Dear Colleague,

Philadelphia, birthplace of the U.S. Constitution, seems an appropriate venue for the one conference that defines and discusses the evolving constitution of the profession of system administration. LISA remains a unique and essential conference created for system administrators by system administrators, a place where practicing system administrators, researchers, software developers, and vendors meet to explore the problems of the day, learn new solutions, and predict future research challenges and solutions.

Strongly driven by social and economic forces, the constitution of our profession is rapidly changing. The informed professional must commit to continually learning new skills to keep pace in this rapidly evolving Internet culture. Every system administrator must now understand the fundamentals of networking and security, so LISA has been expanded to cover these and other timely topics that now are essential knowledge for all system administrators.

LISA offers over 35 tutorials that teach you to make more informed choices and best respond to the pressing challenges of the immediate future and beyond. Taught by master practitioners and noted authors, our tutorials train you in cutting-edge technologies and techniques, including:

• UNIX, Solaris, and Linux system administration
• Performance tuning, disaster recovery planning, SANs, massive upgrades, user request management, and other service challenges
• Monitoring, intrusion detection, firewalls, and Web security
• DNS administration and practical wireless networking

LISA's technical program covers timely topics of interest to all professional system administrators. Expert speakers will discuss current challenges of the profession, including:

• Keynote: Jim Reese, Chief Operations Engineer of Google, on Google's architecture and the challenges of running an Internet search service
• Paul Vixie on Internet governance, peering, and legislation
• Curtis Preston, backup guru, on streamlining backup and recovery
• Len Sassaman on "the promise of privacy"
• Tim Nagle of TRW on his years with the NSA Red Team
• Daniel V. Klein on the constitutional and legal arguments against spam

LISA continues to provide an integrated experience for attendees that is much more valuable than the sum of its parts. In one place, you can:

• Evaluate new approaches to automation, monitoring, security, and the evolving theory of system administration (among other topics) in the Refereed Paper sessions
• Find people with similar interests or administrative problems at Birds-of-a-Feather sessions
• Bring your perplexing technical questions to experts at LISA's unique "The Guru Is In" sessions
• Explore the latest commercial innovations at the Vendor Exhibition

Alva Couch

For the LISA 2002 Program Committee,
Alva Couch, Tufts University
Program Chair