This one-day workshop features a frank, open, spirited discussion between 30 very senior (and, often, well-known) system administrators. The nominal topic is “the most difficult problems facing system administrators today” but almost anything is fair game once you get this group started.
Attendance is limited and based on acceptance of a position paper. Potential workshop attendees should submit a short position paper (about three paragraphs, one page at most), in plain ASCII – no fancy formatting, and certainly no Word documents or PDFs – to:
< lisa07ws-atw AT usenix DOT org >A typical paper states what the author thinks is the most difficult or important issue facing system administrators today, why this problem is significant, and why the problem hasn’t been solved.
Based on past workshops, little (if any) time may be spent actually discussing the position papers. To facilitate additional discussion, authors should also consider (and, maybe, answer) the following questions:
- What do you hope to get out of the workshop?
- What specific technical topics would you like to discuss?
- What can the ATW attendees (as some of the most experienced SAs in the industry) be doing to help:
- The SA profession?
- USENIX and/or LOPSA
- The LISA conference?
Please supply the following as part of your "application":
- Name
- Affiliation
- Email Address
Registration details and procedures will be different this year. Details to be supplied Real Soon Now.
Finally, attendees are required to bring a laptop computer with them. You may use any operating system you like, as well as whatever web browser you prefer (although I’ve tested the software only on Firefox and Safari), as long as:
- your machine has a working 100baseT NIC;
- your machine can be connected to a private, untrusted network;
- your machine can be configured as a DCHP client.
Please bring whatever power cords and AC adapters and/or plug converters you require; power will be 120V 60Hz AC from a NEMA 5-15R outlet. If your system has a “wall wart” you might also want to bring a “pigtail” with you, to make more efficient use of the power strips. An extension cord is suggested.
Attendees may be asked to provide their own Cat-5 patch cable; this will be noted in the acceptance letters.
The official starting time of the workshop is 9:00 a.m., but please try to arrive between 8:30 and 8:45 to allow time for connecting to the network, getting logged in, etc.
Additional questions should be sent to:
< lisa07atw AT usenix DOT org >