[AUUG-Talk]: So, How was it? [Last AUUG Conference]

[Karl Auer]

On Fri, 2007-10-19 at 10:45 +1000, steve jenkin wrote:
> How was the last conference??
> 
> Anybody want to volunteer?  I couldn't make it & would like to know...

I enjoyed it. I booked as a True Believer - i.e., I had no idea what the
tutorial was going to be or what all the talks were, but booked
anyway :-)

The tutorial turned out to be an introduction to OpenBSD internals
delivered by Marshall McKusick, which was unexpected but most
educational (and quite funny), so that was a pleasant surprise :-)

Numbers were way down - there would only have been about 40
participants, which was a shame, because the talks were well up to
standard. Highlights for me were Tobias Eggendorfer talking about
quality software, Peter Gray talking about SUS (a sort of super-sudo)
and Grant Diffy talking about puppet.

The organisation could have been better - speakers were not sorted out
until far too late, which I am sure contributed to the low numbers.
However, for the constraints they had I think the organisers did pretty
well, and the venue, food etc was excellent.

The Internet connection allowed only port 80 and 443 out. Watching that
get sorted with SSH tunnels and what have you was rather like watching a
carpenters' convention dealing with a wobbly table :-)

The meeting at the end, which couldn't be an AGM for technical reasons
(proper notice not given) turned into the expected discussion of the
future of AUUG and of AUUG conferences. To everyone's surprise, it seems
that there is life in the old dog yet; time will tell.

Regards, K.

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)                   +61-2-64957160 (h)
http://www.biplane.com.au/~kauer/                  +61-428-957160 (mob)