HP Tech Forum 2006

The HP Tech forum people have released their call for papers. This conference is now in it's 2nd year, I'm not sure how good it will be this year, last year I call "ok", it was effected by Hurricane Katrina (was supposed to be in New Orleans...), hopefully it will be good.

Normally by this time of year, I have selected a topic for a presentation and am fully on my way to preparing it. Every year when I go to a conference (I only go to one a year...), I do a presentation. My reasons for doing this are:

• It's good for me
• The conference fee gets waived (work really likes this)
• I occasionally pick a topic that I want to learn more about so that I am forced to
  
• I get to interact with my peers
• If people like me don't to the presentations, the technical value of the conference goes down. (Leaving more slots for marketing or less than technical presentations.)

I've tried to get others at work to do presentations at the conferences they attend, but haven't really had much success. People are either chicken, too busy, or just lazy.

Anyway, last week they issued the Call For Papers for this years conference, and the thing closes on May 19th. I only have 11 days to pick a topic and prepare a well written abstract. So far, I'm drawing a blank. I just have not gotten excited enough about any topic I have thought of, and any ones I have thought of don't sound good enough for me to do. I also can't think of a topic that I want to learn a lot more about that would be an interesting presentation.

In the past I have done the following:

• HPUX Security
• lsof, tcpdump, and tusc
• Software Package Builder
• Patching
• One other one that I really can't remember

Now I could do HPUX security again, there is no reason why not, but I'm not exactly super excited about it. Hopefully I can think of something before it's too late. I am visiting with the HPUX software engineers in Fort Collins in August, any presentation I do I can get someone from HP to look over and help me make any corrections, or help beef the thing up a little.

Last year I did Software Package Builder, and the guy who wrote the product came and helped answer questions. That was kind of nice.

I am sure if I do not do a presentation, it would be fine, but it might be kind of weird to not present. It's not like I haven't been super busy before when I have done presentations...