News
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.
Carol gives her talk titled, “The Set of Programmers: How Math Restricts Us” on Friday afternoon.
Q: Could you please introduce yourself and tell us a little about your background?
A: I’m Carol Smith, I currently manage education partnerships at GitHub. I have been there 7 months and have also done a lot of of other, related education outreach in that time. Before GitHub I was at Google managing the Google Summer of Code program. For those who don’t know, Google Summer of Code is a program designed to get university students involved in open source software development all over the world. I worked at Google for 10.5 years. Before Google Summer of Code I worked in network operations at Google helping to deploy a lot of network infrastructure for North America.
I have a degree in photojournalism from California State University, Northridge. I am also an avid horseback rider and armchair movie critic.
Q: Without tipping your hand on the actual talk, can you give us an idea of what we might expect?
A: I’d like to show the audience that the way we are teaching programming and computer science to students and newbies is unintentionally creating a barrier to entry for some. We are introducing concepts and ideas that don’t need to be introduced when they are and are unnecessarily sending some people the message that they don’t belong, even though they may very well excel.
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: It is my first visit to SeaGL! I’m excited. I expect that it will be a diverse group of attendees from industry and academia. I also think it’s going to be lots of fun to talk to some new folks and hopefully spur some interesting discussions.
Q: Do you have any questions for us?
A: Some great questions for the attendees to think about would be, “Do you think we’re currently doing a good job teaching programming and computer science to the next generation of developers? Are the students coming into open source and the workforce as well prepared for contributing and working in their jobs as they can be?”
Rikki gives her talk titled, “The proper care and feeding of communities and carnivorous plants” on Saturday afternoon.
Q: Could you please introduce yourself and tell us a little about your background?
A: I’m the community manager and an editor for Opensource.com, a community publication supported by Red Hat. My background is in tech publishing, and before I joined Red Hat as a community evangelist for the Open Source and Standards team almost three years ago, I wrote for and/or edited a bunch of different publications, such as: Linux Magazine, Ubuntu User, ADMIN Magazine, UnixReview.com, Sys Admin Magazine, NetworkWorld.com, Linux.com, ITWorld, and more. I also worked as the Associate Publisher at Linux New Media USA, which means I wore lots of hats for our English publications.
Q: Without tipping your hand on the actual talk, can you give us an idea of what we might expect?
A: I adopted a Venus fly trap, named Gordon, last summer, which ended up requiring a lot more thought and upkeep than expected. I don’t have a green thumb and manage to kill succulents and air plants, so I should have waded into the distilled waters of carnivorous plant care more carefully. As I tried caring for this cute, fun little creature that depended on me for its survival, I started seeing similarities between taking care of a carnivorous plant and an open source community. In my talk, I’ll share a few best practices for how to care for both, and I’ll give an update on what happened to Gordon.
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 visit, but I’ve wanted to attend it every year. I don’t have any specific expectations, so go ahead and surprise me.
Q: What do you want to get out of SeaGL?
A: I’m looking forward to seeing friends and Opensource.com writers, and I’m hoping to meet lots of new people. I’d love it if I found a few new contributors for Opensource.com.
Nithya gives her talk titled, “Many ways of Contributing to Open Source without Coding” on Friday afternoon.
Q: Could you introduce yourself and tell us a little about your background?
A: I run the open source office at Western Digital which is a very large storage company storing the world’s data. I first encountered Open Source in 1998 when I worked at SGI and have never looked back. Have worked in many aspects of open source from being a part of a community to product managing an open source based product to running an open source program office. I enjoy the intersection of opensource, business and community.
Q: Without tipping your hand on the actual talk, can you give us an idea of what we might expect?
A: There are 3 main takeaways from my talk for the attendee:
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Why open source needs other forms of contribution besides code and that they should be valued
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How women are contributing to open source in all aspects
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Opening the audience’s eyes to new careers in open source and how to get started in them
Q: Is this your first visit to SeaGL? If so, what are your expectations?
A: Yes! And I am very excited about it. I have heard wonderful things about the SeaGL community and want to experience it for myself. And when Deb Nicholson calls I listen.
Q: What are you passionate about?
A: I am passionate about opening doors in open source to new and underrepresented people. This is why I am involved in Women of open source at the Linux Foundation and at OpenStack, as well as participating in numerous other activities and events to share how people can become more familiar and learn how to contribute to open source.
John Dulaney gives his talk titled, “Naval Gunnery Fire Control in WWI” on Friday morning.
Q: Could you please introduce yourself and tell us a little about your background?
A: My name is John Dulaney. I am a contributor to the Dreadnought Project, and
have long had an interest in maritime history, and especially in World War One
era naval technology. The Dreadnought Project aims to provide open access to
scholarly naval research.
Q: Without tipping your hand on the actual talk, can you give us an idea of what we might expect?
A: The talk will cover the problem of hitting a tiny, moving target on the horizon
from a platform that itself is moving in three dimensions using the technology
available 100 years ago.
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 SEAGL. I expect it to be an interesting conference judging from what I know of the organizers.
Q: Why do you make historical research freely available?
A: I believe that our history should be available, not just gratis, but easily and freely accessible.
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.
Bri gives his alliteratively titled talk, “Serving Secrets Securely” on Saturday.
Q: Could you please introduce yourself and tell us a little about your background?
A: I’m Bri Hatch, a long time Linux/Open Source enthusiast, security guy, author, and vim user astonished at Apple’s removal of my beloved escape key. (Could it be an Emacs conspiracy?) I’ve been in the security and unix industry for decades, and currently am the Director of IT at ExtraHop Networks. I’ve had various levels of facial hair over the year, but am hopefully not yet a neckbeard.
Q: Without tipping your hand on the actual talk, can you give us an idea of what we might expect?
A: Software often needs access to passwords, authentication tokens, or other secrets. The question is how do you allow access to this sensitive information to non-interactive daemons in a secure manner? When you think about the attack surface you need to balance complete security with the ability for your services to run themselves so you’re not just a pager restart monkey.
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 attending and talking at SeaGL every year since it started, and it gets better every year! The talks and speakers are excellent, and I am always conflicted about which to attend given the across-the-board quality. There are tracks for every level of expertise, and a range from tried-and-true to bleeding edge technologies, so there is something for everyone. And don’t forget to visit the sponsor booths!
Q: How would we identify you in a crowd?
A: Look for the guy in shorts with purple-painted toenails and no shoes - that should narrow it down.
Q: How ‘bout dem Cubs?
A: I’m originally a Chicago Southsider so it took a while to allow the Cubs into my White Sox heart, but I’m there - defeat Cleveland!
Lucy gives her talk titled, “Linux Jargon: From AFK to Zero Day” on Friday morning.
Q: Could you please introduce yourself and tell us a little about your background?
A: My name is Lucy Wyman, and I’m a Quality Assurance Engineer for Puppet where I automate tests and develop testing infrastructure for puppet orchestrator, PCP, and PE core. I graduated from Oregon State University with a BS in Computer Science in June 2016, where I worked as a Front-End Engineer for the OSU Open Source Lab and helped run the OSU Linux Users Group. In my free time I enjoy hanging out with friends, hiking, experiencing new things, and enjoying a wide variety of podcasts, tv shows, blogs, books, and other media.
You can see more of my work here and here and conference presentations I’ve given here or read my thoughts here.
Q: Without tipping your hand on the actual talk, can you give us an idea of what we might expect?
A: There’s a lot of jargon in the tech industry which can be intimidating, ambiguous, or just down-right confusing. My talk covers general technical jargon, from command line tools to cultural touchstones, so that you can be in the know about what bikeshedding, PGP, GEB, and “hunter2” are.
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 think this is my second or third SeaGL. I think of SeaGL as a community of folks passionate about open source (not companies looking to advertise to the open source crowd), sharing ideas, tools, new technologies, and other useful information. Mostly there are a lot of people I look forward to seeing each year.
Q: How did you get involved in the Open Source community?
A: During the first few weeks at Oregon State University, I stumbled upon the Linux Users Group at one of the find-a-club events. I wanted to be as knowledgeable and clever as the people I met there, so I installed Mint and stuck around, eventually becoming the club’s vice president. Since then open source has been a big part of my identity as a software engineer and I advocate for openness and collaboration in each project I join.