[CLUE-Admin] speakers needed

[Lynn Danielson]

On Sat, 2002-12-21 at 13:10, David Anselmi wrote:
> 
> I've been thinking about doing a DNS talk, but I don't really want to 
> work on it that soon.  People will get tired of hearing me (if they 
> aren't already).

I appreciate your willingness to talk to the group this past year.
The talks have gone over very well and I don't think anyone's tired
of you yet.  However, I don't want to burn you out.  Chances are 
you'll be hearing from the CLUE North group about repeating your
TCP/IP presentations before long.  If your willing to work on 
something for CLUE later next Spring or Summer, that would be great.
I'll happily take advantage of your good nature. :-)

'Sounds like Dave Hahn's volunteered for the DNS talk.  I'll be
talking to him about the fax configuration idea as well.
 
> If push comes to shove, perhaps a panel discussion, informal Q&A, or 
> ad-lib sort of thing.  When I heard Kent Beck talk, he wanted to pick 
> topics/questions by some sort of whiteboarding exercise--anyone know how 
> to do that?  If we do something informal I'd be happy to play a part, 
> however would be best.

Thanks again for the offer.  I may end up taking you up on this.  I'm
not sure if Dave and Roy would be available for the January meeting,
but they'd make excellent panel members as well.  I might be able to
talk Kevin Fenzi and/or Sean Reifschneider into joining us for that.

I don't have any familiarity with the whiteboarding exercise you
mention.  The white board at our current location sucks, but I
could probably bring some whiteboard markers and an eraser.  
There's usually an easel available there with paper for mark up.
We could use something like that.  I could probably also bring
an overhead projector to use.

> The way I would approach DNS is to explaing the fundamentals for people 
> who want to know more than resolv.conf(5).  But I don't have a terrible 
> lot of experience beyond that.

Dave (Hahn) is right.  It is a big topic and I'm not sure how to best
narrow it down.  I think it would be a good idea to describe the DNS
heirarchy, the registrar system and how to set up DNS on a personal
Linux box at a minimum.  Advice on how to trouble shoot DNS problems
would be welcome in my opinion.  Bind configuration could be another
angle to come at it.  

> Is there anyone with experience running any significant DNS setup that 
> could talk?  Tummy, Techangle, Americanisp (they use djbdns), Barb's outfit?

I'm not going to bug Barb again any time soon (I expect she's nursing
her newborn by now) but maybe someone else from Netrack would be
amenable.  It's worth a try.

> Cricket Liu could give the talk he did for FRUUG two weeks ago 
> (http://fruug.org/Archive/2002-12/writeup.html).  

FRUUG has managed to get an enviable number of notable speakers,
including Larry Wall and Richard Stallman to name just a couple.
I'm not familiar with Cricket, but he has given multiple talks
to FRUUG.  If you're recommending I talk to him, I will.

> Other ideas (off the top of my head, not necessarily worth considering):
> 
> Roger Frank on education (a contrast to John Hamilton's talk)

I've approached Roger before and he has not seemed very interested in
talking to the group.  That's not to say that he wouldn't.  I've just
had the impression that he's very busy and would rather not.  I've 
also gotten the impression that he's had difficulties with the
school districts sys admin's and the he's been keeping his use of
Linux low key.  I'll contact him about it though.
 
> Jim Intriglia or David Wilson on their experience teaching in community 
> college.

I believe Dave is teaching on Tuesday nights.  The same may be true
for Jim.  I'll touch base with them.  Even if their schedules don't
allow it now, they might be free at somepoint this summer.

> Government people, like the Jefco guy that had Red Hat here.  There may 
> be some feds too.

It turns out that Otis Lamar is the guy in charge of the Jefco Linux
Destop Rollout.  I have him committed to talk to us in February.

> I'd like to learn more about how ISPs operate--what their setups are 
> like, how they get upstream service, what their business models and 
> challenges are.

Well again, Dave and Roy (the Techangle Guys), would be obvious
candidates for a talk like this.  I've heard rumors that one or
two of the guys from AmericanISP attend our meetings and have a
presence on our list, but I've never met them nor noticed their
postings.  Do you have any familiarity with them?  I wouldn't 
mind hitting them up for a talk.

> Zonker could talk to us about writing.  Not sure what angle would be 
> best, but there are several.

I've contacted Zonker about talking to the group about Linux Routing
since that was the topic of the last book he coauthored (I haven't
heard back from him on that yet) but I didn't think to to approach
him about Linux writing and publishing.  That could be an interesting
topic if he's willing.

I'm trying to get a hold of Solvieg Haugland.  She's an ex-Sun
employee and coauthor of the past two Star Office books from Sun
Press.  I'll also try Jon Corbet again.  He runs LWN and coauthored
the lastest edition of O'Reilly's Linux Device Drivers.

If anyone knows of any other Linux/Unix authors in our area, please
let me know.

Thanks for all the suggestions, Dave.


Lynn