[CLUE-Talk] CLUE speakers needed

[Matt Gushee]

On Tue, Aug 10, 2004 at 08:34:44PM -0700, William wrote:
> --- Matt Gushee <mgushee at havenrock.com> wrote:
> > I would also be interested to know how people feel, not so much about
> > specific topics, but about the general focus of CLUE presentations. It
> 
> It seems like you're looking for opinions on this.

That's what I said, isn't it?

> As dangerous as that can be with so many
> people passionate about their opinions,

Could be dangerous, but life without conflict isn't really life at all.

> That said (don't flame me; that'd be a waste of energy and bandwidth),

I can't imagine why you would expect to get flamed for this. You must be
on some very short-tempered mailing lists.

> 1.) I will always be interested in whatever relates to secure Linux servers and network
> administration.  Whatever helps make my job easier would be nice, but I'll sumarilly ignore
> anything that requires a Linux GUI.

Just out of curiosity, why is that?

> 2.) I am curious about Linux workstations and what can be done with a Linux user box.  It'd be a
....
> and I'll never take the time to search for it.  However, if I'm at a convention that covers stuff
> I'm interested in AND this Linux user app stuff, then I'd sit through it.

I'm not sure "this Linux user app stuff" is a good characterization of
my interests either. I would say I'm "more of a high-level guy," but
that's doesn't mean "Linux desktop user." It means I am more interested
in PostgreSQL than in file systems; more interested in HTTP than TCP/IP;
and more interested in open source application servers or Web
programming frameworks that work with Apache, than in Apache itself.

There is also a wide range of potential topics that are not specifically
about Linux, but are relevant and possibly of interest: "Open Source
movement" concerns, the legalities of open source licenses, programming
languages and toolkits, Web standards and their implementations, case
studies of organizations using Linux ... In some ways I think some of
these "tangential" issues are better suited to the one-hour presentation
format. If the topic is, for example, "securing a mail server," one hour
is too much time to simply make people aware of the issue, but not
nearly enough to seriously deal with the topic on a technical level. On
the other hand, you can do a really good business case study in an hour.

Of course, there's no right or wrong here, and I'm sure it's not even
possible to create a mix of topics that will please everyone. My point
in raising the question was just to see if the status quo is really what
most people like, or if there are others like me who would prefer a
somewhat different range of topics, but have been keeping quiet about
it.

Thank you for your comments.

-- 
Matt Gushee                 When a nation follows the Way,
Englewood, Colorado, USA    Horses bear manure through
mgushee at havenrock.com           its fields;
http://www.havenrock.com/   When a nation ignores the Way,
                            Horses bear soldiers through
                                its streets.
                                
                            --Lao Tzu (Peter Merel, trans.)