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usenix conference policies
Birds-of-a-Feather Sessions
Lead or attend a BoF! Meet with your peers! Present new work! Don't miss these special activities designed to maximize the value of your time at the conference. The always popular evening Birds-of-a-Feather sessions are very informal gatherings of persons interested in a particular topic.
Vendor BoFs
Want to demonstrate a new product or discuss your company's latest technologies with LISA '13 attendees? Host a Vendor BoF! These sponsored one-hour sessions give companies a chance to talk about products and proprietary technology—and they include promotional benefits. Email sponsorship@usenix.org if you're interested in sponsoring a Vendor BoF. Click here for more information about sponsorship opportunities. The number of Vendor BoF's per time slot are limited, so reserve early.
Scheduling a BoF
To schedule a BoF, simply write the BoF title as well as your name and affiliation on one of the BoF Boards located in the registration area. If you have a description of your BoF you'd like posted on this Web page, please schedule your BoF on the BoF board, then send its title, the organizer's name and affiliation, and the date, time, and location of the BoF to bofs@usenix.org with "LISA '13 BoF" in the subject line.
BoF Schedule
| Tuesday, November 5, 2013 | |||||
|
ROOM |
# of seats |
7:00 p.m.–8:00 p.m. | 8:00 p.m.–9:00 p.m. | 9:00 p.m.–10:00 p.m. | 10:00 p.m.–11:00 p.m. |
| Wilson C | 80 | Cambridge Computer Vendor Beer and Ice Cream Social | Cloudera Vendor BoF - Hadoop 101 |
LGBT Issues |
|
| Harding | 50 | Summit for Educators in System Administration (SESA) |
CAcert BoF |
GPG BoF |
|
| Thursday, November 7, 2013 | ||||
|
ROOM |
# of seats |
8:00 p.m.– 9:00 p.m. |
9:00 p.m.– 10:00 p.m. |
10:00 p.m.– 11:00 p.m. |
| Lincoln 3 | 100 |
Reserved |
Google Vendor BoF |
|
| Lincoln 4 | 100 | VMware NFS Vendor BoF |
||
| Hoover | 50 | Gluster Vendor BoF - GlusterFS: What's New in 3.4 and How GlusterFS Makes Life Easier for Admins |
Systems Administration - From Occupation to Professional |
Small Infrastructures BoF |
| Thurgood Marshall Northwest | 250 | Women in Advanced Computing (WiAC) BoF |
Disability Issues (If not here, then where?) |
|
| Thurgood Marshall Southeast | 250 | Raspberry Pi |
||
BoF Descriptions
Cambridge Computer Beer and Ice Cream Social
Tuesday, November 5, 7:00 – 9:00 p.m., Wilson C
Summit for Educators in System Administration
Tuesday, November 5, 7:00 – 8:00 p.m., Harding
Bcfg2
Chris St. Pierre, Amplify & Narayan Desai, Argonne National Laboratory
Tuesday, November 5, 8:00 – 9:00 p.m., Harding
Cloudera Vendor BoF - Hadoop 101
Michael Ridley, Cloudera
Tuesday, November 5, 9:00 – 10:00 p.m., Wilson C
CAcert BoF
Scott Murphy, Arrow-Eye Consulting
Tuesday, November 5, 9:00 – 10:00 p.m., Harding
The goal of this event is to inform attendees how the CAcert assurance process works. CAcert has developed new policies and procedures over the last several years. The presentation will introduce the CAcert Community Agreement and describe the audit as it relates to getting our CAcert ROOT certificate included with distributions. The primary purpose is to bring together qualified assurers in order to help those interested in attaining the points needed to start assuring others. By helping new assurers qualify, we will help make CAcert free digital certificates available to more people.
For a more details, I recommend that you review the complete event description on the CAcert Wiki site. There are instructions there for preparations you can accomplish in advance of the BoF session. Make sure you bring more than one government issued photo ID to the event.
If you are a qualified CAcert Assurer, please consider attending this session and helping us get a pool of new assurers started with their first 100 points. Please contact Scott Murphy to discuss your availability.
GPG BoF
Scott Murphy, Arrow-Eye Consulting
Tuesday, November 5, 10:00 – 11:00 p.m., Harding
There has been a key signing BOF at many of the LISA conferences in the past. Those of you attending this GPG key signing BOF might also be interested in the CAcert BoF starting at 9:00 p.m. in the same room.
If you are interested in attending this meeting, please e-mail your key to me. I will add your key to a keyring specific to this event. I will use this keyring to generate the key/fingerprint list we will use at the keysigning.
For more information on Key Signing Parties, I recommend the "GnuPG Keysigning Party HOWTO" document. Our format will follow the suggestions there, specifically the List Based party format. I will bring a printout of the submitted keys. Please submit your keys at least 12 hours in advance of the party to ensure your key fingerprint is on the list.
Please bring multiple forms of ID, at least one being a photo ID. Other attendees (such as those coming from other countries) may not be familiar with the format of your ID. By having multiple IDs, you should have at least one that others will find acceptable. I'm bringing my passport, my Ontario Drivers License and my day job photo ID card.
PLEASE NOTE: If you don't submit your key in advance, we will have to go through the awkward process of you reading your key aloud so that everyone attending can write down your fingerprint. This can be a bother and not everyone may be willing to go to that extra effort. Please submit your key in advance or bring some handout with your Key ID and the key fingerprint. Printing this info on the back of business cards is probably acceptable. We will complete authentication of keys submitted in advance before we do any "walk-in" keys.
OpenStack Vendor BoF - The Sounds of OpenStack Havana
Kathy Cacciatore, OpenStack Foundation
Wednesday, November 6, 7:30 – 8:30 p.m., Wilson ABC
Key new features of Havana, the eighth release of OpenStack cloud software offered on October 17, will be introduced. Please join us for laid-back repartee with representatives of the OpenStack technical community to discuss use cases. Bring your questions and opinions on how to get started, the community culture, and from the OpenStack Lab earlier in the day. The enthusiastic OpenStack community welcomes everyone to participate!
Puppet Labs Vendor BoF
Wednesday, November 6, 7:30 – 8:30 p.m., Lincoln 3
Fedora Vendor BoF - The Packaging Problem: How Software Collections and Fedora are Handling it
Wednesday, November 6, 7:30 – 8:30 p.m., Lincoln 4
Packaging software has never been easy, but it's harder than ever for a one-sized fits all approach to address real-world problems with installing and managing software from many different upstream providers.
We will talk about how Software Collections and Fedora will try to solve some of these problems, and would also like to hear from admins and developers what pain points they have and how they view these solutions.
Red Hat System Administrators BoF
Joshua Jensen
Wednesday, November 6, 8:30 – 9:30 p.m., Thurgood Marshall North
Join the informal meeting for those of us interested in, or currently using Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Come with questions, experiences, and needed solutions to share with fellow attendees.
LOPSA Annual Meeting and Town Hall BoF
Ski Kacoroski, LOPSA
Wednesday, November 6, 7:30 – 8:30 p.m., Thurgood Marshall West
Join us for the League of Professional System Administrators (LOPSA) Annual Meeting and Town Hall to meet fellow system administrators, hear the latest news about LOPSA, and ask questions or give feedback about our profession or LOPSA itself.
Release Engineering - The Next Frontier BoF
Dinah McNutt, Google, Inc.
Wednesday, November 6, 7:30 – 8:30 p.m., Thurgood Marshall East
Get together for LISA attendees interested in Releng. Get a sneak peak at the 2014 USENIX Summit on Release Engineering.
Your Career on OpenStack
Kathy Cacciatore, OpenStack Foundation
Wednesday, November 6, 8:30 – 9:30 p.m., Wilson ABC
Simplyhired.com reports an 87% growth in OpenStack job postings. OpenStack cloud engineers garner 36% higher salaries as compared to other Cloud Engineers according to indeed.com. Visit this BoF for a brief presentation on how you can take advantage of these trends, followed by conversation with current OpenStack engineers and hiring companies. Let's discuss jobs, but also skills and how to grow your strengths with the hottest technologies around today. Make a name for yourself inside and outside the vibrant 12,000+ person community!
Open @ Citrix Vendor BoF - Cloud Operations
Wednesday, November 6, 8:30 – 9:30 p.m., Lincoln 3
Operations on bare metal or in the cloud requires rigor in the process. As our infrastructure becomes more virtualized and distributed we need to adapt our processes to account for these changes. Tools that allow us to bridge our existing data centers and the cloud are critical as are the processes that give us the flexibility to handle this evolution. This BoF will discuss tools and operational practices that allow administrators to adapt to the evolving use of cloud computing in their infrastructure and the management of these services. Administrators and cloud computing solution developers will share their views on how to best address these changes.
CFEngine Vendor BoF - Fireside Chat with CFEngine Luminaries
Mark Burgess and Diego Zamboni, CFEngine
Wednesday, November 6, 8:30 – 9:30 p.m., Lincoln 4
Join us for an open discussion with S'Mores and drinks by the fire about uncertainty in infrastructure as well as more down-to-earth subjects such as writing Design Center sketches using Sketchify and using CFEngine for continuous deployment. It is a great opportunity to make your voice heard by CFEngine insiders.
LOPSA Mentorship BoF
John Boris, LOPSA
Wednesday, November 6, 8:30 – 9:30 p.m., Thurgood Marshall West
Stay with us after the LOPSA Annual Meeting and Town Hall BoF to learn about the LOPSA Mentorship Program. Discover how you can actively improve the professional lives of other system administrators as well as your own, and hear from some of the current mentors and coordinators about their experiences. We'll also be raffling off some fantastic prizes donated by our generous sponsors at the end of the evening. And if you miss us at the BoF, stop by the LOPSA table at LISA to ask about joining the program!
Pythian Vendor BoF - The Responsibility of Root
Chris Stankaitis, Bill Fraser & Paul Vallée, Pythian
Wednesday, November 6, 8:30 – 9:30 p.m., Thurgood Marshall South
Systems Administrators often hold the “keys to the kingdom”. In a data driven world every IT asset has the potential to have multiple privileged accounts, which can introduce risk to your business and your data. From the SuperUser to the Database Admin to the Application Owner, each day numerous people are accessing critical infrastructure, often times using a shared account which makes it nearly impossible to determine which individual actually performed any given task.
Please join Pythian in a discussion of the risk, rewards, and challenges of privileged access management, and the overall responsibility of "root".
SaltStack Vendor BoF - SaltStack for real-time infrastructure automation and application stack configuration management
Wednesday, November 6, 8:30 – 9:30 p.m., Thurgood Marshall East
SaltStack takes a new approach to infrastructure management by developing software that is easy enough to get running in minutes, scalable enough to manage tens of thousands of servers, and fast enough to communicate with them in seconds. SaltStack delivers a dynamic infrastructure communication bus used for orchestration, remote execution, configuration management and much more. The Salt open source project was launched in 2011 and today is the fastest-growing, most-active configuration management / systems management project in the world. SaltStack is the company responsible for keeping the Salt project healthy and dynamic and was incorporated in 2012. Salt remains 100% open.
Oracle Vendor BoF - Oracle Solaris Engineering
Wednesday, November 6, 9:30 – 10:30 p.m., Wilson ABC
Zenoss Vendor BoF
Wednesday, November 6, 9:30 – 10:30 p.m., Lincoln 3
Globally Deploying Citrix VDI, A Survivor's Story
Michael Martin, SearchNetworking, SearchSdn, TechTarget
Wednesday, November 6, 9:30 – 10:30 p.m., Lincoln 4
Share Experiences and knowledge gained during a global Citrix based VDI implementation.
PostgreSQL (System) Administrators BoF
Stephen Frost
Wednesday, November 6, 9:30 – 10:30 p.m., Thurgood Marshall South
Informal meeting for anyone interested in, or already running, PostgreSQL installations. Hosted by Stephen Frost, a PostgreSQL Major Contributor and Committer. Bring your questions and experiences and we'll discuss where PG is going and how our community is growing by leaps and bounds!
Assimilation Project - Providing Zero-Network-Footprint IT Discovery Integrated with Highly Scalable Monitoring
Alan Robertson, Assimilation Project Founder
Wednesday, November 6, 9:30 – 10:30 p.m., Thurgood Marshall East
The Assimilation Project is a ground-breaking open source system management project which integrates infrastructure discovery with extreme-scale monitoring. This discovery cannot set off network security alarms, and the monitoring naturally scales into the hundreds of thousands of systems. All the data is stored in a Neo4j graph database - providing opportunities for straightforward insightful visualizations.
Cards Against Humanity BoF
Derek Balling
Wednesday, November 6, 10:30 – 11:30 p.m., Lincoln 3
VMware NFS Vendor BoF
Thursday, November 7, 8:00 – 9:00 p.m., Lincoln 4
Based on articles such as this one by Howard Marks in Network Computing, VMware would like to hear from you about your experiences with NFS client in vSphere ESX. Air any concerns you have with performance and security and join a discussion on how technologies such as NFSv4.1, Kerberos, pNFS, or others may be able to help.
Gluster Vendor BoF - GlusterFS: What's New in 3.4 and How GlusterFS Makes Life Easier for Admins
Thursday, November 7, 8:00 – 9:00 p.m., Hoover
GlusterFS is a popular, software-only distributed storage system and the lynchpin of the Gluster community. Every day, more users and developers come to appreciate the simplicity, ease of use, and flexibilty of scale-out storage, GlusterFS style. In this talk, attendees will learn about the project's history, what's new in the latest release (version 3.4) and what's new in the project roadmap for the 3.5 release, the community's governance structure and the developer toolset available on Gluster.org.
GlusterFS 3.4 was recently released. One of the major features of this release is the QEMU integration and block device translator. This will significantly increase the scope of possible use cases for GlusterFS. With the QEMU integration, we’re bypassing FUSE and going through a new client library, libgfapi.
In addition to the QEMU integration, other features found in 3.4:
* WORM (write once read many)
* Operating version for glusterd
* Block device translator
* Duplicate Request Cache
* Server Quorum
* libgfapi
* NFSv3 ACL support
Women in Advanced Computing (WiAC) BoF
Carolyn Rowland; Nicole Forsgren Velasquez, Utah State University; Rikki Endsley, The USENIX Association
Thursday, November 7, 8:00 – 9:00 p.m., Thurgood Marshall Northwest
We encourage both women and men who are interested in advancing women in system administration to attend. We would love to hear about the current state of women in the sysadmin profession and how to combat any issues we may currently face.
Google Vendor BoF
Thursday, November 7, 9:00 – 11:00 p.m., Lincoln 3
Systems Administration - From Occupation to Professional
Will Dennis, LOPSA Member
Thursday, November 7, 9:00 – 10:00 p.m., Hoover
A discussion on what professionalization (the act of a person becoming professional) would look like for the field of Systems Administration (*Ops, etc) and what steps LOPSA/LISA could take to support this.
Small Infrastructures BoF
Matt Simmons
Thursday, November 7, 10:00 – 11:00 p.m., Hoover
Come to an open discussion of the problems facing small infrastructure administrators, share your experiences and learn from people dealing the same things you do. All experiences welcome - "small infrastructure" is defined by whatever metric you use.
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