Linux.Conf.Au 2007 Conference

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Thursday, January 18, 2007

High-Availability Linux talk

15:01
So, about my <a href="http://linux-ha.org/HeartbeatTutorials";>talk</a>...

It went really well. I think Jeff Waugh would have said "It Rocked" (because he says that a lot). The audience was great, and the room was pretty full (probably 50-75 people). About 2/3 of the people had done HA type things before, most of those same people had used release 1, and only 2 or 3 people had ever used release 2. A perfect audience for the talk!

When my 90 minutes was up, I only had 100 or so slides left to go ;-) . This was about as planned since the tutorial slot I had was about 4.5 hours short of enough time for a detailed tutorial. I had a hard time packing up and leaving afterwards - people who wanted to talk to me were between me and my stuff. Eventually, they kicked us out (a half-hour later), and I and my little entourage left. As we left the building, we went our own ways, and I went out to the pavilion outside to see how "Open Day" was going.

As I entered the pavilion, about 5 meters inside the entrance and a couple meters to the right was an Asian woman - who was going on and on about my talk - raving about how good it was and how much she'd enjoyed it. She spoke with an American accent and was dressed a lot better than the other attendees (about 2/3 of the way to a business suit). I really didn't know quite what how to react to this situation, but I was tired, so I decided I'd ignore her for the moment. I started to go on through, and she saw me as I went by. She grabbed her companion and told him "That's the guy I was telling you about" and then redirected her enthusiastic and effusive praise to me -- how great the talk was, and how much she'd enjoyed it and so on.

I told her I was really glad she'd enjoyed my talk, and that's why I give talks, and I have a great time giving them, have had fun on the project, and so on. When someone grabs me like this, I try and look for common ground based on their background. But, she wasn't wearing her conference badge. So, I said, "I see you're not wearing your badge. Who do you work for?". She paused for a second then replied a bit quieter - "Microsoft". I was a bit taken aback, and didn't know quite how to reply to that, so I said something like "That's OK. Glad to have you here." I told someone else this story later on and he said "Well, they've got to learn somewhere". [Not sure I agree with the tone of that remark, but it was funny anyway. And, if they learned something in the process, then I'm happy for that too. Maybe they'll sign up to do a Windows port ;-)].

I'm told there was a Microsoft employee taking copious notes during a talk on building communities - which wouldn't be at all surprising.

Back to the talk itself...
Lots of people did actually stop me later and say the talk had really gotten them fired up for installing release 2 and taking advantage of its cool features. Exactly what I had hoped!

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