The IT faithful still attend USENIX Annual Tech Conference

The USENIX Association announced today
that its signature conference suffered no change in attendance despite
a
sagging technical industry.

Shrinking training budgets and massive layoffs have depressed
conference
attendance industrywide, with many events reporting drops in
registration anywhere from 15 to 30 percent from last year. However,
the USENIX Annual Technical Conference, held late last month in Boston,
reported only a five- percent decrease, bringing in over 1,750
technical
professionals. International registration totaled nearly 14 percent,
with 35 countries represented in attendance demographics.

“The strength of this conference is a very important factor,” said
Yoonho Park, USENIX Annual Tech 2001 Program Chair. “We were certainly
in an area where USENIX makes a lot of sense for a lot of people.
People have been coming to this conference for a long time and I’m sure
they made a ruckus to their managers about attending this year.”

“Not everyone was employed,” added Carla Ellis, Annual Tech 2002
Program
Chair. “They came regardless.”

The conference provided an intellectually challenging program with two
tracks of technical research presentation, including the popular
FREENIX
track, sessions dedicated to open source research and advances.
Presenters included industry luminaries such as Keynote Daniel Frye,
Director of IBM’s Linux Technology Center, Security gurus Steven
Bellovin and Avi Rubin, and Compaq’s James Gettys. Longtime USENIX
members, Avi Rubin, Margo Seltzer, and Keith Bostic also announced the
release of their new books at this conference.

“We orchestrated it so that my book signing would be right after my
invited talk,” said Avi Rubin, a member of USENIX Board of Directors.
“I
really think this is the right place to do promotions considering the
combination of the size of the audience and the technical bent that
they
have.”

The Annual Technical Conference is the first of USENIX’s major annual
events, which include the Security Symposium in Washington, DC, in
August; the Annual Linux Showcase and Conference in Oakland in
November;
and the unique conference LISA 2001, The Systems Administrator’s
conference.

“If you want to know what is going on in the industry in the next three
to five years, go to a USENIX conference and hear what the argument is
in any given year,” said Clem Cole, FREENIX Program Chair for Annual
Tech 2001. “This is where industry and research begin to come
together.”

Detailed information on upcoming USENIX events is available on the Web
at www.usenix.org/events.

About the USENIX Association
USENIX is the Advanced Computing Systems Association. For over 25
years, it has been the leading community for engineers, system
administrators, scientists, and technician working on the cutting edge
of the computing world. USENIX conferences are the essential meeting
grounds for the presentation and discussion of technical advances in
all
aspects of computing systems. For more information about the USENIX
Association, visit http://www.usenix.org.

White-Hat Security Arsenal: Tackling the Threats By Aviel Rubin,
published by Addison Wesley. For more information or to purchase the
book, see www.white-hat.org.

Berkeley DB by Sleepycat Software, Inc. (co-written by Margo Seltzer
and
Keith Bostic), published by New Riders, contact Mike Olson,
mao@sleepycat.com or see www.sleepycat.com.