SeaGL speaker Q&A: VM Brasseur

VM Brasseur gives her talk titled, “Cutting Some Slack: Decoding IRC” on Friday morning.

Q: Could you please introduce yourself and tell us a little about your background?

A: I’ve been in tech for about 20 years now, more if you count the dabbling I did in uni. Like many in tech, my studies have nothing to do with computing. My first degree was interdisciplinary humanities (philosophy, English, history, math cognate) and my second is Classical Philology (Ancient Greek & Latin). My path to the industry led straight through the library to working at an ILS (integrated library system) vendor during the dotcom boom in the 90s. I’ve long since moved on to other things, but my love of libraries and their endless free access to knowledge has never waned.

Q: Without tipping your hand on the actual talk, can you give us an idea of what we might expect?

A: I don’t mind if my hand is tipped. It’s a talk about IRC and there aren’t many surprises there after its 29 years of existence (so far). ;-) Well, maybe there are. If you think that learning IRC is unnecessary in this age of Slack, think again. There are over 50,000 IRC channels on the Freenode network alone, and a huge percentage of those are dedicated to free and open source software projects and communities. Knowledge of how to operate on IRC is essential to participating in FOSS.

Q: Is this your first visit to SeaGL? If so, what are your expectations? If not, can you give us your impressions of the event?

A: Yup, it’s my first SeaGL! I’m just a little gull egg. :) Free and open source software conferences are nothing new to me, though. I attend a couple dozen a year right now (no, you have a problem; I can quit any time, honest), so I’m pretty familiar with the general nature of community-driven and -organized free software events. I expect this one to be similar to most but with a very welcome Seattle flair. Also, I really like that the first day is more for students and those newer to free software and I’m looking forward to helping people get started.

Q: What else can you tell us about yourself?

A: I don’t have a favorite color. I like both cats and dogs. I have no food allergies. And, yes, that shirt really does look great on you. Honest.