Re: [SAGE] Certification (was funding)

["David R. Linn" <drl@vuse.vanderbilt.edu>]

>> At 9:36 PM -0700 10/4/01, Pat Wilson wrote:
>> 
>> >  That's sort of interesting.  You do realize that LISA was formed
>> >  in part because the general Usenix conference(s) (back when there
>> >  were two a year) were getting enough "sysadmin" submissions that
>> >  it justifed spinning off a workshop on just that topic?  And, in
>> >  fact, many of the early LISAs were filled with folks who felt
>> >  they'd "graduated" from Usenix general...
>> 
>> 	Maybe it's time to work more hand-in-hand with the program 
>> committee for the USENIX Technical Conference, and to have them start 
>> explicitly rejecting submissions related to systems administration, 
>> and instead pass them on to LISA.  They could do the same with the 
>> tutorials.

The other side of the issue is this: I am essentially a sysadmin (that's
not my title says but that's what most of you would call my job).  That's
my job but that's not what gets my engine going - my areas of *interest*
are kernal internals in general and filesystem design and implementation
in particular.  Those are tangential to LISA, at best, but dead center
in the thrust of ATC.  Worse yet, I've been doing this long enough that
I've even come to believe that there is a *need* for people management -
folks who saw me in Boston will know that I took two days of management
track tutorials (and a Solaris internals tutorial).

I've taken SA tutorials at ATC and at LISA and currently plan to take
SA tutorials in San Diego.  I'm pleased with the new trend toward half-day
tutorials of "new stuff in the area of XXX" - I think the choice between
"start from scratch" or "catch up on new developments" is a really good
idea that addresses the immediate/advanced vs. advanced/senior split.
But ... I like the option of taking the half-days at ATC and the full-days
at LISA or vice versa.

After the split, I hope that option remains open.

For the record, I am a dinosaur.  My membership in USENIX predates the
existence of SAGE, I think I joined SAGE when membership first opened,
have never been overly active in either group (though I am the VU
Campus Liaison for USENIX and one of the folks that handles job postings
on the SAGE Jobs Offered board).  I will probably maintain a membership
in both organizations and continue to attend both conferences (ATC and
LISA) when/if a split occurs.