forward to SAGE-AU (Australia)
As I start to pack for my trip to Australia, I'm getting really excited about attending the SAGE-AU 2008 conference. I just got email with the preliminary registration numbers for my workshops (note: more people will sign up "day of"):- Interviewing/Hiring Technical People: 8 registrations
- Time Management for System Administrators: 31 registrations
- "Help! Everyone hates our IT Department!": 24 registrations
By the way... I've completely revamped the Time Management slides. Previously I've tweaked them between conferences. This time I took a hard look at what people found useful, didn't need, and the way I was presenting the information. I refocused the slides around the more streamlined version of "the cycle", dropped the parts that got the most yawns or "why would anyone want that?"-looks. I also made sure that the more entertaining parts were retained and are spread evenly throughout the presentation. As I learned from mjd's "Presentation Judo" talk says, "Your primary goal should be to entertain". Each slide should educate and entertain, but if you have to pick just one, choose to entertain: people are sitting in the same seat for 3 hours, they deserve nothing less.
Now I have to get back to packing. For the last few months any time I've thought of something to bring I wrote it on my todo list for August 6th. Packing is less stressful when you have confidence that you won't forget anything. Now I just have to fit it all in my luggage!
It's not too late to register for SAGE-AU 2008. I look forward to seeing you there!
Why I attend the LISA conference
One-day workshops and training programs serve a different purpose from week-long conferences. One-day seminars tend to be tactical: focused on a particular technology or skill (TCP/IP, Storage, Backups, etc). Week-long conferences are strategic: offering opportunities to discuss broader topics, to network, to build community, and to further the craft of SA as a respected profession. Week-long conferences give you "vision".
LISA is one of those week-long conferences.
My favorite part of LISA is what I call "the moment." There's always this moment when I realize that someone has just said something that makes me want to shout, "Oh Damn! That just paid for the entire conference!" There are many little "ah-ha!" moments too, but there's always one big one. Some years there are two or three.
LISA is very cutting-edge. Many times I've seen a new tool at LISA that only became popular years later. I had been using it all along. People wonder where I find out about these things, the answer is usually "LISA"! That's really helped me stay ahead of the pack.
Week-long conferences have a powerful effect, providing a much-needed opportunity to relax, and they provide a supportive environment where you can take a step back from your day-to-day work and consider the big picture. Attendees return to their job brimming with new ideas and vision; refreshed, motivated, and with a new outlook.
This year's conference is on the east-coast in lovely Washington D.C. I hope to see you there!
LISA '06, Dec 3-8, in Washington D.C., download this year's flyer (PDF) or go to the LISA'06 home page
Happy Birthday, LOPSA!
Happy Birthday, LOPSA!
You are one year old and look how far you've come! Like most births you were born amid a lot of shouting and confusion, but look how far you've grown! You've formed the organization, build a web site, and had your first regional conference. Congrats! Now you are truly defining yourself, growing up, and becoming your own person.
For those of you that don't know, LOPSA is the League of Professional System Administrators. The goal is to become like the AMA is to doctors, or the APA is to shrinks. That is, work on building the professionalism of our community. If you aren't a member, I highly recommend that you join. Heck, it's free to just register.
Two weeks ago I attended the first LOPSA regional conference in Phoenix, Arizona. I taught a full-day version of my Time Management for System Administrators class. What impressed me about this event was how different it was. Because it was regional most of the speakers were local. There are experts everywhere (not just in California) and seeing them get some spotlight really made me happy. The fact that it was small also meant that it could be at a less expensive hotel, who was more hungry for LOPSA's business. They had a lot of creative ideas that I haven't seen at big hotels. For example, one of the snack-breaks had cookies and milk! I was psyched!
At night we had a lot of deep discussions about the future of system administration, professionalism, and the future of LOPSA. I consulted with some board members about how to get to the next milestone now that the organization is running. I hope to see more regional conferences announced soon. I also brainstormed on ways to reach out to the segments of the IT world that are currently unaddressed.
Why not celebrate the 1st birthday by buying a gift for yourself? The LOPSA CafePress store is ready to fulfill your need for swag, and raises money for a good cause. And if you haven't registered, do that too. They have some extremely useful mailing lists.
Tom + Strata @ LISA '06 in Wash D.C., Dec 3-8, 2006
Tom and Strata be teaching and speaking at LISA 2006 in Washington D.C., Dec 3-9, 2006. This is one of our favorite conferences of the year because it is so dam useful. Get your boss to send ya. This year it is in Washington D.C., which makes it easy to get to for all the east-coasters that usually don't get around.
Tom will be speaking/teaching:
| Mon | 9am-5pm | Workshop | Managing Sysadmins (co-facilitator) |
| Wed | 2pm-3:30 | Invited Talk | Site Reliability at Google/My First Year at Google |
| Thu | AM | Tutorial | Time Management: Getting It All Done and Not Going (More) Crazy! |
| Thu | 12:30pm-1:30pm | Exhibition | "Meet the Authors" at Reiter's Conference Bookstore |
| Thu | 2pm-3:30 | Guru Talk | How to Get Your Paper Accepted at LISA |
| Thu | 4pm-5:40 | Guru Talk | Time Management for System Administrators |
| Fri | 11am-12:30 | Hit The Ground Running | Mac OS X |
Strata Rose Chalup will be speaking/teaching:
| Mon | PM | Tutorial | Project Troubleshooting |
| Wed | PM | Tutorial | Problem-Solving for IT Professionals |
| Thu | AM | Tutorial | Practical Project Management for Sysadmins and IT Professionals |
| Wed | 9pm-10pm | BOF | Sysadmin Education |
In addition, we will be hanging out in what is known as "the hallway track". In fact, if you haven't attended LISA before, you should know that a lot of the educational value is the people you meet. Tom says, "Early in my career a lot of what I learned was from the conversations in the hallway."
- More info about LISA 2006, Washington D.C., Dec 3-8, 2006
- Register for LISA 2006
Coming soon: Book signing and other events.
LOPSA announces "SysAdmin Days" Conference
LOPSA is proud to present our first in-person training workshop: SysAdmin Days this November in Phoenix, AZ.
SysAdmin Days is a two-day training workshop for system administrators to focus on all the aspects of their professional development, both technical and otherwise. Workshops are available for both specific platforms and technologies and general system administration practices, including Mac OS X Administration, PHP, and Perl. We'll also have sessions about topics important for any sysadmin, including Drafting Policy Documents, Communications Skills, and Time Management.
Instructors include Tom Limoncelli, co-author of The Practice of System and Network Administration and Time Management for System Administrators.
More info is here: http://lopsa.org/SysAdminDays-Pheonix
LISA '06 Call For Papers
Usenix/SAGE has announced their call-for-papers for LISA 2006.
This is the 20th Large Installation System Administration Conference. Has it really been 20 years? Wow, how time flies. This year's conference will be December 3-8, 2006 in Washington, D.C. (The deadline for paper submission is May 23, 2006).
I wrote Bill LeFebvre and told him, "Ah heck, don't do the whole 'call for papers' thing this year! You're a smart guy! Write all the papers yourself! You gots tons of ideas."
But no, he wouldn't listen to me.
He said, "Tom, that's not how the conference works. We collect papers from all over the world that real sysadmins submit. These papers describe solutions and innovations from everything from video processing to new security issues to better ways to run helpdesks. So we collect them and read them all and pick the absolute very best. Just those papers are accepted and presented at the conference." (Footnote: By now I hope you realize this conversation is fictional.)
"Bah!" I replied. "That sounds like a lot of work! The conference has been around for 20 years! Why not just pick 20 past papers and reprint them. Nobody will know the difference."
"Tom, that'd be looking at the past." Bill rebuffed. "While it's always good to remember our history, LISA is about innovation. We look for papers that are forward-looking. Attendees come back from our conference saying, 'Wow! I just saw the future! I'm going to look like a freakin' genius with the new 'vision' I have for our little IT group." (Footnote: Bill would never use the term "freakin'")
"Oh well, I guess you're right." I said. That's a much better idea!
(insert "ABC After School Special" theme song)
And that's how I learned all about the importance of submitting papers to LISA.
(Disclaimer: Bill has no idea I wrote this. Click below to read the actual "Call for Papers")
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Call for Papers
LISA '06: 20th Large Installation System Administration Conference
December 3-8, 2006, Washington, D.C., USA
http://www.usenix.org/lisa06/cfpa
Extended Abstract and Paper Submissions Deadline: May 23, 2006
Sponsored by USENIX and SAGE
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Colleague
The LISA '06 organizers invite you to contribute proposals for refereed papers, invited talks, and workshops, plus any ideas you have for Guru Is In sessions, Work-in-Progress reports, and training sessions.
The Call for Participation with submission guidelines and sample topics can be found on the USENIX Web site at http://www.usenix.org/lisa06/cfpa
The annual LISA conference is the meeting place of choice for system, network, security, and other computing administrators. Administrators of all specialties and levels of expertise meet at LISA to exchange ideas, sharpen skills, learn new techniques, debate current issues, and meet colleagues and friends.
People representing every work assignment from the full-time position at a large site to the part-time one at a small shop come to LISA from over 30 countries, bringing a variety of backgrounds and experience levels to the conference dedicated to them. System and network administrators from environments as diverse as academia, large corporations, small businesses, government organizations, and research sites find LISA to be the place to go for training, education, networking, and interacting with their peers.
The conference's diverse group of participants is matched by an equally broad spectrum of activities:
* Training sessions for both beginners and experienced attendees cover many administrative topics ranging from basic administrative procedures to using cutting-edge technologies.
* Refereed papers present the latest developments and ideas related to system and network administration.
* Invited talks and panels discuss important and timely topics and often spark lively debates and conversation.
* Work-in-progress reports (WiPs) provide brief peeks at next year's innovations.
GET INVOLVED!
* Submit a draft paper or extended abstract proposal for a refereed paper.
* Suggest an invited talk speaker.
* Share your experience by leading a Guru Is In session.
* Propose a training session topic.
* Organize or suggest a Birds-of-a-Feather (BoF) session.
* Email an idea to the chair: lisa06ideas@usenix.org
------------------------------------------------------------
IMPORTANT DATES
Extended Abstract and Paper Submissions Deadline: May 23, 2006
Invited Talks proposals due: June 1, 2006
Notification to authors: July 12 2006
Final papers due: September 12, 2006
Submission guidelines and more information can be found at
http://www.usenix.org/lisa06/cfpa
Sponsored by USENIX and SAGE
-------------------------------------------------------------
We look forward to hearing from you!
On behalf of the LISA '06 Program Committee,
William LeFebvre
lisa06chair@usenix.org
LISA Blog
David Blank-Edelman, chair of LISA2005 has created a blog so you can follow what it takes to create a conference. Check out LISA Conference Blog
LISA 2004 Report: Tuesday
Today I attended the Advanced Topics Workshop. This is a full day workshop for old timers to talk about system administration from a very high level. More and more it is becoming a management thing, because as the old timers get older, we get moved into management.
Advanced Topics Workshop -- This one-day workshop, intended for very senior administrators, provides an informal roundtable discussion of the problems facing system administrators today. Attendance is limited to 30 and based on acceptance of a position paper.
Started by John Schimmel in 1995 (?) as a "formalized hallway track" for "all the really experienced folks who show up on Tuesday before the conference and just hang around because there are no suitable tutorials," this workshop gives senior administrators a chance to meet and talk with their peers. Topics can range from difficulties hiring sysadmins to current technical problems, from managing sysadmins to exchanging notes on the latest new and interesting tools.
"An imperfect, light-weight system that people use is better than a heavy-weight system that nobody uses."
Examples:
- TWiki vs. SharePoint
- RT vs. Remedy
- SubVersion+Bugzilla vs. ClearCase
- ...
STOP THE PRESSES! I passed by two people talking about LiveJournal and when I looked at their badges I realized it was Brad (founder of LiveJournal) and Lisa (sysadmin of LiveJournal). They were prepping for Wednesday's presentation about the database/web/etc. technology of LiveJournal. I ended up talking with them for an hour or so (until about 1am). Steven walked by and joined in and we both told them a bunch of stories about how LJ has changed our lives. This was their first LISA, so we also talked about what they could expect.
That's my favorite thing about LISA and all the Usenix conferences. You meet really famous people. Well, famous in the Unix and Internet sense.
Wednesday's talk about LiveJournal was very impressive and an interesting discussion was posted on LiveJournal while they were talking about Livejournal
And the rest of the Advanced Topics Workshop? Who cares! I met Brad and Lisa!
LISA 2004 Report: Monday
Today I spent the morning working on a presentation I'm making on Friday.
In the afternoon I attended Over the Edge System Administration, Volume 1 taught by David N. Blank-Edelman. The basis of the class was to each how to abuse the sysadmin tools that you already know. His first example was setting up a printqueue in lpr (the Unix print queue system) so that the files don't get sent to a printer, but get sent to your audio device. Now you can send MP3 files to this queue and they start playing one after the next. You can even use the usual lp* commands to re-arrange the play order. If you think that was an interesting abuse of a sysadmin tool, the examples only got better (or worse, depending on how you view it). It was a great tutorial. I learned a lot and was entertained. It added a lot of new tools to my mental toolbox. I hope they repeat this tutorial next year. David N. Blank-Edelman's tutorials always seem to be winners, watch this guy in the future.
Towards the end of the talk my boss contacted me by IM and asked if I could do a quick project for her while I was at the conference. I bring this up because a lot of people can't attend week-long conferences because their boss "can't live without them for a week." It is very comforting that LISA (and most conferences) have very good connectivity to the internet (I'm told four T1s this year) and excellent WiFi coverage. Not only is WiFi available in the workshop/presentation spaces, but also the "hang out" spaces where people congregate during the day and in the evenings. Yes, there is internet access in the hotel rooms ($9.99/night) but having it ubiquitously throughout the conference really makes a big difference. Tell your boss that!
LISA2004 Report: Sunday
[ I'm going to try to blog one entry for every day at LISA 2004. ]
I arrived on Sunday. Though I'm not signed up for anything until Monday, I arrived early (2pm) on Sunday.
So if I'm not signed up for anything on Sunday, why did I arrive so early? There is a lot of useful and interesting stuff going on even if you aren't attending a tutorial or workshop. The benefit of a multi-day conference is the contacts that you make and the interaction with other attendees. There were plenty of ad hoc groups of people hanging out and chatting. I've been attending LISA for years, so there were also a lot of friends that I wanted to catch up with.
Dinner is an excellent way to spend "quality time" with the people you meet. At dinner last night we discussed everything from the new Cisco security features, to Solaris ZFS, to the finer points of various other system administration topics. I learned a lot, and many new ideas sprouted in my mind (or at least there were a lot of URLs mentioned that I found I need to check out.)
How to find a group of people for dinner if you are new to LISA? Usually people gather at the registration area around 6pm or 6:30pm to figure out what they're going to do for the evening. If you see a big group gathering, feel free to ask if you can join them. The worst that can happen is they'll say "no". Don't be offended, they might have a private party already arranged. However typically people will invite you to join along.
One of my goals this year is to try to meet a lot of new people. To that end, I'm introducing myself to random people, people I usually might not have met for one reason or another. If you are a regular attendee, I encourage you to do the same. If you are a first-time attendee introduce yourself to the people at tutorials, lunches, and so on. You'll get a lot more out of the conference.
Tomorrow: Review of DBE's tutorial on "Over The Edge System Administration".
Best. Conference. Evah: LISA
Conference Chair Lee Demon (and his committee) has done a bang-up job planning this year's LISA conference. This year's conference is November 14–19, 2004 in Atlanta,GA.
If you are a system administrator, this is the place to be. This is the kind of conference that you come home from with a million great ideas. Other conferences teach, this conference gives you vision. Early Bird Registration Deadline: October 22.
