{panel:borderStyle=solid|borderColor=white|bgColor=white|}
{panel}
{anchor:Democracy}
h1. The Network at the Heart of Democracy
\\
h2. Matthew Landauer
Today's network, the internet, has already shown itself to be the agent of great change. In this talk I'm going to look at some of the new ways politics is coming to ordinary people and some of the incredible opportunities for the future. We have the potential to re-imagine the very core of our democratic system - but how can we do this without leaving people behind?
h3. Bio
Matthew co-founded OpenAustralia.org and is its lead developer. His paid side-work is as director and developer of Visual Appliance, a small company dedicated to developing software for the international feature film visual effects industry.
----
{anchor:VersionControl}
h1. Version control for system administrators
\\
h2. Greg Warner
When I began as a systems administrator I was often asked to assist engineers to setup and configure their version control systems.
But it never occurred to me that the same version control systems could assist with management of my own scripts and maintaining my own systems.
This talk will provide practical examples using various version control techniques that assist with deploying across development, test and production systems with different architectures and operating systems.
The talk will also cover the importance of task based systems administration which can occur when you integrate your help desk/bug tracking system with a version control system. The outcome is better configuration management of your systems and better traceability identifying why a change was made and when.
----
{anchor:Windows7Security}
h1. Windows 7 Security Changes - Enhancing Security and Control
\\
h2. Jeff Alexander
Windows 7 has many features for the consumer, developer and IT Pro. But what about Security? In this session we'll demonstrate some of the important security features that are inherent in Windows 7. These include Applocker™, Bitlocker™ and Bitlocker To Go™, DirectAcess™, as well as the modifications to User Account Control. We'll also overview the security and privacy enhancements to Internet Explorer 8. See firsthand how Windows 7 and Internet Explorer 8 will help improve your organisation's security and privacy.
----
{anchor:Drizzle}
h1. Drizzle: A Microkernel DBMS for High Performance Scale-Out Applications
\\
h2. Stewart Smith
Drizzle is our fork of the MySQL server. It sets its aim at a particular problem, the web-sphere, and goes all out to work really well in this environment.
This talk is part story of how we forked the project and how we got people to join the revolution along with part "this is Drizzle". What is different about Drizzle? How do you use Drizzle? How do you install and manage Drizzle? How do you use PAM or LDAP authentication
We are past our first milestone release (named "Cirrus") and ready for early adopters.
----
{anchor:GoGreen}
h1. Windows 7 User Access Control
\\
h2. Pete Calvert
The Australian Federal Government's recent foray in to Internet content filtering highlights the concerns of many that typical computer users are not capable of protecting themselves against the evils lurking on the internet. Within organisations, particularly large and dynamic ones, a single interally connected compromised machine can wreak havoc behind firewalls and external content filters. Microsoft has been incorporating technology within their operating systems to keep administrative functionality and user activity separate for many years, most recently with the much maligned User Access Control (UAC) in Windows Vista. UAC was perceived as intrusive and distracting by so many people that most turned it off, negating the benefits that it could bring. With Windows 7 UAC has been refined to be more granular in application and less obtrusive to users while still allowing system administrators to enforce its usage through Group Policy. This talk highlights the changes that have been made to UAC with Windows 7 and touches on other security updates that have been introduced in the most recent incarnation of Microsoft's operating systems, changes that system administrators should be aware of in order to make informed decisions, increase administration efficiences and reduce their workload.
----
{anchor:Windows7UAC}
h1. Go Green, Save Green: Virtualization at Oracle On Demand Case Study
\\
h2. Avi Miller
As an IT professional, you face growing challenges: rapid, unpredictable change; unrelenting competitive and regulatory pressures; tight budgets; and increasing concern for the environment. Now is the ideal time to consider a grid computing approach to modernising your data centre.
This talk is an overview of how Oracle On Demand uses new grid technologies to:
* Improve efficiency with server clustering and load balancing
* Drive IT agility with on-demand provisioning, automation, and real-time predictive monitoring
* Boost availability with disaster protection, failover strategies, and quality of service management
* Green your operations with server consolidation, virtualization, and energy-saving best practices
----
{anchor:MovingTowards}
h1. Moving Towards Monitoring Everything
\\
h2. Geoffrey Day
Over the last 5 years TMD have built 2 data centres and vastly expanded the number and complexity of services we provide. Management now want a single integrated system that provide monitoring on everything from room power, temperature and hardware right through to "service availability" and everything in between. We do not have this and it is impossible to purchase for any price. I will take a brief look at where TMD started, before discussing in detail our environment which consists of: generator, UPS's, air-conditioners, room environment, racks, server hardware, network hardware, SAN equipment, VMware, operating systems, CPU usage, memory usage, processes, applications, performance and much, much more. We will look the tools we use, why we use them, talk about alternatives and finish with our plans for the future
----
{anchor:MySQL}
h1. The MySQL Architecture and Scaling Quiz: Sane or ?
\\
h2. Arjen Lentz
Based on real-world deployments, a fun quiz where the SAGE-AU conference audience gets to decide whether a range of given designs makes sense or not.
As you know, truth is stranger than fiction any day - so we don't need to make up weird scenarios, they're out there already, in production\!
Will you use your existing MySQL skills, or apply expertise from other RDBMS or separate fields? Will you be able to pick the good stuff from the bad? Let's find out\!
----
{anchor:AutomatingConfiguration}
h1. Automating Configuration Management using Puppet
\\
h2. Brendan Beveridge
Brief overview of benefits of automating config management
Brief look into puppet
----
{anchor:TelecommutingSysadmin}
h1. Telecommuting Sysadmin
\\
h2. John Dalton
Have you ever dreamed of telecommuting full-time? For almost two years
John has been working from home for a US-based company, managing
infrastructure on the other side of the planet. He'll talk about the
benefits and challenges this involves, the technologies used, and the
social and professional issues that result.
----
{anchor:ControllingAuditing}
h1. Controlling and Auditing software deployment with git
\\
h2. Alec Clews
When deploying files into commercial environments it is vital to document and audit the deployment of files across multiple application instances.
This paper presents a working example that addresses some of the major issues relating to deployment such as automation, access control, logging and change auditing.
Traditionally the git version control tool is used to manage development source code and as a delivery point for other tools such as such Capistrano or Puppet. However current deployment and system management frameworks often use a specialist domain language or pidgin which can make them more complex to deploy. Some tools also require the implementation of classes to perform specific actions. Using git with a number of simple wrapper scripts can greatly simplify the deployment implementation. In a system management environment this effort is worthwhile, but for application deployment it is often too much complex.
After attending this presentation attendees will be able to implement a similar git based approach elsewhere in any modern scripting language or framework.
----
{anchor:CareFeeding}
h1. Care and feeding of developers: experiences from the OpenSolaris Gate
\\
h2. James C. McPherson
The OpenSolaris development community is globally distributed, and reliant on well run infrastructure. This presentation will explain some of the quirks and features, as well as covering some of the procedural and infrastructure issues that we have come across while moving to an Open development model including a new source code management system.
----
{anchor:TechnicalSEO}
h1. Technical SEO vs Strategic SEO: Simple tricks for better foo
\\
h2. Kristy Bennett
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is an interesting buzz-word bingo topic topic at the moment and everyone with TCP/IP is an expert. Filtering the bull from the truth is the hard job and, even then, 99 per cent of what you read about is only what would be considered the technical aspects of search engine optimisation. The problem with this is if the technical is the ying then the strategic is the yang and getting the best results depends on both.
Strategic search engine optimisation skills is what defines the leading consultants in industry at the present time and these people, particularly in Australia, are few and far between so it is only fair to share the black magic of strategic SEO and how it works in conjunction with Technical SEO to get more qualified traffic through to your web site.
----
{anchor:CaseStudy}
h1. Case Study: Using pre-processing Input filters
\\
h2. Drew Ames
Improving Application Security using pre-processing input filters - a case study
Recently, CQR Consulting were engaged to assist one of our customers who was having significant difficulties due to compromise through their published web applications. A review of their code and development practices showed that the quickest and most efficient way to prevent multiple attacks was through the implementation of a pre-processing validation filter.
This presentation will discuss the issues, approach and results of the development effort in creating a pre-processing validation filter. It will present the risks which can be mitigated in such a way and others which need further controls to successfully manage.
The information provided will assist attendees in the decision between roll-your-own, WAF appliance or full scale code re-write.
----
{anchor:Inkscape}
h1. Inkscape: vector graphics for sys admins
\\
h2. Donna Benjamin
Inkscape is fantastic Free and Open Source Graphic Software that is easy to learn. It is also a powerful tool for creating and modifying icons, web graphics and diagrams as well as for enhancing charts and graphs generated by spreadsheets. Using the W3C SVG standard as its native file format Inkscape is also useful for dynamically generating diagrams and reports on the fly with information direct from a database.
This is an introductory level Inkscape talk. It describes vector graphics and showcases a range of image types from Artwork to Network Diagrams to Web Mockups and beyond. The talk outlines the basic tools and techniques for generating vector graphics and the fundamental principles of graphic design.
----
{anchor:WhyCant}
h1. Why can't we all just get along?
\\
h2. Lee Damon
So just what is it that makes us "different"? Is it the OS we're best at supporting? The difference between a network engineer/admin and an application engineer/admin? The DBA's need to normalize the world vs. the system administrator's need to standardize it for sanity sake?
When you get down to it we're all professionals who have a desire to make things better, to make things go, "to make it work."
So why is it we don't see eye to eye on these things? Could it be that we don't really understand each other? Could it be something basic like communication? Could it be a simple case of 'first learned, best supported'?
Does this bother you as much as it bothers me? Well then, lets talk.
h3. Bio
Lee Damon has a BS in Speech Communication from Oregon State University. He has been a UNIX system administrator since 1985 and has been active in SAGE and LOPSA since their inceptions. He assisted in developing a mixed AIX/SunOS environment at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center and has developed mixed environments for Gulfstream Aerospace and QUALCOMM. He is currently leading the development effort for the Nikola project at the University of Washington Electrical Engineering department. Among other professional activities, he is a charter member of LOPSA and SAGE and past chair of the SAGE Ethics and Policies working groups, and he was the chair of LISA '04.
----
{anchor:WhyVirtualisation}
h1. Why Virtualisation Sucks
\\
h2. Rusty Russell
Virtualisation, like many shiny geek toys before it, has escaped the lab and is now wreaking across an enterprise near you. Is this a new level of awesome, or a sucking quagmire of complexity? I promise you that I don't know the answer, I'm just a coder.
This talk will not demonstrate how virtualisation will cure world hunger. But through my experience working on Xen, KVM and lguest I will reflect on whether the promise of obsoletion removal is real, or whether it means we'll never, ever, get rid of the crap we're stuck with now.
h3. Bio
Rusty Russell is an Australian Open Source developer, best known for his work on the Linux Kernel. He wrote the lguest virtualisation system, which has the merit of being the smallest and least featureful hypervisor supported by Linux. His other current projects include the Comprehensive C Archive Network (CCAN), ctdb, virtio and misc kernel things. He has an 8 month old daughter who is a constant source of delight and distraction.
----
{anchor:RollingOut}
h1. Rolling out new technology successfully: How users can get in the way of a good solution
\\
h2. Stephen Gillies
We roll out way too much technology without considering the impact on users. It's more than just change control, suddenly deciding to enforce a corporate policy about access to Facebook or rolling out a completely new application often turns the user population into a lynch mob with their crossbows focused on the IT staff....
Stephen will discuss some advantages of user communication and provide some insight from over 15 years experience rolling out applications and network changes which has, in some cases, seen him wanting to install a new deadbolt of his office door.
Stephen will also provide some suggestions for some of the new technology hitting the market which will change how we communicate with our peers, our customers, our managers and the suppliers we deal with.
----
{anchor:LiveMigration}
h1. Live migration to a new datacentre - from the other side of the world\!
\\
h2. John Dalton
John joined US-based startup LibraryThing.com with the task of helping them
scale up with increasing demand, and improving overall system reliability.
A major infrastructure upgrade is taking place as this is written,
culminating in a live migration of the site from one datacenter to another. This is complicated by the fact that the sysadmin has never visited either site. This talk will review the the migration plan, and compare it with reality\!
----
{anchor:ChangePlanning}
h1. Change (under) Planning
\\
h2. Geoff Crompton and Tim Bell
Geoff and Tim thought they were prepared when they announced they were migrating the master LDAP Directory to another server... and a new version of the LDAP server software... and to the first linux host to be centrally managed.
Come share their pain as they reveal the ensuing mess and the lessons they have learnt about doing change plans correctly.
----
{anchor:ReputationalSecurity}
h1. Reputational Security: Cisco's view of the future of access security and threat mitigation
\\
h2. Stephen Gillies
Since the purchase of IronPort in early 2007 and the Cisco has been working on bringing the benefits of Reputational security together with its existing industry leading DPI and traditional Firewall technologies.
A standard feature of the leading email and web gateways, Reputation is becoming increasingly relevant in a world where any Internet connected computer may be the attack platform for a highly distributed fluxing threat.
This presentation will describe some of those threats, and show that blacklists and stateful inspection are only one part of the future of gateway protection. Further, as Internet technologies increasingly impact the devices we use on a daily basis, how do we protect new devices and secure new applications? A discussion on attack types and technology concepts, this talk is not focused on the newest iron from Cisco but on security strategy and architecture.
----
{anchor:RelaxFailure}
h1. Relax\! A Failure is NOT an Emergency
\\
h2. Arjen Lentz
Modern geeks have a life. The trick is to keep it\!
Many people regard the existence and occurrance of "emergency situations" as normal and inevitable, and I choose to challenge this.
We don't want to be woken up in the middle of the night or across a weekend by blipping mobiles. Really.
Of course, I'm an argumentative Dutchie, but that merely explains why I don't shy away from a topic - challenging the premise actually makes sound business and commercial sense both for companies as well as their clients and service providers (that is, upstream and downstream).
I'll describe what this is all about and why I feel it's important. With this new baseline, interesting possibilities open up. The basis is "prevention is better than a cure" but of course there's more to it than that, as many will agree with that particular statement but then disagree with the naturally following assertion of "a failure is not an emergency", for seemingly perfectly sensible reasons.
As concepts are best tested by trying to disprove them, we'll try to identify scenarios where it might not work, and disect the "why?". And finally, we'll touch on the related slippery topic of "commercial risk".
----
{anchor:InternetCensorship}
h1. Internet Censorship in Australia - Where are we at?
\\
h2. Panel: Kimberlee Weatherall, Peter Black, Nic Suzor and others
----
{anchor:StateBroadband}
h1. State of the Broadband Nation
\\
h2. Simon Hackett
In this session, we'll take a look at the current state of play in Australian broadband, and see what is approaching on the horizon.
h3. Bio
Simon Hackett founded and runs both Internode, a broadband services provider, and Agile, a broadband network building company. He helped to put AARNet v1 together many moons ago. He likes making good and cool technical things happen in the broadband space.
----
{panel}
{anchor:Democracy}
h1. The Network at the Heart of Democracy
\\
h2. Matthew Landauer
Today's network, the internet, has already shown itself to be the agent of great change. In this talk I'm going to look at some of the new ways politics is coming to ordinary people and some of the incredible opportunities for the future. We have the potential to re-imagine the very core of our democratic system - but how can we do this without leaving people behind?
h3. Bio
Matthew co-founded OpenAustralia.org and is its lead developer. His paid side-work is as director and developer of Visual Appliance, a small company dedicated to developing software for the international feature film visual effects industry.
----
{anchor:VersionControl}
h1. Version control for system administrators
\\
h2. Greg Warner
When I began as a systems administrator I was often asked to assist engineers to setup and configure their version control systems.
But it never occurred to me that the same version control systems could assist with management of my own scripts and maintaining my own systems.
This talk will provide practical examples using various version control techniques that assist with deploying across development, test and production systems with different architectures and operating systems.
The talk will also cover the importance of task based systems administration which can occur when you integrate your help desk/bug tracking system with a version control system. The outcome is better configuration management of your systems and better traceability identifying why a change was made and when.
----
{anchor:Windows7Security}
h1. Windows 7 Security Changes - Enhancing Security and Control
\\
h2. Jeff Alexander
Windows 7 has many features for the consumer, developer and IT Pro. But what about Security? In this session we'll demonstrate some of the important security features that are inherent in Windows 7. These include Applocker™, Bitlocker™ and Bitlocker To Go™, DirectAcess™, as well as the modifications to User Account Control. We'll also overview the security and privacy enhancements to Internet Explorer 8. See firsthand how Windows 7 and Internet Explorer 8 will help improve your organisation's security and privacy.
----
{anchor:Drizzle}
h1. Drizzle: A Microkernel DBMS for High Performance Scale-Out Applications
\\
h2. Stewart Smith
Drizzle is our fork of the MySQL server. It sets its aim at a particular problem, the web-sphere, and goes all out to work really well in this environment.
This talk is part story of how we forked the project and how we got people to join the revolution along with part "this is Drizzle". What is different about Drizzle? How do you use Drizzle? How do you install and manage Drizzle? How do you use PAM or LDAP authentication
We are past our first milestone release (named "Cirrus") and ready for early adopters.
----
{anchor:GoGreen}
h1. Windows 7 User Access Control
\\
h2. Pete Calvert
The Australian Federal Government's recent foray in to Internet content filtering highlights the concerns of many that typical computer users are not capable of protecting themselves against the evils lurking on the internet. Within organisations, particularly large and dynamic ones, a single interally connected compromised machine can wreak havoc behind firewalls and external content filters. Microsoft has been incorporating technology within their operating systems to keep administrative functionality and user activity separate for many years, most recently with the much maligned User Access Control (UAC) in Windows Vista. UAC was perceived as intrusive and distracting by so many people that most turned it off, negating the benefits that it could bring. With Windows 7 UAC has been refined to be more granular in application and less obtrusive to users while still allowing system administrators to enforce its usage through Group Policy. This talk highlights the changes that have been made to UAC with Windows 7 and touches on other security updates that have been introduced in the most recent incarnation of Microsoft's operating systems, changes that system administrators should be aware of in order to make informed decisions, increase administration efficiences and reduce their workload.
----
{anchor:Windows7UAC}
h1. Go Green, Save Green: Virtualization at Oracle On Demand Case Study
\\
h2. Avi Miller
As an IT professional, you face growing challenges: rapid, unpredictable change; unrelenting competitive and regulatory pressures; tight budgets; and increasing concern for the environment. Now is the ideal time to consider a grid computing approach to modernising your data centre.
This talk is an overview of how Oracle On Demand uses new grid technologies to:
* Improve efficiency with server clustering and load balancing
* Drive IT agility with on-demand provisioning, automation, and real-time predictive monitoring
* Boost availability with disaster protection, failover strategies, and quality of service management
* Green your operations with server consolidation, virtualization, and energy-saving best practices
----
{anchor:MovingTowards}
h1. Moving Towards Monitoring Everything
\\
h2. Geoffrey Day
Over the last 5 years TMD have built 2 data centres and vastly expanded the number and complexity of services we provide. Management now want a single integrated system that provide monitoring on everything from room power, temperature and hardware right through to "service availability" and everything in between. We do not have this and it is impossible to purchase for any price. I will take a brief look at where TMD started, before discussing in detail our environment which consists of: generator, UPS's, air-conditioners, room environment, racks, server hardware, network hardware, SAN equipment, VMware, operating systems, CPU usage, memory usage, processes, applications, performance and much, much more. We will look the tools we use, why we use them, talk about alternatives and finish with our plans for the future
----
{anchor:MySQL}
h1. The MySQL Architecture and Scaling Quiz: Sane or ?
\\
h2. Arjen Lentz
Based on real-world deployments, a fun quiz where the SAGE-AU conference audience gets to decide whether a range of given designs makes sense or not.
As you know, truth is stranger than fiction any day - so we don't need to make up weird scenarios, they're out there already, in production\!
Will you use your existing MySQL skills, or apply expertise from other RDBMS or separate fields? Will you be able to pick the good stuff from the bad? Let's find out\!
----
{anchor:AutomatingConfiguration}
h1. Automating Configuration Management using Puppet
\\
h2. Brendan Beveridge
Brief overview of benefits of automating config management
Brief look into puppet
----
{anchor:TelecommutingSysadmin}
h1. Telecommuting Sysadmin
\\
h2. John Dalton
Have you ever dreamed of telecommuting full-time? For almost two years
John has been working from home for a US-based company, managing
infrastructure on the other side of the planet. He'll talk about the
benefits and challenges this involves, the technologies used, and the
social and professional issues that result.
----
{anchor:ControllingAuditing}
h1. Controlling and Auditing software deployment with git
\\
h2. Alec Clews
When deploying files into commercial environments it is vital to document and audit the deployment of files across multiple application instances.
This paper presents a working example that addresses some of the major issues relating to deployment such as automation, access control, logging and change auditing.
Traditionally the git version control tool is used to manage development source code and as a delivery point for other tools such as such Capistrano or Puppet. However current deployment and system management frameworks often use a specialist domain language or pidgin which can make them more complex to deploy. Some tools also require the implementation of classes to perform specific actions. Using git with a number of simple wrapper scripts can greatly simplify the deployment implementation. In a system management environment this effort is worthwhile, but for application deployment it is often too much complex.
After attending this presentation attendees will be able to implement a similar git based approach elsewhere in any modern scripting language or framework.
----
{anchor:CareFeeding}
h1. Care and feeding of developers: experiences from the OpenSolaris Gate
\\
h2. James C. McPherson
The OpenSolaris development community is globally distributed, and reliant on well run infrastructure. This presentation will explain some of the quirks and features, as well as covering some of the procedural and infrastructure issues that we have come across while moving to an Open development model including a new source code management system.
----
{anchor:TechnicalSEO}
h1. Technical SEO vs Strategic SEO: Simple tricks for better foo
\\
h2. Kristy Bennett
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is an interesting buzz-word bingo topic topic at the moment and everyone with TCP/IP is an expert. Filtering the bull from the truth is the hard job and, even then, 99 per cent of what you read about is only what would be considered the technical aspects of search engine optimisation. The problem with this is if the technical is the ying then the strategic is the yang and getting the best results depends on both.
Strategic search engine optimisation skills is what defines the leading consultants in industry at the present time and these people, particularly in Australia, are few and far between so it is only fair to share the black magic of strategic SEO and how it works in conjunction with Technical SEO to get more qualified traffic through to your web site.
----
{anchor:CaseStudy}
h1. Case Study: Using pre-processing Input filters
\\
h2. Drew Ames
Improving Application Security using pre-processing input filters - a case study
Recently, CQR Consulting were engaged to assist one of our customers who was having significant difficulties due to compromise through their published web applications. A review of their code and development practices showed that the quickest and most efficient way to prevent multiple attacks was through the implementation of a pre-processing validation filter.
This presentation will discuss the issues, approach and results of the development effort in creating a pre-processing validation filter. It will present the risks which can be mitigated in such a way and others which need further controls to successfully manage.
The information provided will assist attendees in the decision between roll-your-own, WAF appliance or full scale code re-write.
----
{anchor:Inkscape}
h1. Inkscape: vector graphics for sys admins
\\
h2. Donna Benjamin
Inkscape is fantastic Free and Open Source Graphic Software that is easy to learn. It is also a powerful tool for creating and modifying icons, web graphics and diagrams as well as for enhancing charts and graphs generated by spreadsheets. Using the W3C SVG standard as its native file format Inkscape is also useful for dynamically generating diagrams and reports on the fly with information direct from a database.
This is an introductory level Inkscape talk. It describes vector graphics and showcases a range of image types from Artwork to Network Diagrams to Web Mockups and beyond. The talk outlines the basic tools and techniques for generating vector graphics and the fundamental principles of graphic design.
----
{anchor:WhyCant}
h1. Why can't we all just get along?
\\
h2. Lee Damon
So just what is it that makes us "different"? Is it the OS we're best at supporting? The difference between a network engineer/admin and an application engineer/admin? The DBA's need to normalize the world vs. the system administrator's need to standardize it for sanity sake?
When you get down to it we're all professionals who have a desire to make things better, to make things go, "to make it work."
So why is it we don't see eye to eye on these things? Could it be that we don't really understand each other? Could it be something basic like communication? Could it be a simple case of 'first learned, best supported'?
Does this bother you as much as it bothers me? Well then, lets talk.
h3. Bio
Lee Damon has a BS in Speech Communication from Oregon State University. He has been a UNIX system administrator since 1985 and has been active in SAGE and LOPSA since their inceptions. He assisted in developing a mixed AIX/SunOS environment at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center and has developed mixed environments for Gulfstream Aerospace and QUALCOMM. He is currently leading the development effort for the Nikola project at the University of Washington Electrical Engineering department. Among other professional activities, he is a charter member of LOPSA and SAGE and past chair of the SAGE Ethics and Policies working groups, and he was the chair of LISA '04.
----
{anchor:WhyVirtualisation}
h1. Why Virtualisation Sucks
\\
h2. Rusty Russell
Virtualisation, like many shiny geek toys before it, has escaped the lab and is now wreaking across an enterprise near you. Is this a new level of awesome, or a sucking quagmire of complexity? I promise you that I don't know the answer, I'm just a coder.
This talk will not demonstrate how virtualisation will cure world hunger. But through my experience working on Xen, KVM and lguest I will reflect on whether the promise of obsoletion removal is real, or whether it means we'll never, ever, get rid of the crap we're stuck with now.
h3. Bio
Rusty Russell is an Australian Open Source developer, best known for his work on the Linux Kernel. He wrote the lguest virtualisation system, which has the merit of being the smallest and least featureful hypervisor supported by Linux. His other current projects include the Comprehensive C Archive Network (CCAN), ctdb, virtio and misc kernel things. He has an 8 month old daughter who is a constant source of delight and distraction.
----
{anchor:RollingOut}
h1. Rolling out new technology successfully: How users can get in the way of a good solution
\\
h2. Stephen Gillies
We roll out way too much technology without considering the impact on users. It's more than just change control, suddenly deciding to enforce a corporate policy about access to Facebook or rolling out a completely new application often turns the user population into a lynch mob with their crossbows focused on the IT staff....
Stephen will discuss some advantages of user communication and provide some insight from over 15 years experience rolling out applications and network changes which has, in some cases, seen him wanting to install a new deadbolt of his office door.
Stephen will also provide some suggestions for some of the new technology hitting the market which will change how we communicate with our peers, our customers, our managers and the suppliers we deal with.
----
{anchor:LiveMigration}
h1. Live migration to a new datacentre - from the other side of the world\!
\\
h2. John Dalton
John joined US-based startup LibraryThing.com with the task of helping them
scale up with increasing demand, and improving overall system reliability.
A major infrastructure upgrade is taking place as this is written,
culminating in a live migration of the site from one datacenter to another. This is complicated by the fact that the sysadmin has never visited either site. This talk will review the the migration plan, and compare it with reality\!
----
{anchor:ChangePlanning}
h1. Change (under) Planning
\\
h2. Geoff Crompton and Tim Bell
Geoff and Tim thought they were prepared when they announced they were migrating the master LDAP Directory to another server... and a new version of the LDAP server software... and to the first linux host to be centrally managed.
Come share their pain as they reveal the ensuing mess and the lessons they have learnt about doing change plans correctly.
----
{anchor:ReputationalSecurity}
h1. Reputational Security: Cisco's view of the future of access security and threat mitigation
\\
h2. Stephen Gillies
Since the purchase of IronPort in early 2007 and the Cisco has been working on bringing the benefits of Reputational security together with its existing industry leading DPI and traditional Firewall technologies.
A standard feature of the leading email and web gateways, Reputation is becoming increasingly relevant in a world where any Internet connected computer may be the attack platform for a highly distributed fluxing threat.
This presentation will describe some of those threats, and show that blacklists and stateful inspection are only one part of the future of gateway protection. Further, as Internet technologies increasingly impact the devices we use on a daily basis, how do we protect new devices and secure new applications? A discussion on attack types and technology concepts, this talk is not focused on the newest iron from Cisco but on security strategy and architecture.
----
{anchor:RelaxFailure}
h1. Relax\! A Failure is NOT an Emergency
\\
h2. Arjen Lentz
Modern geeks have a life. The trick is to keep it\!
Many people regard the existence and occurrance of "emergency situations" as normal and inevitable, and I choose to challenge this.
We don't want to be woken up in the middle of the night or across a weekend by blipping mobiles. Really.
Of course, I'm an argumentative Dutchie, but that merely explains why I don't shy away from a topic - challenging the premise actually makes sound business and commercial sense both for companies as well as their clients and service providers (that is, upstream and downstream).
I'll describe what this is all about and why I feel it's important. With this new baseline, interesting possibilities open up. The basis is "prevention is better than a cure" but of course there's more to it than that, as many will agree with that particular statement but then disagree with the naturally following assertion of "a failure is not an emergency", for seemingly perfectly sensible reasons.
As concepts are best tested by trying to disprove them, we'll try to identify scenarios where it might not work, and disect the "why?". And finally, we'll touch on the related slippery topic of "commercial risk".
----
{anchor:InternetCensorship}
h1. Internet Censorship in Australia - Where are we at?
\\
h2. Panel: Kimberlee Weatherall, Peter Black, Nic Suzor and others
----
{anchor:StateBroadband}
h1. State of the Broadband Nation
\\
h2. Simon Hackett
In this session, we'll take a look at the current state of play in Australian broadband, and see what is approaching on the horizon.
h3. Bio
Simon Hackett founded and runs both Internode, a broadband services provider, and Agile, a broadband network building company. He helped to put AARNet v1 together many moons ago. He likes making good and cool technical things happen in the broadband space.
----