Would you like to speak at LOPSA-NJ? We'd love to have you come and speak! Meeting sizes vary from 15-55 people and are usually held in Lawrence, New Jersey. Each meeting begins with 30 minutes of "social" time, followed by the speaker at 7:30pm.
We have had very good success with speakers that were from out of state that happened to be in or near New Jersey and free on a Thursday night. Keep us in mind if you plan on being in New York City or New Jersey any time soon and could spare an evening to chat with us.
Why speak at LOPSA-NJ?
We're a bunch of fun-loving sysadmins that want to hear what you have to say. We are looking for technical presentations. No sales pitches... ever.
What kind of topics are we looking for?
The key word is "technical". Don't hold back! Tell us about the guts of the system, bring slides with source-code, configuration files, etc. We can take it.
We're not interested in sales pitches. We're the propeller-heads that sit in the back of the room during sales pitches making notes about how many times you mis-pronounced "FDDI", chuckled when you mixed up the Session and Transport layers of the OSI protocol stack, and asked questions like, "Does it work behind a firewall" even before most people knew what "the Internet" is. ...and we all hate the term "intranet".
Nothing sells product to people like us like a good technical presentation. Nothing keeps us away from your products like a salespitch. Got it?
Here's a list of previous presentations when we were $GROUPNAME to help you get an idea of what we usually have:
- "Majordomo and other mail toys", Tom Limoncelli, Mentor Graphics Corp
- "PERL5 and The Perl Programming Language", Tom Christiansen
- "Security Without a Firewall (how Princeton handles security)", Lawrence Rogers and Chris Kranz, Princeton
- "Firewalls", Bill Cheswick, AT&T Bell Labs
- "Why would a sysadmin want to run OSF's DCE?", Rich Salz of OSF and INN fame
- "Technical overview of the new NS7000 from Auspex", Don Zigo, Auspex
- "Where is Novell taking Unix?", George Demarest, Novell
- "Technical overview of Network Appliance's NFS server", Dave Hurley, Network Appliance
- "The Latest on NFS/NIS", Hal Stern, Sun
- "Plan 9", Rob Pike, AT&T Bell Labs
- "An opinion of what sys admin's should do for their user community", Ted Leibfried, AT&T Bell Labs
How much will I be paid?
Nothing. We can't afford to reimburse you for travel. However, you gain the knowledge of helping the profession, spreading your good name. It's excellent exposure.
Suggested Topics
The audience has recently suggested the following topics: IPv6, Networking with ATM, a panel of representatives from various UNIX vendors answering the question "What are the biggest problems with UNIX and what are we doing to fix them?"
What to Expect
Attendance: Our group's typical attendance is anywhere between 15 and 30, depending on the topic and the time of year.
Location: LOPSA-NJ meets at the Lawrenceville Public Library.
Audio/Visual: The Library facilities include a projection screen, limited Internet access, and the capacity for a large audience. LOPSA-NJ has our own projector (if you are planing to use a Mac for your presentation please remember your adapter so you can connect to the VGA port on the projector) , if required.
How to Arrange
When: LOPSA-NJ meets on the first Thursday of each month, unless otherwise noted.
Contact us: If you would like to speak at LOPSA-NJ, contact William Bilancio (info@lopsanj.org) to start the ball rolling.
What we need: To best promote your presentation, and to let our membership know what to expect from your visit, we'll need:
- Your name, organization or project you'll be representing, and your position, if applicable
- A short title describing your talk (e.g., "History of the foo Project")
- A summary blurb, describing your talk. Feel free to define terms or describe products, as you see fit. URLs are welcome.
- Your biographical information is always helpful.
- The general technical level of your talk. (Not technical at all? Extremely technical?)
- What will you need from us? (A projector is assumed. Internet access?)
Give-a ways:
You are welcome to bring give-a ways ("swag"), flyers, pamphlets and handouts. Unless you or we think the meeting will have a larger-than-usual attendance, 25-30 of each item is plenty. (We can keep the rest to give away at later meetings.)
Anything Else?
If you have any other questions or comments, feel free to let us know when we arrange your visit. (If you've simply got some suggestions on how to improve this document, let the webmaster know!)
