[buug] conferences, publications, associations, _Computer-Related Risks_, etc. (follow-up from the BUUG 2005-07-21 meeting)
Jon Phillips
jon at rejon.org
Fri Jul 22 17:26:07 PDT 2005
Cool...thanks for the nice list!
Jon
On Fri, 2005-07-22 at 03:08 -0700, Michael Paoli wrote:
> conferences, publications, associations, _Computer-Related Risks_, etc.
> (follow-up from the BUUG 2005-07-21 meeting)
>
> The BALE -- Bay Area Linux Events
> http://linuxmafia.com/bale/
>
> I *strongly* recommend this for all persons in software, programming,
> or computer related professions, related hardware/design/management
> and/or management of any of those areas thereof. Also recommended in
> general for any engineering/nuclear/power/electrical/electronics realms
> and risks, risk prevention and analysis in general also, and most any
> areas dependent upon or significantly impacted by any of those
> technologies:
> _Computer-Related Risks_
> http://www.csl.sri.com/users/neumann/neumann.html#4
>
> Illustrative Risks to the Public in the Use of Computer Systems and Related
> Technology
> This list is supurb, and terse/concise (but long) reading with
> references (one line per incident, 620,612 bytes total, wc gives me about:
> 16820 97762 627204, on the text, not including URL references). It is
> probably much more valuable to read after reading _Computer-Related
> Risks_, and makes an excellent supplement to _Computer-Related Risks_ Be
> sure to have handy and/or familiarize one's self first with the
> "Descriptor Symbols" key towards the start of that list when reading
> through the list.
> http://www.csl.sri.com/users/neumann/illustrative.html
>
> ... and closely related to _Computer-Related Risks_:
> the Risks Forum:
> http://www.csl.sri.com/users/neumann/neumann.html#3
>
> BugTraq:
> http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1
>
> UNIX Review:
> http://www.unixreview.com/
>
> And the next Bay Area Debian (BAD) meeting and such:
> http://bad.debian.net/list/2005-July/002951.html
> http://bad.debian.net/list/2005-July/002952.html
>
> Oh, and LinuxWorld and Expo vendors (and .org pavilion exhibitors), and
> Birds-of-a-Feather Meetings, etc.:
> http://www.linuxworldexpo.com/
> http://www.linuxworldexpo.com/live/12/events/12SFO05A
> http://www.linuxworldexpo.com/live/12/events/12SFO05A/conference/special
>
> And a bunch more stuff and details (references towards the end) from
> some materials I prepared a while back (~2003-11-10, was with a slant
> towards being a set of related tips regarding doing job searches and
> such). References (URLs) are towards the bottom - appologies if there
> may be some link rot in there, but most of the URLs should still be
> correct and reasonably current (and if not that, probably findable via
> Google or such).
>
> (Technical and other): Conferences/Expositions, Publications, Associations,
> etc.
>
> I'll attempt to cover these items from more/most general, to more
> specific (towards technical/UNIX/LINUX and related).
>
> One thing that may be of interest regarding conferences and such, is
> these tend to generally include exhibitions (some of them seem more
> exhibition oriented than conference oriented), and for most of them,
> one can register for the exhibition portions of the events for free
> (typically on-line, or sometimes via a mail-in form), and often in
> particular ahead of some early registration or mail-in/on-line
> registration cutoff deadline. Even if one has no intention to
> physically attend the event, registering for such free exhibition
> stuff can be quite useful (sometimes also includes some useful free
> hardcopy publication subscription), can get one
> information/leads/information on vendors, advertisers, sponsors, etc.
> Note that with such registrations, one may want to explicitly "opt
> out" of most of the e-mail option stuff (to avoid having some, many,
> or most all of the vendors sending e-mail items and/or passing your
> e-mail address on to their "partners", etc.). Also, many of the major
> exhibitions/conferences often come to San Francisco (typically Moscone
> Convention Center - I'd guestimate probably somewhere from 30 to 60%
> of the time, on average) - or other locations in the San Francisco Bay
> Area that may be reasonably convenient. If one can get to the
> exhibition, that can be rather/quite useful - if nothing else, picking
> up program guide (and addendum/update/errata) can be quite useful
> (advertisers, directory of vendors/exhibitors - often also including
> categorized listings). In addition to that, "working" the exhibition
> floor (for information, contacts, leads, general networking, etc.) can
> be quite useful/informative. If one does go to an exhibition to "work"
> the floor, having advance listing of vendors/exhibitors and having
> researched where one wants to concentrate one's time/focus may be
> advantageous (but it may not always be easy or possible to get
> vendor/exhibitor listing in advance).
>
> Advertisers/Exhibitors/Sponsors. Noting who is (and isn't) exhibiting,
> selling, advertising, sponsoring, (and relative sizes of these
> things), etc. can provide useful insight into who's got products to
> sell, who may be expanding/shrinking (compare earlier
> events/publications), who has larger/major $$ for large sponsorships
> or key advertising positions, "flavor" of what the
> company/organization is/isn't "pushing", etc. Note not only general,
> but also "classified" or "marketplace" advertising in publications may
> be of interest (e.g. specific job leads, potential networking
> leads/pointers, etc.). Also, quick skim of various materials may help
> with "feel" for news/growth/"hot" areas.
>
> [1]Information Week (relatively general, Information Technology) -
> Weekly hardcopy and on-line publication, free hardcopy with qualified
> subscription form (fill out form with typical "magic" / "good enough"
> numbers, and one gets it for free - typically using liberal numbers of
> logical OR of anything and everything one and/or one's company (or
> last 12 months of employment) that one has touched or been associated
> with will qualify one for most all of the publications I mention).
> Once upon a time I used to really enjoy getting and reading UNIX Today
> (despite the name, it was a hardcopy weekly) ... but that became Open
> Systems Today and was eventually subsumed into [2]Information Week. I
> used to enjoy [3]Information Week more - particularly when it was more
> technically oriented (such as just after it subsumed Open Systems
> Today) ... nowadays it's much more higher-level / business oriented,
> but it's still generally a pretty useful/informative read - or at
> least skim. This is one of the few freebie hardcopies I actually
> bothered to (re)subscribe to and am currently getting.
>
> [4]CIO Magazine (as in Chief Information Officer) I haven't looked at
> this one a whole lot, but when I have it always seemed at least fairly
> interesting to me. I believe it's significantly more high-level
> "business" oriented, though it is IT focused. I'm not sure if much or
> all of it might also be available on-line for free. Hardcopy
> subscription is free with qualified subscription form ... but the
> "magic numbers" might be trickier on that form - I'm pretty sure I
> tried at least once, and perhaps twice, and didn't get free hardcopy
> subscription (probably the only free with qualification form
> subscription I didn't actually get via such a form).
>
> [5]WITI - Women In Technology International was mentioned in the
> 2003-11-03 meeting.
>
> That also reminded me of Systers: [6]Systers - an informal
> organization for technical women in computing that began in 1987 as a
> small mailing list for women in "systems", thus the name Systers
>
> [7]Computer Technology Review - I used to really enjoy reading this
> :-) ... last I had (free with qualified form) hardcopy subscription,
> it was a monthly ("newspaper" format), with a glossy quarterly also.
> Definitely nerdly/scientific/technical (I fit somewhere in there), but
> it's a really good publication to get a nice sense of where the
> technology is likely to be heading in the 2 to 5 year time frame (plus
> also what's current production state-of-the-art). It tends to be more
> hardware oriented than software, but does reasonably cover
> important/critical software technology also. I believe it's also
> available on-line.
>
> [8]Sys Admin (mostly focused on/towards UNIX (and LINUX) Systems
> Administration) Hardcopy, not horribly expensive, may also have stuff
> (partially) on-line too (likely a feature/sample article, older
> issues, advertisers, etc.) I've been a long-time subscriber of this,
> but it is pretty much technically oriented. Also, *some* (free!)
> exposition registration(s) can get one a free hardcopy subscription (I
> think for one year). I believe I got a free year's subscription via
> [9]LISA conference and/or exposition registration (see [10]LISA
> reference(s) further below).
>
> [11]Slashdot - on-line only, and absolutely, definitely very
> technically/nerdly oriented ("News for nerds, stuff that matters"),
> however, it's an excellent resource for a few more general purposes in
> the IT (and to a lesser extent, scientific in general) realm: keep eye
> on advertisers, most of the commentary on articles is from a bunch of
> self-selecting nerds (good for feel of pulse, more technical
> references/discussion, but not much else), however the main articles
> often contain links to other sources that may be more generally
> interesting/useful. What I'd guess might be most/more generally useful
> on slashdot would be quick skim glance at advertisers, and skim over
> article headlines and lead text (all of which can be seen on a single
> not-too-huge web page), and then follow-up from there if/where
> something seems useful (otherwise go on to other resources). At any
> given time one goes to slashdot, one will just see stuff from the last
> 24 hours on that main web page, but one can read/skim backwards - over
> on the right there's a heading which says "Older Stuff" - select the
> link that corresponds to yesterday, and one gets quite similar web
> page for yesterday. This can be repeated recursively to effectively
> peruse backwards (relatively) indefinitely.
>
> [12]USENIX - The Advanced Computing Systems Association / [13]SAGE -
> The System Administrators GuildE (okay, so it appears they may have
> tweaked the SAGE motto, but that's where the name comes from
> historically) - Historically, SAGE was part of USENIX. Though I
> believe they're now technically separate, I tend to still think of
> them as tightly intertwined, and for most practical purposes, that
> probably is and will remain to be the case. These associations tend to
> be more - but not exclusively - technically oriented. Membership is
> (semi-)"moderately" priced - <~= $150.00 USD to cover both USENIX and
> SAGE. Membership does include subscription to [14];login: I believe
> it's monthly, or approximately monthly hardcopy. Without membership,
> one can still get to [15]issues of ;login: more than one year old
> on-line. I believe ;login: carries no advertising. It tends to be more
> technically oriented than not, but is by no means exclusively
> technically oriented (perhaps peruse/skim some older on-line issues to
> get a rough feel for it), and may cover a fair number of more general
> IT issues/areas. Some other USENIX/SAGE resources (with or without
> membership) might also be of potentially more interest. USENIX/SAGE
> puts on a great conference - LISA (Large Installations Systems
> Administration) ([16]LISA '03 [17]LISA '04) - which also includes a
> smallish (but very high quality) exhibition. I've been to two LISA
> conferences - they're great. They tend to approximately alternate
> between San Diego and some other location in the US. I also registered
> for the '03 exhibition portion - even though I wasn't planning to
> attend (though I was still seriously considering going to the
> conference on my own $$ this year; of the two times I went before,
> once I went entirely on my own $$ because my employer was too
> shortsighted (they almost entirely prohibited attendance of anything
> that contained the word "conference") to send me and I didn't want
> that to interfere that much with my career growth). One other great
> USENIX/SAGE resource are the annual [18]SAGE Salary Surveys. They have
> tons of good well analyzed information (far from being just a salary
> survey). If you're a non-member, you can look at the ones over one
> year old. The most recent one was actually a combined effort and also
> is available on-line without needing to be a member: [19]2002
> SAGE/SANS/BigAdmin Annual Salary Survey. Might be useful for looking
> at trends and such (e.g. growth areas by (sub-)sector or geography,
> etc.). I've been a member of USENIX and SAGE more often than not for
> at least the past 6 years. Oh, ... not to forget, USENIX also does
> various other conferences and also often has training events at other
> conferences (e.g. LinuxWorld): [20]USENIX Events Calendar
>
> [21]SANS SANS is particularly great in the (IT and related physical)
> security realm. Though I haven't been to a SANS conference yet, what
> I've heard about their conferences, and what I've generally seen and
> know of SANS is excellent. It's certainly a conference that I would be
> very interested in attending. I'm not sure what, if anything, they may
> have in the way of hardcopy periodicals.
>
> [22]LinuxWorld - Conferences, expositions, etc. I think about every
> other LinuxWorld conference/exposition event is in San Francisco. From
> what I've heard, the events post-dot-com-fizzle aren't as big as they
> were at their peak, but they're still very respectably sized (I'm
> guestimating >=60% of prior peak size). When I went this year, they
> had Moscone North pretty well filled - not totally, and not bursting
> at the seams, but certainly well filled up most of the available
> space. Oh, they recently also created their own [23]LinuxWorld
> Magazine - it's definitely available as hardcopy (I don't think it's
> available in hardcopy for free), ... it's also available on-line (both
> browseable web pages, or as a largeish downloadable PDF to cover an
> entire issue). I haven't particularly read it yet, but at quick glance
> it seems like a decent publication. I'd guestimate it to be more
> "business" oriented than the many other LINUX magazines (which are
> mostly LINUX "user" oriented). Also, for glancing over LINUX
> magazines, this may be a useful starting point: [24]Google Directory:
> ... LINUX Magazines and E-zines.
>
> [25]Atlanta Linux Showcase / Annual Linux Showcase (ALS) -
> Unfortunately this one seriously fizzled after 2001 :-( Might want to
> give the web site a peek about every 6 months or so, just to see if it
> ever comes back to life. There might be some older materials available
> there, but I'd guestimate they may be getting a bit too dated to be
> particularly useful for "market" type information. I think most of
> what used to be covered under ALS shifted over into the realm of
> LinuxWorld and/or USENIX/SAGE/LISA (and/or SANS, etc.). First and only
> time I went to ALS was 2001 - it had its first change of venue at that
> time (to Oakland) - unfortunately it was not only into the
> dot-com-fizzle, but less than two months post 2001-09-11, and it ended
> up quite sparsely attended (vendors/exhibitors seemed to have about a
> 20 to 30% cancellation rate, attendance seemed to be a meager 10 to
> 20% of the facility's capacity - despite USENIX taking the
> unprecedented step, on 2001-10-12 of switching all the technical
> session registrations to being free) ... and unfortunately USENIX (and
> other major sponsors) lost a lot of money on the 2001 event. Oh well,
> ... what was there (conferences/tutorials/technical sessions,
> exhibition), etc., was great.
>
> Excellent, long established professional organizations/associations:
> * [26]Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
> * [27]Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
>
> I think membership in each of them is roughly USD $100.00/yr. I know
> ACM has excellent publications (they may be all or mostly
> advertisement free) ... not sure how useful the various publications
> may be, however, for purposes such as market research or vendor leads,
> etc.
>
> Many major vendors (e.g. commercial UNIX) also have their own
> conferences/exhibitions (and/or user groups). These various
> resources/leads may be worth checking out:
> * [28]HP World [HP-UX (Hewlett Packard's UNIX, etc.]
> * [29]USERblue [user-run, related to AIX (IBM's UNIX)]
> * [30]JavaOne (Sun Microsystems Java Technology, etc.)
> * [31]OracleWorld [often (always? - at least recently) occurs in San
> Francisco at Moscone]
> * [32]Macworld - fairly regularly in San Francisco (Moscone). Note
> that MacOS is now Unix (BSD) based, and such systems may even used
> now be used for quite huge computing projects, e.g.: [33]"Virginia
> Tech's 'Big Mac' Power Mac G5 cluster has secured its place as the
> third fastest supercomputer in the world."
>
> * [34]NetWorld + Interop It's
> networking/internetworking/interoperability focused. I went to
> this many times when it was just Interop. I think last time I went
> was somewhere in the range of 1992-1995. Last time I went, Moscone
> North was quite recently opened, and Interop had both Moscone
> North and Moscone South not only completely filled, but totally
> packed and very much bursting at the seams (they were also pretty
> much using any and all space within the Moscone North and South
> complexes - including packing rooms on many floors of Moscone
> South). That was when FDDI was still cutting/bleeding edge
> technology (the prior year there was no FDDI at the show (possibly
> excluding inside some vendor's booth) ... the last year they were
> in San Francisco they were dependent upon FDDI to cover traversing
> the large distance between Moscone North and Moscone South.
> Interop always featured a very impressive live show network (they
> had their very own Internet class A network) and to the extent
> feasible, they try to have every vendor connected to the network
> and hopefully doing something useful with it (definitely a big
> event for network equipment providers, and for them to be able to
> actively test the interoperability of their equipment on a live
> network and with quite a variety of systems and activity on the
> network). Anyway, I digress ... At least historically, Interop was
> more "Open Systems"/IP/UNIX oriented (with a bit of OSI, SNA, big
> iron, etc.), and NetWorld was I believe more oriented towards
> networking DOS/Windows/Novell (IPX/IP, perhaps also AppleTalk?). I
> believe presently it's pretty much all pulled together under
> NetWorld + Interop. When they left San Francisco and went to Las
> Vegas, they did so because "Las Vegas was the only place they
> could fit" (I believe they've been there since). They also merged
> with NetWorld as they moved (which kind of made sense anyway, as
> with the move, they could fit together, and the two "worlds" were
> increasingly moving towards and interoperating primarily over/via
> IP anyway).
> * [35]Comdex Huge event/show, blah, blah, ... might be some useful
> stuff/leads there.
> * [36]UniForum Once upon a time, UniForum used to do huge
> conferences and exhibitions (e.g. typically annually filling
> Moscone South). While far from "dead", I think much of what
> UniForum used to do can now be found in areas such as
> USENIX/SAGE/LISA, SANS, LinuxWorld, etc. UniForum does continue to
> do stuff and have conferences and training and such, so it's still
> probably worth poking around their web site at least once in a
> while to see what's up. Also, I don't know if they still do, but
> they at least used to have an excellent Open Systems Product
> Directory (also good for vendor leads) - I can't find that
> presently with quick search - seems it's likely gone away or been
> renamed or been superseded or supplanted by something else (like
> The Web; the OSPD used to be available via a very fat softback
> bound volume (or volume(s)?), or on CD-ROM(s).)
>
> References
>
> 1. http://www.iweek.com/
> 2. http://www.iweek.com/
> 3. http://www.iweek.com/
> 4. http://www.cio.com/
> 5. http://www.witi.com/
> 6. http://www.systers.org/
> 7. http://www.wwpi.com/Home_CTR.asp
> 8. http://www.sysadminmag.com/
> 9. (see "LISA (Large Installations Systems Administration) just before [16])
> 10. (see "LISA (Large Installations Systems Administration) just before [16])
> 11. http://slashdot.org/
> 12. http://www.usenix.org/
> 13. http://sageweb.sage.org/
> 14. http://www.usenix.org/publications/login/login.html
> 15. http://www.usenix.org/publications/login/online.html
> 16. http://www.usenix.org/events/lisa03/
> 17. http://www.usenix.org/events/lisa04/
> 18. http://sageweb.sage.org/jobs/salary_survey/
> 19. http://sageweb.sage.org/jobs/salary_survey/2002/2002SalarySurvey.pdf
> 20. http://www.usenix.org/events/
> 21. http://www.sans.org/
> 22. http://www.linuxworld.com/
> 23. http://www.linuxworld.com/magazine/
> 24.
> http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Software/Operating_Systems/Linux/News_and_Media/Magazines_and_E-zines/?il=1
> 25. http://www.linuxshowcase.org/
> 26. http://www.acm.org/
> 27. http://www.ieee.org/
> 28. http://www.hpworld.com/
> 29. http://www.userblue.org/
> 30. http://servlet.java.sun.com/javaone/
> 31. http://www.oracle.com/oracleworld/
> 32. http://www.macworld.com/
> 33. http://www.macobserver.com/article/2003/11/05.11.shtml
> 34. http://www.interop.com/
> 35. http://www.comdex.com/
> 36. http://www.uniforum.org/
> _______________________________________________
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> Buug at weak.org
> http://www.weak.org/mailman/listinfo/buug
>
--
Jon Phillips
USA PH 510.499.0894
jon at rejon.org
http://www.rejon.org
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