I did go to LISA 2014, even though I had a fresh cancer diagnosis and was awaiting surgery. I knew I’d see a bunch of friends there, and it would likely be the last conference I’d be able to attend for a while.
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.
NAB 2012
I attended this with Jonas Thaler for the second time. Not sure what the excuse was, but the reason was that I wanted to go. As usually happens, I managed to make myself useful by introducing people to each other – above, Jonas meets Jonathan King.
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.
Joyent miscellanea, 2010-2011
There were good times and there were bad ones.