We’re 3 years old and as we have finally gotten our foothold it seems like a good time to pick a name that more accurately depicts who we are and what we do. Changing the name of the conference is a very serious matter. It is not something we take lightly. At the current growth rate this is likely to be our last opportunity to change the name (our registration numbers for the first three years were 81, 98 and 127. We hope to grow to 150-200 which is a good size for a regional conference).

At the end of PICC ’12 we surveyed the audience about possibly changing the name of the conference. We asked for a show of hands and nobody liked one of our first idea. Literally nobody raised their hand. However when we suggested “LOPSA-East” people actually cheered.

We’ve been asking for suggestions for the last few months but not have had such a great reaction as “LOPSA-East”.

After discussion with the board and other stakeholders we’ve decided to make it official. Starting in 2013 the conference will be known as “LOPSA-East (formerly PICC)”. Our old URL will always work but the new URL will be lopsa-east.org

We have big news! The conference chair for PICC ’13 is Adam Moskowitz! You may know him from BBLISA or other fine events and organizations. Adam brings a wealth of experience to PICC. He’s even chaired a Usenix LISA conference.

This is the first time we’ve had a conference program chair so far in advance of the next conference. We can’t wait for the planning cycle to get started. PICC ’13 will be
the best PICC yet!

PICC ’13 will be May 3-4, 2013!

We’ve signed the contract with the hotel so it is safe to “mark your calendar”.

It wil be in New Brunswick NJ (same hotel as the first 3 years)

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PICC ’12 was a big success!  Thanks to everyone for attending!  Here’s some great pictures that were taken by “Matt Simmons:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bandman614/sets/72157629714863480/

I hope you are ready for two solid days packed with information and learning opportunities. The Committee has stepped up their game this year. They listened to your Feedback and put together a tremendous set of Tutorials, Talks and Presentations.  If you see a conference volunteer thank them for the conference as I can’t thank them enough for the work they did.

This year we added Birds of a Feather (BoF) sessions on Friday night after dinner. I hope you take advantage of these sessions. A key word in our conference name is “Community” and the BoFs are a great place to build Community.  Also don’t miss out on the “Hallway Track”. The breaks are a great venue to talk over a presentation, put a face to a name you only saw on the email list and create new connections in a field that has been famous for stepping in and helping solve issues.

We have two great Keynote speakers Bill Cheswick and Rebecca Mercuri. Bill will be kicking off the conference speaking on how we mismanage our passwords. Rebecca will be closing the conference with her talk “The Black Swan and Information Security”.  What a great lineup.

We need your participation to make this a successful conference. Please fill out the feedback survey after each tutorial (http://www.picconf.org/training-survey) and after the conference (http://www.picconf.org/rate-picc-12/). We analyze your feedback and use it shape next year’s conference and tutorials.

So enjoy the conference and if you see me through the weekend don’t be afraid to stop me and let me know how we did. I love feedback. In the words of “Johnny Five” Hmmm. Data!.

Go Team!!!

John Boris – PICC ’12 Conference Chair

The PICC committee is excited to announce our closing keynote speaker:

Rebecca Mercuri on “The Black Swan and Information Security”

Dr. Mercuri is the lead forensic expert at Notable Software, Inc.

Her caseload has included matters from contraband, murder, viruses and malware, and election recounts (most notably Bush vs. Gore).  She has testified on the federal, state, and local level as well as to the U.K. Cabinet.

Talk abstract:
The economic theories proposed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book “The Black Swan” have strong parallels in information security. Indeed, the concepts of robustness and risk assessment mentioned in Taleb’s writing are also well known to those who design software and systems intended to withstand attack. Such assaults on computers, networks and data are now so commonplace that if these threats all suddenly vanished, this would likely constitute a Black Swan Event.

But whether a successful and novel attack should also be considered a Black Swan may be debatable. This talk will compare the shortcomings of bell curve (Mediocristan) and power law (Extremistan) event models. The idea that outlier occurrences should be considered more “normal” will shed insight on new methods for recovery mitigation. Attendees need no formal knowledge of statistics or economics in order to appreciate the concepts discussed in this talk.

Register now and avoid the rush!   http://picconf.org   Space is limited!

Registration is open for the 2012 LOPSA PICC conference, May 11-12, 2012 at the Hyatt Regency hotel in New Brunswick, NJ.  Sysadmins and IT workers from Maine to Virginia are expected to attend the most talked about, community-driven, sysadmin conference of 2012!

We’re excited to announce our slate of speakers and world-class tutorials for 2012.

This 2-day conference starts on Friday with long-format tutorials on a wide variety of topics by world-class instructors: Topics include PowerShell, Puppet, Amazon Web Services, WordPress, DNSSEC, IPv6 and much, much more!  (Tutorial schedule: http://www.picconf.org/picc12-training-classes )

Saturday adds invited speakers on a wide variety of topics:

• Learn how Google does backups, how Etsy manages DevOps, and how  Mozilla has radically revamped their software release process.
• Windows users will love the talks on MS Small Business Server  and tutorials on PowerShell (requested back for a 2nd year).
• Linux users will love the talks about high performance computing, he Ganeti free virtualization project, and advanced monitoring techniques.
• DevOps will be impressed by speakers from “the big three” configuration management vendors: CFEngine, Chef, and Puppet.
• Cloud computing training from speakers with “from the trenches” experience.

Speaker list: http://www.picconf.org/picc-12-talkspapers

To register goto http://www.picconf.org/registration/#event