Unigroup's May 2002 Meeting Announcement


Topic:
How do sysadmins write books?
   or
How to write a book with someone you don't know:
Internet collaboration for the truly geeky.

Speaker:
Tom Limoncelli,
Lumeta Corp

Date:
Thursday, May 23, 2002 (+1 week from normal)

Location:
The Chase Manhattan Bank
55 Water Street, South Tower
13th Floor Conference Room C
** RSVP AND PHOTO ID WILL BE REQUIRED FOR ENTRY **

Time:
6:15 - 6:30 PM Registration
6:30 - 6:40 PM Ask the Wizard - Questions, Answers and Current Events
6:40 - 6:50 PM Unigroup Business
6:50 - 9:30 PM Main Presentation


Introduction:

We have learned that 16-MAY-2002 is a holiday for some, so we have moved our meeting +1 week to Thursday, 23-MAY-2002.

   SPECIAL INSTRUCTIONS:
   ---------------------

   * IN ORDER TO PASS THROUGH SECURITY AT CHASE, WE NEED YOU TO RSVP
   * PRIOR TO THURSDAY, SO WE CAN GET YOUR NAME ON THE ATTENDEE LIST.
   * ADVANCE REGISTRATION AND PHOTO ID ARE REQUIRED!

   -- RSVP DEADLINE IS 23-MAY-2002 08:00AM --
   -- YOU WILL RECEIVE AN RSVP ACK MESSAGE WHEN YOU ARE REGISTERED --

   Please RSVP if you know you are attending or if you think you may
   be attending.  This will help us arrange for a letter to security
   for all of Unigroup.  It will also help us to determine the correct
   amount of food and refreshments.

   To REGISTER for this event, please RSVP by:

   a) If at all possible, please use the Unigroup Registration Page.
      This will allow us to have some automation in the registration process.

   b) If you really must EMail us, send an EMail containing the FIRST and
      LAST NAMEs of the persons attending to the Unigroup RSVP Address:
         unigroup-rsvp@unigroup.org
      The EMail subject should start with "RSVP".
      You may optionally include your contact phone number (that day)
      or other current information.
      Sample EMail:
        RSVP LastName FirstName your_email@domain.dom 000-000-0000

   Please continue to check the Unigroup web site:
        http://www.unigroup.org
   for any last minute updates concerning this meeting.  Please
   check your email for any last minute announcements prior to the
   meeting.  Note that only the Attendee First and Last Names will
   be provided to Chase Security.


Description of Talk:

It's easy to do a new project: Just take everything you've learned before, and reuse it the best you can. When Tom Limoncelli and Christine Hogan wrote the new book "The Practice of System and Network Administration" they had a couple challenges: They didn't know each other. They were 5 timezones apart. They had to share and interact with gigabytes of data.

Their solution was to apply their sysadmin tools to the process. To solve their Internet collaboration needs, they used the tools commonly found in Open Source collaborations (CVS, SSH, Make, Apache, and so on). To deal with the fact that they didn't know each other, they applied the "soft skills" concepts presented in the book.

This talk will cover the techniques they used to collaborate on a project that would envelope their entire lives for more than 2 years. Amazingly enough, the book was completed, nobody went crazy in the process, and they've still only met in person 7 times.

You can preview the book on

http://www.EverythingSysadmin.com
or order it here:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0201702711/safocus-20

While this talk sounds like it's about collaboration, it's really about system administration. The project had security requirements, reliability requirements, bandwidth requirements, processes to be defined, and tons of scripting. The talk will cover all of these issues and more. We can't imagine how a non-sysadmin could ever write a book!

Giveaways:

O'Reilly has provided us with various giveaways (books, t-shirts, etc).


Speaker Biography:

(borrowed from http://www.everythingsysadmin.com/abouttomchris.html)

Thomas A. Limoncelli is Director of Operations at Lumeta Corporation, a venture startup that focuses on intranet security. Most of Tom's experience comes from his seven years at AT&T Bell Labs (later Lucent Bell Labs) where he supported the network used by the researchers and scientists, and lead the effort to separate the Holmdel Bell Labs network between AT&T, Lucent and NCR when the company split into three.

He got his fundamentals from his three years at Mentor Graphics, Corp. Prior to that he was at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey where he received his B.A. in Computer Science.

Outside of work Tom is a grass-roots civil-rights activist, from which he gains experience that directly applies to his career in computers. Tom's first published paper extolled lessons that SAs can learn from activists. His activism has been recognized on the state and national level. Tom doesn't see a much difference between his work and activism careers. They are both about helping people.


Company Biography:


Complimentary Food and Refreshments will be served.
This now includes salads and sandwiches (eg. turkey, roast beef, chicken, tuna, grilled eggplant, pasta salad, Caesar salad)!

Please join us for this meeting, you won't want to miss it!

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