ABLEconf Free Software for Free Enterprise

Thanks to everyone who proposed a talk! Thanks especially to those who are travelling to town in order to speak for us.

This year's ABLEconf has a variety of great presentations. We have talks for small- and medium-sized businesses. We have talks for educational environments. We have talks on security, desktop applications and even for finding a career.

Speakers include a KDE core developer, a senior Red Hat engineer and several local stars from our community.

See you Saturday the 24th at ABLEconf.

Meeting Modern User Expectations (F/OSS Across the Device and Experience Spectrum)
Presenter: Aaron Seigo
Length: 50 Minutes
In the 1990s, several F/OSS projects were founded to create high quality desktop software. Today the communities that organized around those original projects span the spectrum of hardware form factors and user experience expectations: from mobile to netbook to laptop to desktop to industrial usage; rich client, thin client and cloud computing.

This presentation demonstrates how KDE products are meeting the needs and expectations of modern users and pushing forward the boundaries of what's possible.

Why's and How's of Server Consolidation through Virtualization
Presenter: Rick Spurgeon
Length: 50 Minutes
Presentation highlights:
a) the impetus for server consolidation
b) virtualization as an enabler of server consolidation
c) VMware, xen, and KVM as virtualization engines
d) considerations relative to deploying virtualization in your datacenter
e) applying what has been learned in the server world to the desktop

ITIL: The Dreams, the Wake-Up
Presenter: Kaia Taylor
Length: 20 Minutes
Outline
* Motivation for ITIL - it's always been there
* ITIL's ancesters
* The hype
* ITIL's scope
* What we're looking at - only a small part of the scope
* Specific examples of cmdb implementation and what could block it
-- ownership of distributed databases
-- info formats
-- different motivations
-- viewing issues
-- multiple copies - plusses and minuses
-- sanity checks
-- authoritative sources

How to Land a Job and Career in Information Security
Presenter: Debbie Christofferson
Length: 50 Minutes
Security provides a red-hot job opportunity today, for men and women alike. Security is front and center for most businesses and is expected to stay hot for the coming decade. What skills and experience will you need to land a job or map a career, and what are the specific job options? Who is your competition and how can you come out on top? How can you enter the field without direct experience? What are the best ways to leverage your passion and skills for current and future security positions? What skills matter most and how can you focus experience and education to gain a market advantage? Join us-to help you stand up and stand out, and successfully compete.

Small / Medium Business FOSS Reliable Server Solution
Presenter: Steven DuChene
Most SMB, small to medium businesses (Attorney, Doctor, Dentist, and etc) do not have a dedicated IT support person on site. Most of their IT systems for desktop and back office servers only get attention when they have problems. Because of these and other issues, it is quite common for them to experience data loss or temporary off-line conditions that directly effect their ability to service their core business requirements. Most of these small to medium size offices typically have a single office server in a back room with some rudimentary backup solution in place. Although the backup may not have ever been fully tested or implemented. If a hardware of software problem does occur there is still some sort of downtime or data unavailability and at worst data files may actually be unrecoverable. There usually is no redundancy or failover built into these back office solutions to prevent these serious problems from occurring. Linux based office solutions are typically very reliable systems however by building in service redundancy and failover across servers, we can strive to eliminate the possibility that a hardware failure will cause a business interruption. In addition to this by providing for a call home feature where hardware or software issues are relayed to a central IT support facility, we can catch issues before they become serious enough to cause any sort of outage. Properly configured these service alerts will enable repairs or issues to be resolved before a customer is even aware they have an issue developing. This combination of redundancy and remote system alerts means end customers have a drastic reduction in system failure that can cause business outages.

Using Moodle Class Management Software
Presenter: Dennis Kibbe
Length: 50 Minutes
Moodle is an online class management software used by major colleges and universities around the world. During the presentation we'll set up a Moodle course and go thought the various features that Moodle offers including glossaries, lessons, creating content and assignments. Participants will be able to login to the Moodle course and actually work with the software.

Sage: Free Software for the research and teaching of mathematics
Presenter: Antonio Cárdenas
Length: 50 Minutes
Sage is free software tool for the research and teaching of mathematics. It is a very good alternative to any commercial math software and it has some innovations that put it ahead of others. Sage is also a useful tool for the research in all the areas of science and as a math problem solver in general. Some of the most important characteristics of Sage are shown here through some examples.

Disaster Recovery
Presenter: Bryan O'Neal
Length: 50 Minutes
Slides [odp]
In its simplest form a disaster recovery plan is just what it sounds like; you plan to recover from a disaster. This may sound vague, but much like the advice "you should purchase insurance" the details differ for every person, group, department, and company. The insurance you need is not the same as the insurance your 19 year old college bound daughter needs, and it is certainly not the same insurance Xerox Corp of America needs. However, I will try to give some general advice about disaster recovery plans for small businesses, and then some simple how-to sections that will get you started.

The Penguin, the Daemon, the Gnu and your Bottom Line
Presenter: Christopher Lewis
Length: 50 Minutes
Just a few years ago the only software choice small businesses had was to either run legitimate or pirated versions of proprietary software. Open Source Software has matured to the point that businesses now have a viable choice. This presentation will explore two fictional small business to demonstrate how using Open Source Software can improve your bottom line.

OpenOffice.org 3.x
Presenter: M Vening
Length: 20 Minutes
Everyone has heard of Microsoft Office, but not everyone wants to shoulder the cost of buying it. A well publicized and free alternative to Microsoft is OpenOffice.org. OpenOffice.org provides similar functions--word processing, spreadsheet, and so on -- that are appropriate for the business as well as the home office. OpenOffice.org is portable, allowing you to use Macintosh and Linux as easily as Windows. OpenOffice.org can be placed on a USB/flash drive so that your work and the applicatations you need are completely portable--no need to install software and you're ready to work in an instant.

Email Deliverability Science and Solutions for Customer Relationship Management, MultiLevel and Email Marketing using FOSS for responsible business use
Presenter: Lisa Kachold
Length: 50 Minutes
What IS Spam? Email marketing, email deliverability, email ethics, email legislation, free and open source web or server based email tools, MTA solutions and servers will be discussed. OpenEMM, Postfix/ISPConfig, Customer Relationship Management portals (overview of WordPress, Drupal) (with emphasis on email systems integration). Light discussion of cross integration with Open Exchange (Exchange), Pop3 and SMS will be included. Spamassassin, ClamAV, virus and email security and risks, encrypted authentication, encrypted content, domain keys DKIM, DNS txt PTR records and the vast subject of deliverability content development for ethical successful marketing packaged together for the responsible business.

Using Mozilla Firefox & ChatZilla
Presenter: Matthew A Coulliette
Length: 50 Minutes
How to use Firefox & ChatZilla.

Using Mozilla Thunderbird & Lighting
Presenter: Matthew A Coulliette
Length: 50 Minutes
How to use Thunderbird & Lightning.

The Fedora Project
Presenter: Ryan Rix
Length: 50 Minutes
An overview of the Fedora project is presented. Apart from giving a feel of the structure and working of the Fedora community, we also mention some important technical features of the Fedora Linux operating system.

Applying FOSS with Business Servers
Presenter: Eric Shubert
Length: 50 Minutes
How to put together a server for an SMB/SME environment. This presentation will describe software and services necessary for a small- or medium-sized busines and how to meet those need using Free and Open Source Software.

Selling Open Source
Presenter: Kristy Westphal
Length: 50 Minutes
Is open source software right for your organization? This presentation will look at evaluation criteria from a technical perspective that will realistically compare commercial software to open source software, and how you can make the right decisions based on requirements and risk. I will also point the reader to resources that they can use and adapt in their own organizations, ultimately resulting in organization policy that will satisfy legal, procurement and IT requirements.

Red Hat in the Context of the Open Source Community and Development Process
Presenter: Rick Spurgeon
Length: 20 Minutes
Presentation highlights:
* A description of the Linux community composition and organization and the contribution they make to the ongoing development of open-source projects, in general, and the Linux kernel, in particular.
* A review of Red Hat and the contributions that it makes to open-source and the Linux kernel.
* A discussion of the role of Fedora and how it both supports continued open-source development and makes possible a much better Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Netbooks: What Good Are They?
Presenter: Craig A. Eddy
Length: 20 Minutes
Advantages and disadvantages of netbooks (in general), and the need to choose hardware wisely.

Using Forensics to Prove Your Case
Presenter: Kristy Westphal
Length: 50 Minutes
Introduction to the problem: The problem in this case is that people do dumb things on computers and then deny it later. The list of dumb things is long, but tend to include: inappropriate work usage (porn, hooking up with your girlfriend in the parking garage, violent websites), fraud, propagating threats, or complaining about the workplace.

Despite the user's best efforts, they can't hide everything. This talk will discuss the nooks and crannies of a computer to see where data hides and how you can find it. All tools used in this discussion are already freely available today on the Internet. We will also discuss the importance of an organized forensic program to any organization, to include processes, procedures and trained staff.

First, we will look at some real experiences of computer misuse. In each case, we will look at where the data was found to "make the case". Then we'll talk about the procedure and policy behind what actions were taken next (which depends mostly upon employee history, company past treatment of similar cases, and how we try to level out what is considered a minor violation versus serious violations).

Metasploit: A Pen-Testers Best Friend
Presenter: Kristy Westphal
Length: 50 Minutes
When you get down to the nitty gritty of your penetration test, it helps to have an exploitation toolkit ready to go with a great many of the possible tools that you'll need to complete your test. The Metasploit framework is such a toolset. "The Metasploit Framework is an advanced open-source platform for developing, testing, and using exploit code. This project initially started off as a portable network game and has evolved into a powerful tool for penetration testing, exploit development, and vulnerability research."

Green IT
Presenter: Rick Spurgeon
Length: 20 Minutes
While green IT is pursued for a number of reasons (eco-responsibility, CAPEX/OPEX, facility constraints, etc.), a green IT strategy often has unforeseen benefits (increased manageability, security, business continuity, etc.).

This presentation will explore how Red Hat has and continues to contribute to the green IT movement. While there are many ways of going green, we will discuss four of them:

* UNIX-to-Linux migration: UNIX-to-Linux migrations facilitated green computing before the term “going green” was popular. As customers migrated from RISC systems to industry-standard systems running Linux, they were able to achieve higher performance with less hardware and lower power consumption.

* Power management technologies: Red Hat's involvement with power management technology, including LessWatts.org. Emerging improvements, which include: RHEL 5.3 and Nehalem, the tickless kernel, improved drivers, and improved coding techniques, will also be discussed.

* Virtualization: Virtualization provides many benefits to a green IT strategy, from server consolidation to the increased benefits of Red Hat Enterprise virtualization's system scheduler and power-saver technologies. In addition to these benefits, we will discuss the benefits of emerging approaches, which include KVM's architectural approach (relative to power savings), cloud computing, and VDI.

* The mainframe: Discussion of a migration to the mainframe as a path to green IT with a discussion of the Bank of New Zealand migration.

The Dangers of Software as a Service
Presenter: Ryan Rix
Length: 20 Minutes
As desktop systems and the internet begin to blend more and more completely, many companies are beginning to see the purported benefits of using hosted services and online collaboration tools such as the Google Apps suite. However, as more and more private, corporate and even government entities begin to embrace 'open protocols' and 'free' (that's free as in beer) services, they risk exposing their data. This presentation will look at the risks of using proprietary Software as a Service (SaaS) web applications and the benefits of embracing either self hosted, Free equivalents, or keeping their data "out of the cloud."

Virtualization In The Open Enterprise
Presenter: Joseph Sinclair
Length: 50 Minutes
Virtualization is one of the more widely talked about technologies today, but most discussions are deeply technical, leaving the business leader with little understanding of how to use virtualization to drive business results. This presenter provides a discussion of the basics of the technology as a framework for discussing how, when, and why virtualization technology may be used to drive real business benefits in cost reduction, flexibility, system utilization, and business growth. Free and open virtualization products are discussed in some detail, along with their advantages and disadvantages from a business management viewpoint. Major forms of virtualization, along with their uses and limitations are also covered. A short discussion of the near-horizon in virtualization technology and a business uses wrap-up conclude the discussion.

If it wasn't for people! Conflict Management 101
Presenter: Barbara Atkinson
Length: 50 Minutes
Solving a technical problem is easy, there are no shades of gray. It's the human conflicts that create challenges which compromise the success of both projects and businesses.

My Social Network Can Beat up Your Social Network
Presenter: David Huerta
Length: 20 Minutes
Twitter is used by a lot of people and groups of people, including ABLEconf, but there exists a Free software alternative to Twitter from Quebec that can do the same things, and maybe even better. This presentation will discuss the differences and advantages between the two microblogging platforms.