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Using rsnapshot to backup changing data.
Linux.conf.au: First timers Guide.
Simple way to protect your wiki from Spam.
Where are ex-ihug Engineering guys now?.
Domestic Blindness Information
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Spam from an ISP perspective talk given to Uniforum NZ in July 2003.

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© Simon Lyall 2008

I am starting to get ready for conferences early in 2007.

NZNOG
The Call for Participation and Papers for NZNOG 07 has gone out. This year it will be in Palmerston North between 31 January and 2 February. As usual I am looking forward to it, this year I'm on the programme committee and organising the lightning talks.

The CFP was only sent a couple of days ago so we are still waiting around for some replies with offers to present. I would expect we will get a few soon but waiting is a little nerve wracking.

Linux.conf.au
The 2007 LCA will be held in Sydney a week or so before NZNOG. I am definitely planning to go as I have really enjoyed the last 3 (Adelaide, Canberra and Dunedin). Worth going to to meet some of the serious Open Source people and find out what is going on, what are the hot technologies and the learn stuff. The networking is fun too.

Sysadmin Miniconf
Early this year I was one of the organisers of a Sysadmin Miniconf at Linux.conf.au in Dunedin. The LCA conferences tend to run from a Monday though to a Saturday and on the first 2 days a series of Miniconfs is held on Debian, Gnome, Openoffice or whatever.

I'm not much of a programmer so at previous LCAs I was a little left out when I had the choice between talks like "Kobjects, ksets, and ktypes: the device model from the bottom up" , "Inside the PostgreSQL Query Optimizer" , "Towards a small, efficient Linux hardware inventory system" all back to back. So working off the theory of setting up a conference with stuff I wanted I pushed the Sysadmin Miniconf a bit and it worked pretty well.

However for LCA 07 the organisers indicated in the CFP that they were after more sysadminy papers in the main conference which meant that there wasn't as big a demand for a separate Miniconf so we decided not to organise one. We will see how things go and there is always an option for 2008 etc.

Instead Ewen McNeill and myself are looking to have a similar event on the first day (Wednesday) of NZNOG 07. The event will probably be fairly similar to the Dunedin one and since NZNOG attracts plenty of operational people should be a good fit. More details in the future.

BarCamp
Finally I am considering the option of holding a Barcamp in Auckland at some point (A weekend in early December seems good). Barcamps don't have a lot to do with running Bars unfortunately but is "an ad-hoc un-conference born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from attendees." . Read the website and if you are interested in the idea then send me an email and we'll see if we get enough interest.