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Interview with Invited Talk Coordinator Amy Rich
Submitted by Matt Simmons on October 13, 2010 - 2:18 pm
As part of the effort in blogging about the LISA conference, we want to show you what it's like to attend the largest conference for and by system administrators in the world, but also what it's like to run a conference like that.
As Marius Ducea's interview with Rudi van Drunen brought to light, it takes a lot of people to put on a show like LISA. Today, we hear from one of the people responsible for an important piece in the puzzle. Amy Rich is in her second year as an Invited Talks (IT) coordinator. It's her and her colleagues' job to determine the content of the Invited Talks tracks.
I was curious how this all happened, so I talked Amy into an interview. She was kind enough to give me some of her time to answer my questions.
Matt Simmons: What are "Invited Talks", and how do they differ from the other tracks in the technical sessions?
Amy Rich: The Invited Talks are hour long presentations on a single topic of interest to system administrators. They can run the gamut on number of presenters,
subject matter, technical depth, and tone. The Invited Talks Committee accepts proposals for presentations, but, unlike most other portions of the technical sessions track, also works to solicit specific speakers from the global system and network administration community.
MS: What kinds of things do you look for in potential presenters? Is it the person or the technologies that make you interested?
AR: Our profession changes rapidly, so there's never a shortage of interesting or pertinent topics. Our job on the committee is to try to find the intersection
of the interesting topics and fabulous speakers. Some of my personal selections have been driven by the charisma of the presenter, the company the presenter works for, or a specific topic. Sometimes the ITs we choose are very technically in-depth, and sometimes they're geared more towards historical perspectives or soft skills. When we solicit people to speak, we're trying to balance predicting the next big thing in our field, discussing a current hot topic, and covering a topic that's important to our field but may not necessarily be sexy.
MS: This is your second year being on this committee. How does that change your perspective when evaluating possible topics and presentations?
AR: Participation on the IT committee is usually a two year volunteer commitment. This ensures the involvement of at least one person with conference experience and one with a fresh perspective. As a general rule, I think any volunteer's individual experiences will differ depending on the mix of personalities and background of the current IT committee.
In my case, I tend to be very focused on organization, so I spent the first year learning the ropes and was more likely to rely on the guidance of folks with more experience when it came to recommending ITs. In the second year I had a solid working relationship with the USENIX staff, knew the seasoned conference veterans better, and had a good understanding of the administrative requirements. With those details taken care of and some experience under my belt, I felt more comfortable taking the lead on suggesting speakers and topics.
When it comes to evaluating the talks, I've come to put more weight on the ability of the speaker to connect with the audience. Topics that may seem less interesting on paper but have fabulous presenters might garner more positive response from the conference attendees than great topics presented by less dynamic speakers. It's also important to consider the wide range of interests and skill levels of the conference attendees when choosing and scheduling talks.
MS: What were your favorite invited talks from the past few LISA conferences?
AR: As a general rule, I most enjoy things that deal with large data sets: scientific discovery data, SFX and animation, data mining and correlation, etc. Not only are the end results of projects themselves fascinating to someone who likes to know how things work, but the scale of operations is awe inspiring.
I had a fantastic time learning and laughing in Bryan Cantrill's Visualizing DTrace: Sun Storage 7000 Analytics and Elizabeth Zwicky's Searching for Truth, or at Least Data: How to Be an Empiricist Skeptic talks last year. I also really enjoyed Keith Scott's Delay/Disruption Tolerant Networking presentation because I'm a big space geek.
My favorites for LISA '08 included Sean Dennehy's Implementing Intellipedia Within a "Need to Know" Culture talk for it's behind the scenes look into how the government handles intel and David Wagner's The State of Electronic Voting, 2008 for it's frightening statistics and war stories. Getting to see how PDI/Dreamworks makes animated films was also a treat.
MS: There are twenty invited talks this year. Can you pick a couple, and describe what originally appealed to you and the rest of the committee about the concept?
AR: The talk that sets the tone for the technical sessions portion of the conference is the Wednesday morning keynote. The committee tries to choose a
topic that generates significant interest and draws in the entire community. Whether you anticipate the scientific data that's expected to come from the experiments, are amazed at the infrastructure that it takes to run the project, or are afraid the Earth will be sucked into a black hole, you've heard about CERN and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Tony Cass spoke at LISA before the LHC was operational, so this is an excellent opportunity to check back and see how the theory and planning that went into building the LHC computing infrastructure has held up to real world use.
Social media sites are another hot topic this year made even more popular by the recent release of the movie The Social Network. We have two talks, one from John Adams at Twitter and one from Robert Johnson at Facebook, that deal with the massive scaling issues and technology innovations needed to keep pace with fluctuating user demand on a global level.
MS: What topic do you most wish that someone would have presented, but didn't?
AR: After the 2008 presidential elections we discussed bringing in someone to talk about President Obama's new information technology initiatives and policies. Unfortunately arranging a talk months in advance with someone in a government position significantly high enough to have the necessary insight is difficult since they also have constantly changing schedules and demands. In the end, we couldn't find the right person who could commit to giving the talk.
MS: How do you see the future of system administration progressing, judging from the topics that were presented as potential invited talks?
AR: Based on the submissions we received, one thing is abundantly clear; computing is a ubiquitous part of every day life. Whether you're talking about deploying IPv6 because of address starvation, legal issues surrounding data you store in the cloud, massive computational projects, or keeping up with your friends on twitter or Facebook, the world of computing that we support has exploded into a global information store and a way for people to connect with each other in near real time. There's a constant need for additional computing power which drives our industry to build things quicker, physically smaller, and cheaper while increasing robustness.
MS: Do you have any advice to people who might want to give an invited talk next year?
AR: Typical advice like clearly defining your idea and submitting it early aside... If you have a phenomenal idea for an invited talk, one of the best things you can do is present it before an audience, perhaps a local user group, record it, and put it up where the IT coordinators can watch it. Not only does this give us a good idea of the material you want to discuss, but it also shows us your presentation style and how you interact with your audience. In addition, some of the best talks we've solicited have been suggested by community members who've seen the speaker at a venue outside of LISA.
Amy also had this to say:
Helping to organize LISA has been a tremendous way to give back to the
invaluable community built by USENIX, SAGE, and LOPSA. My thanks to all of
the people that make the conference a success, from the staff to the
volunteers, instructors, presenters, and attendees. It's been a pleasure to
share the view from my small corner of the organizing effort with you.
Amy, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to answer these question. I'm really looking forward to the Invited Talk sessions.