POSSCON 2011

I'm starting to get excited about POSSCON.  This will be my first computer science related professional conference, so I'm also a little bit nervous.  I'm also somewhat thankful for the requirement to meet and talk with some of the presenters.  I know that I'm too timid to do this if I wasn't being nudged, but I also know that it will make the experience more rewarding and beneficial.  I've also been realizing again just how important it is to learn these basic networking skills.

One of the things that is encouraging to me is that Walter Bender, one of the co-founders of One Laptop Per Child and involved with SugarLabs, will be there.  In case you're new to my blog, I am participating in the SugarLabs HFOSS project by contributing to a new activity called Lemonade Stand.  In addition to talking with Mr. Bender about SugarLabs and the activities, I'm also interested in OLPC, specifically its implementation in Africa and in general in rural areas of developing countries.  I've spent some time in Tanzania and Swaziland and to be completely honest, I don't understand how a laptop is going to fix things in either of those education systems.  Technology requires power, which is not always available in these schools.  The project has obviously been successful in certain locations, so I'm interested in how some of these basic obstacles have been overcome.

Another speaker I'm interested in speaking with is Deb Bryant.  She works in the Open Source Lab at Oregon State University and will be making a presentation on Open Source in Government.  This is something that is of particular interest to me because my husband is in the Navy and I have watched him suffer through poorly developed and maintained tools which he is required to use.  I didn't realize that the government was willing to work with open source, especially considering how Windows-centric their current software is and how Linux-centric open source work seems to be.  I'm hoping to talk with her about what is currently being done and where to find these types of projects.  Since I may not be working in my first year after graduation, this might be an interesting place to stay involved and continue developing my skills.

As I continued my research about the speakers I found someone else who will be presenting about a certain interest of mine: Steve Sarsfield.  He will be talking about data governance - a subject I have a hard time explaining, but which I believe is invaluable to the success of any enterprise.  My last job was essentially as a DBA, which gave me a lot of experience dealing with poor data collection and maintenance.  When I joined the organization there was a lot of data clean-up necessary and there were not good practices in place for collecting good data.  This problem may not be exactly what he is addressing, but it seems related to me.  His bio actually refers to him as a blogger, so I am hoping to find his blog and do some reading before POSSCON so that I can be better prepared, both in what to expect and in my questions.