Category Archives: my life in tech

OpenStack Summit 2014

This edition was held in Paris and, among other things, featured the best food I’ve ever had in a conference hall. Yes, OpenStack was quite a boondoggle for many people, for years. I hung out with some friends, participated in a hair-raising session about the OpenStack community (20+ contributing companies, each with its own fork of the software – it was clearly doomed), enjoyed spending time with my friend Robyn who had come for a visit from Switzerland, but I also very distracted by an imminent diagnosis of breast cancer.

This was also the conference where I heard for the nth time the complaint from women in engineering about how insulting it is to be mistaken for “the marketing chick.” I got to the mic during Q&A and, with my voice shaking with rage, pointed out how sexist and demeaning this attitude is. As I exited the room, a man came to thank me for speaking up on behalf of marketers.

ZFS Day and illumos Day 2012

Two days of conferences organized by me. These took place at the Children’s Creativity Museum in San Francisco, deliberately on the same dates that Oracle Open World was being held next door at Moscone Center – I was surprised that Oracle hadn’t pre-emptively rented the Museum themselves.