2006 HP Tech Forum

For a while, I didn't plan to attend the HP Tech Forum this year. I didn't get a presentation done during their call for papers. (I think 2 weeks was much too short a time...)

3 weeks ago, I took a look at the public session scheduler. I wasn't all that impressed. For one thing, a number of the interesting sessions were duplicates of the stuff I heard last week in Ft. Collins. (Or at least the base of what we heard. Last week was NDA, HP Tech has less NDA stuff, so we saw more last week...) Most of the rest of it was pretty basic stuff.

Last week I talked to one of the guys who was on the HPUX selection team for the forum. I talked to him about how the large layer of basic stuff was good to have for the conference, but on top of that they needed to have a little bit larger selection of non-basic stuff than they currently provided. (Feedback for next year.) He told me to look at the scheduler again, there were new things added.

Well, there a few more things added (maybe not lots, but more). The Tech forum I figured would be worth it (as of last week) if I could take a certification exam there. (They are free at the Tech Forum.)

The HPUX Certified Systems Engineer certification has 2 exams, one for Advanced System Administration, and one for a specialty, 'High Availablity' or 'Networking and Security'. Last year at the Tech forum, I took (and passed) the Advanced Sysadmin exam. Well, I wasn't really interested in HA, and the Networking and Security exam had yet to be released.

A few weeks ago, I had emailed the cert office, asking about the N&S exam. Their answer was that it was scheduled to be released at the end of July. I looked August 1, and it was not there. This morning, I wrote an email to the head of HP certified, detailing my waiting for the exam, and how it was the linchpin in my decision to attend the conference. After sending off the email, I went back to the site, and found the exam was indeed available to take! I felt like an idiot sending the email. Luckily, I was a bigger idiot, and typed the guy's email wrong, the thing bounced back.

Now I plan to attend the Tech Forum, and have started the paperwork. I expect to take and pass the exam then, to finish the HPUX CSE. I also expec to attend a baseball game. I yeah, I will also go to the sessions that are interesting...

Next year, I plan to be ready with a presentation early, so that I don't miss the call for papers. I will be a part of the solution, and get a presentation that's not on a beginner level.