August (un)Meeting

In past years we've taken this month off, but instead we're going to mix up our formula a little bit. We're going to "borrow" a page from the unconference playbook and have an unmeeting.

If you're unfamiliar, the basic idea is that you have your participants provide the content. You provide a pad of paper, a white board, or a chalk board - maybe with a couple lanes for duration - and anyone who wants to walks up and writes what they'd like talk to about. If there's too much content, you break out into rooms or vote.

How this will work practically is we'll be spending the first 30 minutes or so letting people file in, hang out, and put topics up on the chalkboard. If there's too much, we'll spend a few minutes to let people go up and put a check next to what they want to hear about as a way to sound out interest. We'll play the amount of content a bit by ear, but no less than one hour and no more than 2 hours. I'll timekeep and facilitate.

So what would an appropriate topic be? Pretty much anything. The purview of this group is anything of interest to people who administer computers. This is a ludicrously broad thing, because people in this field, particularly people who attend things like this, tend to be just a bit curious about everything. We read things from different disciplines and abstract lessons from them into our practice. We get passionate about things, sometimes to our detriment. If you want concrete examples - our past topic list (particularly the one over at bblisa.org) is a good indicator of what we've booked for full lectures.

What can you expect to hear about? If you attend it's up to you! There is a frankly ludicrous level of technical expertise within this group, and even more in the mailing list membership. Technical topics that may come up are things like an exploration of the immutable infrastructure pattern, what exactly is a 12-factor app, how content delivery networks work, obscure kernel subsystems, cli tools you may not have heard of, networking, configuration management, infosec, or infrastructure as code. This may include some things you don't know you don't know. There may be some storytelling; the time they put node 3 on the internet, stuff like the "magic" switch, the server in the wall, why the Vasa was the first software project, or how a solaris box formed(and still forms) the still-beating heart of an infrastructure for 25 years. Or maybe someone will just completely geek out about mixed drinks, or theater tech, or how to negotiate salaries.