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12TH SYSTEMS ADMINISTRATION CONFERENCE (LISA '98)

December 6-11, 1998, Boston, Massachusetts, Marriott Copley Place Hotel

Sponsored by the USENIX Association
Co-sponsored by SAGE, the System Administrators Guild

IMPORTANT DATES

Extended abstracts due: June 23, 1998
Invited Talk Proposals due: June 23, 1998
Notification to authors: July 21, 1998
Final papers due: October 16, 1998
Registration materials available August, 1998

The theme for LISA '98 is "Systems Administration in the Real World."

LISA, the Systems Administration Conference, is the largest and oldest conference exclusively for system administrators. LISA is unique because the entire program is put together by veteran systems administrators who know first-hand the issues you face, and what factors are important in devising solutions. LISA offers the most comprehensive program for systems administrators at all levels of experience, supporting a variety of platforms, and managing sites of all sizes.

Systems administration is a recognized and valued professional skill, and one critically essential in production, mission-critical environments. Systems administration is one of the hottest jobs in the computing industry, with demand outpacing supply. In addition to possessing sophisticated technical skills and needing to enhance skills to keep up with rapidly changes in technologies and tools, sys admins must be on top of social, business even legal issues that face their organizations. How can you keep up?

Whether you are a novice or senior-level sysadmin, or the manager of sysadmins, this year's program will have plenty to offer. Many different types of learning options are offered--intensive tutorials, refereed papers, invited talks, vendor demos in the trade show, and after-hours Birds-of-a-Feather sessions--with lots of discussion and chances to get together with your peers. LISA is a very informal conference, and nobody--even industry luminaries--stands on ceremony. It's a terrific place to hang out and learn from your fellow system administrators.

That's why LISA, the Systems Administration Conference, has been so popular. Sys admins can find most of the things they need to know in one place. Over 2000 system administrators are expected to attend.

TUTORIAL PROGRAM

December 6-8, 1998

Gain mastery of complex techniques and technologies and you'll get immediate payoff within your organization. You can choose from up to 40 full- and half-day classes over three days. Whether you are a novice or senior system administrator, you will be able to find a tutorial to meet your needs. Tutorials cover important topics such as: performance tuning, administering Windows NT, Perl, TCP/IP troubleshooting, security, networking, network services, sendmail, Samba, legal issues, and professional development.

TECHNICAL SESSIONS

December 9-11, 1998

The three days of technical sessions, in keeping with the conference theme "Systems Administration in the Real World," will be dedicated to delivering specific, useful knowledge, derived from experience, and applicable to managing the real-life issues you face daily. The technical sessions will focus heavily on sys admin pragmata which can be put to immediate use at your site.

This year the technical sessions will be marked by flexibility in the kind of session formats offered. In addition to the traditional refereed papers, Works-in-Progress (WIP) reports and invited talks by leaders in the field, focused panels, mini-tutorials, jump-start talks, technical overviews and the like will be selected to promote enjoyable and interactive learning environments. They will offer systems administrators a chance to learn of the very latest developments in important technologies, hear about solutions which have worked for your peers, and survey what's happening in topic areas of particular concern.

The refereed papers will provide the latest findings on cutting-edge technologies. Refereed papers may be academic in nature, designed to advance the field of systems administration, or they may report practical solutions to specific problems. The Program Committee selects for presentation the very best papers from among the submissions; attendees benefit from hearing results of the leading research and latest implementations.

CONFERENCE TOPICS

The Program Committee invites you to contribute to the LISA conference. Submissions of refereed papers or other presentations which address the following topics are particularly timely. Presentations addressing other areas of general interest are equally welcome.
  • Innovative system administration tools and techniques
  • Distributed or automated system administration
  • Integration of emerging technologies in system administration
  • Incorporation of commercial system administration technology
  • Experiences supporting large sites (1000 users or machines)
  • Experiences supporting nomadic and wireless computing
  • High availability solutions
  • Integration of heterogeneous platforms including legacy systems
  • Managing enterprise-wide email
  • Disaster recovery solutions
  • OS / platform migration strategies
  • Performance analysis and monitoring
  • Data management
  • Security

CONFERENCE ORGANIZERS

Program Chair: Xev Gittler, Lehman Brothers
Co-Chair: Rob Kolstad, Berkeley Software Design, Inc.

Program Committee
Eric Anderson, University of California, Berkeley
Melissa D. Binde
Phil Cox, NTS, Inc.
Tina Darmohray, System Experts
Rik Farrow, Independent Consultant
Tim Hunter, KLA-Tencor
David Kensiski, Cisco Systems, Inc.
Kurt J. Lidl, UUNET Technologies, Inc.
E. Scott Menter, ESM Services Inc.
John Orthoefer, GTE Internetworking
John Sellens, UUNET Canada, Inc.
Marc Staveley, Marc Staveley Consulting
Ozan S. Yigit, Secure Computing Corp.

Invited Talks Coordinators
Pat Wilson, Dartmouth College
Phil Scarr, Netscape Communications Corporation

INVITED TALK TRACK PROPOSALS

If you have a topic of interest to system administrators, but it is not suitable as a refereed paper, please submit a proposal to the Invited Talk coordinators. Please email your proposal to itlisa@usenix.org.

TUTORIAL PROGRAM PROPOSALS

To provide the best possible tutorial offerings, USENIX continually solicits proposals for new tutorials. If you are interested in presenting a tutorial at this or other USENIX conferences, please contact the tutorial coordinator:
Daniel V. Klein
Tel: 1-412-421-0285
Fax: 1-412-421-2332
Email: dvk@usenix.org

BIRDS-OF-A-FEATHER SESSIONS

Birds-of-a-Feather sessions (BoFs) are very informal gatherings organized by attendees interested in a particular topic. BoFs are held Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday evenings. BoFs may be scheduled in advance by phoning the Conference Office at 1-949-588-8649 or via email to conference@usenix.org. BoFs may also be scheduled at the conference.

CASH PRIZES

Cash prizes will be awarded at the conference for the best paper and the best student paper within the refereed paper track.

HOW TO SUBMIT A REFEREED PAPER

An extended abstract of two to five pages is required for the paper selection process. Full papers are not acceptable at this stage; if you send a full paper, you must also include an extended abstract.

Include references to establish that you are familiar with related work, and, where possible, provide detailed performance data to establish that you have a working implementation or measurement tool.

Submissions will be judged on the quality of the written submission, and whether or not the work advances the state-of-the-art of system administration. For more detailed author instructions and a sample extended abstract, send email to lisa98authors@usenix.org or call USENIX at 1-510-528-8649.

Note that LISA, like most conferences and journals, requires that papers not be submitted simultaneously to more than one conference or publication, and that submitted papers not be previously or subsequently published elsewhere for a certain period of time. Papers accompanied by non-disclosure agreement forms are not acceptable and will be returned unread. All submissions are held in the highest confidence prior to publication in the conference proceedings, both as a matter of policy and as protected by the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976.

At least one author of each accepted paper presents the paper at the conference. Authors of an accepted paper must provide a final paper for publication in the conference proceedings. Final papers are limited to 20 pages, including diagrams, figures and appendices. Complete instructions will be sent to authors of accepted papers.

To discuss potential submissions and for inquiries regarding the content of the conference program, contact the program chair:

Xev Gittler
Email: xev@usenix.org
Tel: 1-201-692-1638

Where to Submit

Please submit an extended abstract for the refereed paper track by two of the following methods:

Email to: lisa98papers@usenix.org

Fax to: 1-510-548-5738

Mail to:

LISA 98 Conference
USENIX Association
2560 Ninth Street, Suite 215
Berkeley, CA USA 94710
Authors: Please include the following (in a separate email message, in ascii format please, if the abstract is submitted electronically) providing:
  • The title and authors of the manuscript.
  • The name of one author who will serve as a contact, with postal and electronic mail addresses, daytime and evening telephone numbers, and a fax number.
  • An indication of which, if any, of the authors are full-time students.

PRODUCTS EXHIBITION

See demonstrations of innovative solutions which can put you ahead of your systems, network and internet management tasks. The exhibition let's you preview in operation products you've heard about and get the details from well-informed vendor representatives, Compare solutions quickly and save hours of research looking for products and services you need!

VENDORS: You can reach 2000 highly qualified system administrators eager to purchase system administration, network, intra/internet and other solutions.

FOR PROGRAM AND REGISTRATION INFORMATION

Complete program and registration information will be available in August 1998 on this web site. The information will be printable from a PDF file on the web site. If you would like to receive the materials in print, please request them at any time email to conference@usenix.org.

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