News
Thanks to everyone who helped make SeaGL amazing this year! We had lots of new sponsors and lots of returning sponsors that helped us provide coffee and donuts on both days, lunch on Saturday and pay for our lovely post-conference party. Sponsors also allow us to keep SeaGL a free as in cost (as well as a free as in freedom) event for attendees. We especially owe a huge debt to Seattle Central College. Their ongoing involvement allows us to keep running SeaGL as a grass-roots conference.
We had a really great line-up of speakers this year. Some people joined us from a few blocks away while others travelled from Indianapolis, Raleigh and even Lima, Peru. We had a wide range of topics from the practical; how to write a technical resume or compile your first kernel to specific; how to use IRC or understanding API’s. We also had talks that were more inspirational in nature on topics like the mission of free software or how to get amazing things done with volunteers. Our keynotes assured that us failure is ok and that we can be the future of free software. We could not be more pleased with this year’s content and look forward to sharing it with you as video in the coming weeks.
Thanks to everyone who attended SeaGL. Especially those of you who spent the day tabling and talking passionately about your organization or your workplace. We also appreciate everyone who invited their friends, colleagues and fellow user group goers. As a small conference, word of mouth is a crucial part of how we grow SeaGL each year.
Finally, I’d like to express what an honor it is to work with so many smart, dedicated and thoughtful volunteers. People woke up early to fetch coffee, they did unfun things like taking out the garbage or running back upstairs for the fifth time in an hour. They learned new things on the fly so they could get the talks recorded or make updates to this website. They asked for support from our community for cash and time and donations. They answered questions – large and small – from speakers, attendees, students and others. They did a lot of toting and carrying.
SeaGL is truly a community effort. I want to take this moment to thank everyone who helped make this year’s event happen, whether you attended every single weekly organizing call or hopped in to help when you arrived at Seattle Central.
I can’t wait to do it all again with you next year! Really!
Deb
Contact us either by
emailing participate@seagl.org
or visiting us on IRC on
Freenode in
#seagl.
Q: Is SeaGL really free?
A: We are both free as in cost and free as in freedom. We’re able to keep SeaGL free because of all the amazing support we receive from our generous sponsors. (Thanks, generous sponsors!)
Q: What kinds of people attend SeaGL?
A: Friendly folks who care about free software and increasing access to technology and people who are curious about free and open source software. We’ll have plenty of content for beginners, experts, free software advocates and everyone in between. There will also be an expo floor where you can talk with local employers and some of the dot-orgs that make the Seattle tech scene so vibrant.
Q: What about the Saturday night party?
A: First of all, it will be fun! We’ve got Corey Quinn and VM Brasseur hosting an interactive variety show. We’ve also got food (including snacks for vegans and gluten intolerant folks) plus we are providing both tasty non-alcoholic drinks and some alcoholic ones. The party will be all-ages and free to attend. (Thanks again, sponsors!)
Q: I’m sold. How do I get to SeaGL?
A: We put together a handy post with all kinds of travel and logistics information. If you still have questions, get in touch and we’ll do our best to help.
Contact us either by
emailing participate@seagl.org
or visiting us on IRC on
Freenode in
#seagl.
der.hans gives his talk titled, “MySQL for the system administrator: !DBA MySQL goodness” on Saturday afternoon.
Q: Could you please introduce yourself and tell us a little about your background?
A: I’ve mostly been a sysadmin for many years, but have also been a full-time developer, managed IT and engineering teams, taught at a community college, pretended to be a DBA and generally tried to automate myself out of a job. I annually do not set myself on fire.
Q: Without tipping your hand on the actual talk, can you give us an idea of what we might expect?
A: Pinatas. We should definitely have pinatas. They would be great. Since we just had candy fest the presentation will instead cover database stuff from a system administrator’s perspective. Leveraging the CLI, automating, restorals, usernames longer than 16 characters and generally keeping our standard sysadminny toolchest.
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: Yes, this is my first SeaGL. Last year I ventured a bit further north for LFNW, then visited some friends in Seattle.
This year I look forward to catching up with conference friends and also meeting new people. The schedule has some great presentations and I’m certain the hallway track is marvelous.
As a desert dweller I’m also looking forward to the free water from the sky thing that I’ve heard so much about.
Q: nomyon6swobanon (nom-yon-SIX-swob-an-on)?
A: rherhothkufibfo (rher-hoth-kuf-ib-fo)
There’s no need for security questions and answers to make sense :)
Jesse and Matt give their talk titled, “i3-wm: Tiling never felt so good” on Saturday afternoon.
Q: Could you please introduce yourselves and tell us a little about your background?
A (Jesse): Hi! My name is Jesse and I am currently a junior in high school. My passions and hobbies include computers, design, Aikido (a non-violent martial art), robotics, running, and drawing. I frequently ask myself how I can make things better, and this is how I discovered GNU/Linux. In middle school, I would frequently find pages on GitHub for fascinating projects but get stuck on the ‘Installation’ section because I was using Windows command prompt. I did not realize this immediately, but I eventually discovered that there was a strange and foreign alternative to both Windows and MacOS. From that point on I found the freedom of the system very empowering. The freedom of the code. The freedom to do whatever I wanted to my computer that fit myself. Every person has their reasons for using GNU/Linux and mine is that I want to get the most out of what I have while making it suit my needs perfectly. My background is mainly in markup languages such as HTML/CSS and LaTeX/TeX since I am so passionate about design. In addition to this I know a moderate amount of JavaScript and increasingly smaller amounts of Java, C++, and Python. I use GNU/Linux multiple times each day and might consider myself an aspiring sysadmin as well.
A (Matt): I’m Matt. I am a programming enthusiast and workflow fanatic. I am a junior in high school and spend most of my free time developing code, rock climbing, and racing drones. I was first introduced to GNU/Linux through Ubuntu trying to avoid buying Windows for a spare computer. Initially I was skeptical but soon grew to love both the operating and what it stood for. I later gave up Ubuntu for Arch and decided to ditch Windows across all my computers. I have been running various distros of GNU/Linux as my daily OS for about 4 years now and have never looked back.
Q: Without tipping your hand on the actual talk, can you give us an idea of what we might expect?
A: Good question! Expect to see two high school students (Matt and me) having a fun time presenting on a topic that we are very passionate about. There will be a tasteful amount of humor interspersed with the serious topic of i3-wm as well. Finally, we hope that afterwards people will leave with a large amount of useful information on the program and be able to look back over our presentation, which will be hosted on one of our servers, to go over things that may have been glossed over or unclear. Basically, two high schoolers having a fun time, some humor, and a surplus of information.
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: For both of us this is our first visit to SeaGL. Last year we attended Linux Fest Northwest and loved every second of it, which initially inspired us to give this talk! If anything, we would expect a smaller-scale but similar format to LFNW.
Q: What is your most embarrassing mistake ever made with GNU/Linux?
A (Jesse): I was planning on testing a new GNU/Linux distribution on a flash drive and was using dd to move over the disk image. Instead of specifying ‘/dev/sdc’ I specified ‘/dev/sdb’ and accidentally wrote over my Arch Linux install. I spent the rest of my winter break reinstalling everything.
A (Matt): No comment.
Tessa gives her talk titled, “Nom Nom: Consuming REST APIs” on Friday afternoon.
Q: Could you please introduce yourself and tell us a little about your background?
A: Yes! My name is Tessa Mero and I live for my family and the developer community. :-) I absolutely love encouraging and inspiring others and also bringing people together in a community and everyone sharing knowledge with each other. Currently I am a Developer Evangelist for Cisco DevNet. DevNet is a department that was born about 2 years ago to create a developer side of Cisco where we create new products from Open Source Software to APIs that will help make your work more productive and efficient. Cisco has also switched from a networking company to a software and services company and we want the world to know this. I specifically advocate on Cisco Spark (a chat/collaboration tool) and Tropo (a Voice/SMS API). I find these 2 API’s absolutely fascinating and love teaching people how to make their applications better by creating more automation for their work flows.
Q: Without tipping your hand on the actual talk, can you give us an idea of what we might expect?
A: Since I love to teach, having a background in education, teaching web application development at Edmonds Community College (Lynnwood, WA), I love helping people extend their knowledge. I also love learning new things for the sole case of showing others how to do it. In this talk, I will be going over the basics of REST APIs and how they can easily get started with learning how to use ANY API. This is a basic level talk and does not require coding knowledge to join, so I encourage any level of expertise can be part of the talk.
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: This will be my first time at a SeaGL event, specifically my first time at a Linux conference. I’m quite overwhelmingly excited and want to be more involved at events in the Linux community as I have heard nothing but positive feedback on the community. I’m really hoping to get the opportunity to learn from others and meet a lot of people.
Q: So, you run the local PHP meetup… what can you tell us about that?
A: Yes! I run the Seattle PHP User Group and the Pacific Northwest PHP Conference in Seattle. SeaGL was kind enough to offer us a booth (THANK YOU). I will have our Vice President of the Board be at the booth giving information about our community and how much we would really love the Linux community to be part of our events. We give talks with such a range that we would love to have more speakers on DevOps! There will always be topics that will work for any developer in general, so please check it out. Come find out more information at the SeaPHP Booth and also come there to get free goodies!
Spencer gives his talk titled, “OpenStack for Humans” on Saturday afternoon.
Q: Could you please introduce yourself and tell us a little about your background?
A: My name is Spencer Krum. I’ve been doing Open Source things in the Pacific NW for the past several years. I work at IBM on the OpenStack project, making Open Source cloud software.
Q: Without tipping your hand on the actual talk, can you give us an idea of what we might expect?
A: This talk is going to introduce OpenStack to people who want to know what it is, where it comes from, and what to do with it. OpenStack has been going for 5 years and there has been a lot of hype. I’m hoping to educate the audience on some simple use cases and answer some common questions. If you last checked in on OpenStack a few years ago, what you learn might surprise you!
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: This will be my third SeaGL conference. Ever year I make sure to attend this event. It is such a good mix of community members, we are so privileged in the PacNW to have so many awesome people. You never know which OSI board member is sitting next to you in a session!
Q: What small thing makes SeaGL great?
A: I really enjoy the impromptu GPG keysigning party that always pops up. It’s always a small hoot.
Mark gives his talk titled, “How to get one of those Open Source jobs” on Friday afternoon.
Q: Could you please introduce yourself and tell us a little about your background?
A: I’m the Director of Open Source Engagement at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Some of the projects I’m currently involved in right now include OpenSwitch https://www.openswitch.net/ and NTPsec https://ntpsec.org/
Q: Without tipping your hand on the actual talk, can you give us an idea of what we might expect?
A: Getting a paying software developer job the open source way has amazingly low barriers to entry. It bypasses much of the “you need a job to get experience, and experience to get a job” problem, and has not been infested by the expensive debt-heavy degree credentialism that has burdened other career paths. The largest barrier is just not knowing that the option exists. This talk removes that barrier.
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: I’ve attended and presented at SeaGL before. I actually live in the Seattle Capitol Hill neighborhood, so it’s refreshing to attend a conference that I can walk to, instead of having to fly across the country to attend. SeaGL attracts lots of people who are there to learn, which are my favorite cohort to present to.
Brian gives his talk titled, “Bare Metal Programming: Introduction to Writing Assembly in Linux” on Saturday afternoon.
Q: Could you please introduce yourself and tell us a little about your background?
A: I’m Brian Raiter, I’ve been a professional programmer for most of my adult life, and a recreational programmer for even longer. I’m most interested the aspects of computer programming that are, in and of themselves, fun. My tech talks tend to reflect this.
Q: Without tipping your hand on the actual talk, can you give us an idea of what we might expect?
A: My tech talk will provide people with enough background to start demystifying Intel x86 assembly language. By the end of the talk, the idea of writing assembly language code for Linux will no longer seem scary (I hope) – in fact, it will even sound fun!
Assembly language has a reputation for being difficult and tedious, particularly nowadays when knowledge of assembly has become less and less necessary. While this stereotype is partly true, it is also true that assembly language is both precise and powerful. And mastering assembly language programming provides opportunity for a certain type of enjoyment that you can’t get anywhere else. I want to give more people a glimpse of that enjoyment.
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: This is my fourth time attending SeaGL. The talks at SeaGL cover the gamut from programmers to users, sysadmins to managers, and their commitment to free software and inclusion is sterling. It’s a great little event, and I’m looking forward to it getting bigger.
Q: What is your favorite assembly instruction that is also coincidentally a valid HTML tag?
A: DIV.
Donald gives his talk titled, “Free Software Foundation: Volunteer Empire” on Saturday afternoon.
Q: Could you please introduce yourself and tell us a little about your background?
A: I am the Copyright & Licensing Associate for the Free Software Foundation. I have worked on the licensing team for the FSF for over 8 years. I joined the FSF straight out of law school but was an advocate for software freedom long before then.
Q: Without tipping your hand on the actual talk, can you give us an idea of what we might expect?
A: The FSF is a very small organization in terms of staff. All the work that we do is made possible by thousands of volunteers all around the globe. In my talk I want to highlight their work while also giving the audience some helpful ideas on how to magnify the work of volunteers in their own communities.
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: I’ve been coming to SeaGL for years now. It’s one of my favorite conferences. The talks are wonderful but the community that comes out for this event is what makes it so great. The people at SeaGL are dedicated free software activists and users.
Q: How can someone become more involved in FSF’s work?
A: There are plenty of opportunities to volunteer, and we’re also hiring for several positions at the moment.
Charlotte gives her talk titled, “SSL/TLS Primer” on Saturday afternoon.
Q: Could you please introduce yourself and tell us a little about your background?
A: I’m a software developer, currently at ExtraHop Networks, and I’ve been working on networking appliances my entire professional life. I’ve spent way too much time writing single-purpose hash tables, staring at hex dumps, and scanning packet captures. As someone whose work has benefited a lot from open source, I thought it was past time to contribute something more!
Q: Without tipping your hand on the actual talk, can you give us an idea of what we might expect?
A: TLS is the most widely used cryptographic protocol, and most software developers will run into it at some point, but it can be intimidating! My ambitious goal is to demystify parts of it from the high-level motivations down to the nitty-gritty details on the wire.
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: This is my first visit! It’s the nature of the software industry that you tend to specialize, so I always appreciate the chance to hear from a wide variety of people doing different things. I’m loving the scope of the talks on the docket!
Q: Do you want to rant about network security?
A: Yes! With the recent DNS outage due to a DDoS attack, internet of things vendors need to get their bananas together and implement basic things like randomized default passwords and (at least) basic authentication and encryption! ISPs also need to take responsibility for mitigations like reverse path check for spoofing and reflection attacks. There aren’t many simple solutions, but as the internet grows, we need to think very hard about the security implications of end to end connectivity.