LISA '11: Deb Nicholson on 25 Years of LISA

Deb Nicholson has more than 15 years of non-profit management experience and got involved in the free software movement about five years ago. Currently she splits her time between MediaGoblin, a federated media-hosting start-up, Open Hatch, a non-profit dedicated to identifying and mentoring new free software contributors, and Harvard, where she is working on a graduate degree in Information Technology.

Nicholson attended her first LISA back in 2006, and this year she'll be leading a birds of a feather session, Software Patents and Linux, at LISA '11 on Monday, December 5.

"I think the percentage of ladies attending has increased a bit each year, which I appreciate," Nicholson says. She'll be on the Wednesday Women in Tech panel this year, too.

Nicholson says that her first LISA back in 2006 was a positive experience. "All of my first LISA was amazing, especially since it was the first tech conference I'd ever attended," she explains. "Everyone was really nice and wanted to talk about technology for hours. It kind of made me feel like I'd been going to the wrong family reunions."

Like other attendees, Nicholson made great connections over the years. "Dave Nalley [community mananger for the CloudStack project] and I met for the first time at LISA. He introduced me to a dozen other Fedora people and everyone who organizes SELF [Southeast Linuxfest]," she says. Other connections she's made include Cat Allman (then Usenix, now Google), Bill Pollack (No Starch Press), Kent Skaar (VMWare), Mark Hinkle (then Zenoss, now Cloud.com), Kyle Smith (then TERC, now Google), everyone at FreeBSD, and more.

"LISA is a collection of everyone's smartest sys admin," Nicholson says. "I like hearing what tools people are using and what tools are driving people crazy."

Why should you come to LISA '11 in Boston?

According to Nicholson, "If you care about technology and you want to know what's coming next, LISA is a friendly place to find out."