Presentations and Tutorials

Over the years I have presented several talks and tutorials. In the spirit of giving back to the community, here are my slides and/or speaking notes:

The Path to Senior Sysadmin
Invited Talk presented at: Slides:

Job-Hunting Skills for System Administrators
Invited Talk presented at: Slides:

How to Get Your Budget Approved
Invited Talk presented at: Slides: This talk is an abbreviated (and updated!) version of "Budgeting for System Administrators" (below).

How to Interview a System Administrator
Tutorial, presented at: Speaking notes: Additional materials

How to Get Your Papers Accepted at LISA
Talk / Guru Session, presented jointly with Tom Limoncelli at: Slides: If you think you might ever write a paper for LISA (and I encourage you to do so), please read our slides; if you have additional questions, please don’t hesitate to send me email.

Budgeting for System Administrators
Invited Talk presented at: Slides:

There’s one other talk (class, really) that I give: “Workplace Presentations 101 for IT professionals.” Since I’m actively being paid to teach that class I’m not yet ready to make the slides and notes publicly available. If you want to hire me to teach the class where you work (or at a conference you’re organizing or for your local technical group meeting, contact me for rates and availability. (Note that for non-profit groups I’m probably willing to do it for just the cost of my travel expenses.) For more details about the class, have a look at the event page from when I ran the course in March 2011.

One thing from that class I am willing to make available is a PowerPoint color test to be help pick a color scheme that works for any circumstance (room, lighting, projector, screen). It doesn’t even come close to letting you test every combination of foreground and background colors; instead, I’ve limited it to the six foreground and seven background colors that I recommend, plus black on white.