What can we expect from LISA'10?

Rudi van Drunen is the LISA'10 program chair, and it was my pleasure to interview him for the USENIX Blog readers, and to try to understand what challenges the organizers are facing when putting on such a huge event as LISA'10.

Marius Ducea: Rudi, could you please introduce yourself, and give us some details on your background, and how you got involved with LISA?
Rudi van Drunen: Sure. I'm the CTO of Competa IT, a medium size consulting company here in Netherlands, where we design, implement and maintain large IT infrastructures. I'm also the owner of my small consulting company: Xlexit Technology. As for my background, originally I was a hardware guy, but during university I become interested in Unix and open source. My first LISA was in 1998, and after that I got more and more involved with USENIX, doing invited tech talks, presenting and teaching, and in general trying to help with anything I could. This year I've been given the biggest challenge so far in being the program chair for LISA'10.

MD: Can you explain some of the responsibilities of the program chair?
RvD: As program chair you are the head of the program committee; the program chair builds the program, picks the keynotes and with its committee selects the papers that are going to be presented at the conference. USENIX staff does all the hard work to actually run the conference, and this is great, as it lets the program chair focus on building the program. Of course you get all the help and support from USENIX staff with any logistics you might need.

MD: LISA is a huge conference. Can you share with us some of the challenges the organizers have putting on such an event?
RvD: as I mentioned, USENIX staff do most of the work in setting up the conference. LISA being one of the largest conferences, normally 900+ attendees, here everything needs to be perfect; everything needs to be organized and in place. I would say that one of the biggest challenges the organizers have is finding the proper venue that can accommodate all the attendees, and setup the logistics needed for the conference. This is very complex, and it is far more than making a few phone calls :). For example, we have 48 tutorials over the course of the conference, and this results in many rooms to be organized and prepared for the trainings. One other challenge is setting up a good wireless internet connection at the hotel for all the attendees. With so many people concentrated in a single place this is not always so simple.

MD: You mentioned that it is a challenge to find a good venue for such an event; I'm curious; how is the city hosting LISA chosen?
RvD: Well, there is some magic involved there. Of course there is the East of Mississippi, West of Mississippi rule: one year on the East, and the other on the West; for example last year we had Baltimore for LISA, and now we have San Jose. When choosing a city we are looking at a place that has an active USENIX community. We would like to have as many people as possible from the local area come to the conference as this will be more economical for them, as they don't have to travel or have hotel expenses. So it is important to have a large user base in the area, like we have in the Bay Area for example. Also it is important to find a good and economical venue for our attendees. I mean, there are definitely some great hotels in San Francisco, but they are so expensive, and we need to keep this in mind when choosing the venue to be as affordable as possible for everyone that we hope to have in the hotel. We would like to have everyone in the conference hotel because this creates great networking opportunities during every conference day, but also during the evenings, at the bar and so on.

MD: How does LISA'10 compare with past LISA conferences? bigger? better?
RvD: Of course we don't have yet a number on the attendees, but I hope that we can at least top Baltimore. Actually, I hope we are going to do much better this year now that economy is picking up a little. Maybe there is more room for companies sending their staff for professional training at LISA. We have a large number of tutorials and workshops and also very interesting tech sessions.

MD: Can you please explain what is the difference between a workshop and a tutorial?
RvD: Sure. A tutorial is like a vendor independent course; it is half day or full day, mostly one way traffic where the presenter explains its material to the attendees; while a workshop is far more interactive. You have more two way traffic and open discussions, where the presenter will normally have some slides just to guide the discussion.

MD: What do you think attendees can expect to get from LISA?
RvD: Depends on what they are looking for… If you have a technical problem, you can probably find someone at LISA, not necessarily from the speakers, but from the other attendees in the lobby, that will be willing to help you fix the issue. If you are looking for technical training that is not vendor driven, you can definitely find this from gurus in the respective field. You can also connect with other system administrators and from this point of view LISA is a great opportunity also. The LISA vendor show has tech people that you can ask tech questions; no sales people, just support people ready to respond to your hardware or software questions. In the end in my experience you will always take home something you never thought, after a week with all the gurus in the field.

MD: Rudi, again thank you so much for taking the time to do this interview for our readers. I know you are very busy, and we appreciate it.
RvD: My pleasure.